7 ms·

It's clearest in the conclusion.

dpark 10mo ago
I still don’t see it. I feel like the “this is AI” crowd is getting ridiculous. Too perfect? Clearly AI. Too sloppy? That’s clearly AI too. Rarely is there anything concrete that the person claiming AI can point to. It’s just “I can tell”. Same confident assurance that all the teachers trusting “AI detectors” have.
- dkdcio 10mo ago
  I came to this thread hoping to read an interesting discussion of a topic I don’t understand well; instead it’s this I have opened a wager r.e. detecting LLM/AI use in blogs: https://dkdc.dev/posts/llm-ai-blog-challenge/ https://dkdc.dev/posts/llm-ai-blog-challenge/
  - dpark 10mo ago
    I feel like it’s on every other article now. The “this is ai” comments detract way more from the conversation than whatever supposed ai content is actually in the article. These ai hunters are like the transvestigators who are certain they can always tell who’s trans.
    - PKop 10mo ago
      No. These articles are annoying to read, the same dumb patterns and structures over and over again in every one. It's a waste of time; the content gives off a generic tone and it's not interesting.
      - dkdcio 10mo ago
        say that! that’s independent of whether AI/LLM tools were used to write it and more valuable (“this was boring and repetitive” vs “I don’t like the tool I suspect you may have used to write this”)
      - sb8244 10mo ago
        Are we reading the same article? Also, you do realize that writing is taught in an incredibly formulaic way? I can't speak to English as second language authors, but I imagine it doesn't make it easier.
      - WesolyKubeczek 10mo ago
        So is the vast majority of comments on HN (and in any comment section of any website) well before LLMs came into being, yet we give them a benefit of doubt. Users on forums tend to behave in a starkly bot-like way, often having a very limited set of responses pertaining to their particular hobby horses, so much so that others could easily predict how the most prolific users would react to any topic and in what precise words. Now, apparently, we have a generation of "this is AI slop!" "bots".
  - _dain_ 10mo ago
    I don't have a million dollars but I'll take you up on it for like a grand. I'm serious, email me.
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      the problem is it’s a lot of work (not actually worth it for me for a thousand dollars) — but you cannot win just one scenario, I write 100 rather short, very similar blog posts. run 50 through Claude Code with instructions “copy this file”. have fun distinguishing! of course that’s an extreme way to go about it, but I could use the AI more and end up at the same result trivially
      - _dain_ 10mo ago
        This is so childish and pathetic it doesn't deserve a response.
        dkdcio 10mo ago
        why? LLM/AI use doesn’t denote anything about style or quality of a blog, that’s the point — and why this type of commentary all of HackerNews and elsewhere is so annoying. obviously if a million dollars are on the line I’m going to do what I can to win. I’m just pointing out how that can be taken to the extreme, but again I can use the tools more in the spirit of the challenge and (very easily) end up with the same results
        Panzer04 10mo ago
        People object to using AI to write their articles (poorly). Your answer to them saying it's obvious when it's AI written is to.. write it yourself, then pretend copy-pasting that article via an AI counts as AI-written? That's a laughable response.
        dkdcio 10mo ago
        my point is using AI is distinct from from the quality of blog posts. these frequent baseless, distracting claims of AI use are silly this wager is a thought exercise to demonstrate that. want to wager $1,000,000 or think you’ll lose? if you’ll lose, why is it ok to go around writing “YoU uSeD aI” instead of actually assessing the quality of a post?
  - internetter 10mo ago
    > I will make a bet for $1,000,000! > I won't actually make this bet! > But if I did make this bet, I would win! ???
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      if two parties put up $1,000,000 each and I get a large cut I’ll do the work! one commenter already wagered $1,000, which I’d easily win, but I suspect this would take me idk at least a few days of work (not worth the time). and, again, for a million dollars I’d make sure I win see other comment though, the point is that assessing quality of content on whether AI was used is stupid (and getting really annoying)
- PKop 10mo ago
  That's your issue not ours. It's obvious; if you don't have a problem with it, enjoy reading slop; many people can't stand it and we don't have to apologize for recognizing or not liking it.
  - dpark 10mo ago
    I don’t believe you can recognize anything. Like everyone else claiming they can clearly identify AI you can’t actually point to why it’s AI or what parts are clearly AI. If you could actually identify AI deterministically you would have a very profitable product.
    - Jweb_Guru 10mo ago
      I would never claim that we can reliably detect all AI generated text. There are many ways to write text with LLM assistance that is indistinguishable from human output. Moreover, models themselves are extremely bad at detecting AI-generated text, and it is relatively easy to edit these tells out if you know what to look for (one can try to prompt them out too, though success is more limited there). I am happy to make a much narrower claim, however: each particular set of models, when not heavily prompted to do otherwise, has a "house style" that's pretty easily identifiable by humans in long-form writing samples, and content written with that house style has a very high chance of being generated by AI. When text is written in this house style, it is often a sign that not only were LLMs used in its generation, but the person doing the generation did not bother to do much editing or use a more sophisticated prompt that wouldn't result in such obvious tells, which is why the style is commonly associated with "slop." I find it interesting that you believe this claim is wildly conspirational, or that you think the difficulty of reliably detecting AI generated text at scale is evidence that humans can't do pretty well at this much more limited task. Do you also find claims that AIs are frequently sycophantic in ways that humans are not, or that they will use phrases like "you're absolutely right!" far more than a human would unless prompted otherwise (which are the exact same type of narrow claim) similarly conspirational? i.e., is your assertion that people would have difficulty differentiating between a real human's response to a prompt and Claude's response to a prompt when there was no specific pre-prompt trying to control the writing style of the response?

