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Let my karma burn for saying this: Maybe it is time to let this go man. These comments are really the new incarnation of "grammar policing". (1) They don't add

Let my karma burn for saying this: Maybe it is time to let this go man. These comments are really the new incarnation of "grammar policing". (1) They don't add anything of value, did the author use an LLM to fix his prose but no useless slop was added in the process: who cares ? Is the article useless slop: fine, downvote it to oblivion. (1) For those not old enough to remember that wonderful practice please use your nearest LLM to find out or, you know, visit a library and do your own research.

woadwarrior01 2mo ago
I'm not making any moral judgements based on it, merely observing it.
- rpdillon 2mo ago
  The criticism is not that it's moralizing, but that it's boring.
  - heyyeah 2mo ago
    100% agree. We're on Hacker News. We should be open to people who aren't native English speakers using LLMs to help them communicate their ideas and more importantly, cool projects without getting dragged for AI speak in the text.
itsdesmond 2mo ago
The writing is made worse by a specific choice which the commentator identified. That’s actionable feedback.
- govping 2mo ago
  how is it made worse in this case?
  - evilduck 2mo ago
    Because it's a strong signal of AI slop. Why put in more work than the "author" did? If the author generated text that required no effort, and has no understanding of the contents of the material generated, and no self-awareness of their behavior and how the audience will receive it, it definitely doesn't warrant wasting a single second reading it. Now, granted, maybe they did review it, maybe they did understand it, maybe they did know how it would be received and merely made a mistake, but how are we to know? It quacks like a duck.
    - rpdillon 2mo ago
      The term "AI slop" is thought-terminating. A more nuanced approach: read it and decide for yourself on merits, rather than vibes.
      - evilduck 2mo ago
        Saying that something is thought terminating is thought terminating, it's the laziest "I win" bullshit approach ever. A more nuanced approach: don't produce slop and people won't dismiss it as lazy bullshit either.
        rpdillon 2mo ago
        No, that's not true at all. Thought-terminating cliches cause you to stop thinking; they give a quick shortcut that let's you be dismissive. That's what "AI slop" is, when someone bestows the moniker on a piece of prose that has "It's not this, it's that" in it. Look, there's is a wide variety of work being produced with AI, all the way from exceptional professional work to total trash done by amateurs. Painting all over those efforts with the same brush of "AI slop" attempts to avoid the thought necessary to process the nuance in each individual situation. In fact, folks that use "AI slop" enjoy being able to dismiss AI output as quickly as possible; they seem to be quite happy to forgo whatever insights might be present in such work. But let's not for a moment pretend it's not a crappy heuristic. Through this lens, dunking on a piece of prose because it has some trace of LLM processing seems both useless and uninsightful, which is why I'm rallying against it as thought-terminating. Do the thinking to determine whether what you're reading is valid. Saying that it has tells that an LLM might have contributed is not sufficient evidence to do that, and it's also something anyone can do, it requires no skill or insight, and makes for boring discussion. Zero curiousity, 100% dismissive.
- e12e 2mo ago
  I don't know what the author's native language is, but I assume it's something I'd need machine translation for anyway. Having it in good (if not Nobel prize level great) English is much easier - and will probably be easier to find again via search.
- trinix912 2mo ago
  If they feel the need to polish their texts with LLMs because they’re not comfortable with English, how would they tell the output is bad? I can tell you first hand it’s sometimes hard to figure out what is LLM writing and what isn’t, English isn’t my first language either.
wellthisisgreat 2mo ago
I am with you in principle. There is 0 wrong with using AI to write a draft. However catching the glaring LLMisms shows that the person did a pass and tried to edit the obvious LLMisms. For me, unprocessed AI output is perfectly fine as the means to the end, but not as a final output.
latexr 2mo ago
> Is the article useless slop: fine, downvote it to oblivion. You can’t downvote submissions on HN, only flag them. Identifying when text was written by LLMs is a useful signal. Maybe you don’t like these repeated comments, but I’d bet the people making them hate even more that they feel they wasted their time reading it.
- rpdillon 2mo ago
  This attitude will just cause people to write the same thing with AI and then ask it to strip out all the tells. I found it works just fine, but then you push usage underground, making it harder to detect, which isn't in your best interest, assuming you want to be able to detect and avoid low-effort writing.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
JSR_FDED 2mo ago
Why would you want to signal low effort for your writing and the related project?
- jryle70 2mo ago
  It's not low effort. The author had to write in English, not their native, and then used LLM to polish it. The sentence itself conveyed a real point. They cared how their article came across. That's much more effort than the boring "Claude was here" comment that took a second to write but costs real energy to appear, and once again spurred a worthless debate. Let it go FFS.
  - JSR_FDED 2mo ago
    I hear you, the author put in real effort. That’s why it’s a tragedy if it presents like low effort.
- Almondsetat 2mo ago
  The world is not the Unites States
gitpusher42 2mo ago
Thank you! Text is not the main part of this repo. The main part is the technology and the list of experiments (and some useful knowledge I got from this project, haha). I have always been bad at writing or editing text (in both my native language and English), but without text it is impossible to share this project online. Text was the last and most difficult part for me. It is not perfect (and this project is not perfect as well), but I believe it does the job of communicating my ideas

woadwarrior01 2mo ago

I'm not making any moral judgements based on it, merely observing it.

rpdillon 2mo ago
The criticism is not that it's moralizing, but that it's boring.
- heyyeah 2mo ago
  100% agree. We're on Hacker News. We should be open to people who aren't native English speakers using LLMs to help them communicate their ideas and more importantly, cool projects without getting dragged for AI speak in the text.

itsdesmond 2mo ago

The writing is made worse by a specific choice which the commentator identified. That’s actionable feedback.

govping 2mo ago
how is it made worse in this case?
- evilduck 2mo ago
  Because it's a strong signal of AI slop. Why put in more work than the "author" did? If the author generated text that required no effort, and has no understanding of the contents of the material generated, and no self-awareness of their behavior and how the audience will receive it, it definitely doesn't warrant wasting a single second reading it. Now, granted, maybe they did review it, maybe they did understand it, maybe they did know how it would be received and merely made a mistake, but how are we to know? It quacks like a duck.
  - rpdillon 2mo ago
    The term "AI slop" is thought-terminating. A more nuanced approach: read it and decide for yourself on merits, rather than vibes.
    - evilduck 2mo ago
      Saying that something is thought terminating is thought terminating, it's the laziest "I win" bullshit approach ever. A more nuanced approach: don't produce slop and people won't dismiss it as lazy bullshit either.
      - rpdillon 2mo ago
        No, that's not true at all. Thought-terminating cliches cause you to stop thinking; they give a quick shortcut that let's you be dismissive. That's what "AI slop" is, when someone bestows the moniker on a piece of prose that has "It's not this, it's that" in it. Look, there's is a wide variety of work being produced with AI, all the way from exceptional professional work to total trash done by amateurs. Painting all over those efforts with the same brush of "AI slop" attempts to avoid the thought necessary to process the nuance in each individual situation. In fact, folks that use "AI slop" enjoy being able to dismiss AI output as quickly as possible; they seem to be quite happy to forgo whatever insights might be present in such work. But let's not for a moment pretend it's not a crappy heuristic. Through this lens, dunking on a piece of prose because it has some trace of LLM processing seems both useless and uninsightful, which is why I'm rallying against it as thought-terminating. Do the thinking to determine whether what you're reading is valid. Saying that it has tells that an LLM might have contributed is not sufficient evidence to do that, and it's also something anyone can do, it requires no skill or insight, and makes for boring discussion. Zero curiousity, 100% dismissive.
e12e 2mo ago
I don't know what the author's native language is, but I assume it's something I'd need machine translation for anyway. Having it in good (if not Nobel prize level great) English is much easier - and will probably be easier to find again via search.
trinix912 2mo ago
If they feel the need to polish their texts with LLMs because they’re not comfortable with English, how would they tell the output is bad? I can tell you first hand it’s sometimes hard to figure out what is LLM writing and what isn’t, English isn’t my first language either.

wellthisisgreat 2mo ago

I am with you in principle. There is 0 wrong with using AI to write a draft. However catching the glaring LLMisms shows that the person did a pass and tried to edit the obvious LLMisms. For me, unprocessed AI output is perfectly fine as the means to the end, but not as a final output.

latexr 2mo ago

> Is the article useless slop: fine, downvote it to oblivion. You can’t downvote submissions on HN, only flag them. Identifying when text was written by LLMs is a useful signal. Maybe you don’t like these repeated comments, but I’d bet the people making them hate even more that they feel they wasted their time reading it.

rpdillon 2mo ago
This attitude will just cause people to write the same thing with AI and then ask it to strip out all the tells. I found it works just fine, but then you push usage underground, making it harder to detect, which isn't in your best interest, assuming you want to be able to detect and avoid low-effort writing.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]

JSR_FDED 2mo ago

Why would you want to signal low effort for your writing and the related project?

jryle70 2mo ago
It's not low effort. The author had to write in English, not their native, and then used LLM to polish it. The sentence itself conveyed a real point. They cared how their article came across. That's much more effort than the boring "Claude was here" comment that took a second to write but costs real energy to appear, and once again spurred a worthless debate. Let it go FFS.
- JSR_FDED 2mo ago
  I hear you, the author put in real effort. That’s why it’s a tragedy if it presents like low effort.
Almondsetat 2mo ago
The world is not the Unites States

gitpusher42 2mo ago

Thank you! Text is not the main part of this repo. The main part is the technology and the list of experiments (and some useful knowledge I got from this project, haha). I have always been bad at writing or editing text (in both my native language and English), but without text it is impossible to share this project online. Text was the last and most difficult part for me. It is not perfect (and this project is not perfect as well), but I believe it does the job of communicating my ideas