dpark 10mo ago

I still don’t see it. I feel like the “this is AI” crowd is getting ridiculous. Too perfect? Clearly AI. Too sloppy? That’s clearly AI too. Rarely is there anything concrete that the person claiming AI can point to. It’s just “I can tell”. Same confident assurance that all the teachers trusting “AI detectors” have.

dkdcio 10mo ago
I came to this thread hoping to read an interesting discussion of a topic I don’t understand well; instead it’s this I have opened a wager r.e. detecting LLM/AI use in blogs: https://dkdc.dev/posts/llm-ai-blog-challenge/ https://dkdc.dev/posts/llm-ai-blog-challenge/
- dpark 10mo ago
  I feel like it’s on every other article now. The “this is ai” comments detract way more from the conversation than whatever supposed ai content is actually in the article. These ai hunters are like the transvestigators who are certain they can always tell who’s trans.
  - PKop 10mo ago
    No. These articles are annoying to read, the same dumb patterns and structures over and over again in every one. It's a waste of time; the content gives off a generic tone and it's not interesting.
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      say that! that’s independent of whether AI/LLM tools were used to write it and more valuable (“this was boring and repetitive” vs “I don’t like the tool I suspect you may have used to write this”)
    - sb8244 10mo ago
      Are we reading the same article? Also, you do realize that writing is taught in an incredibly formulaic way? I can't speak to English as second language authors, but I imagine it doesn't make it easier.
    - WesolyKubeczek 10mo ago
      So is the vast majority of comments on HN (and in any comment section of any website) well before LLMs came into being, yet we give them a benefit of doubt. Users on forums tend to behave in a starkly bot-like way, often having a very limited set of responses pertaining to their particular hobby horses, so much so that others could easily predict how the most prolific users would react to any topic and in what precise words. Now, apparently, we have a generation of "this is AI slop!" "bots".
- _dain_ 10mo ago
  I don't have a million dollars but I'll take you up on it for like a grand. I'm serious, email me.
  - dkdcio 10mo ago
    the problem is it’s a lot of work (not actually worth it for me for a thousand dollars) — but you cannot win just one scenario, I write 100 rather short, very similar blog posts. run 50 through Claude Code with instructions “copy this file”. have fun distinguishing! of course that’s an extreme way to go about it, but I could use the AI more and end up at the same result trivially
    - _dain_ 10mo ago
      This is so childish and pathetic it doesn't deserve a response.
      - dkdcio 10mo ago
        why? LLM/AI use doesn’t denote anything about style or quality of a blog, that’s the point — and why this type of commentary all of HackerNews and elsewhere is so annoying. obviously if a million dollars are on the line I’m going to do what I can to win. I’m just pointing out how that can be taken to the extreme, but again I can use the tools more in the spirit of the challenge and (very easily) end up with the same results
        Panzer04 10mo ago
        People object to using AI to write their articles (poorly). Your answer to them saying it's obvious when it's AI written is to.. write it yourself, then pretend copy-pasting that article via an AI counts as AI-written? That's a laughable response.
        dkdcio 10mo ago
        my point is using AI is distinct from from the quality of blog posts. these frequent baseless, distracting claims of AI use are silly this wager is a thought exercise to demonstrate that. want to wager $1,000,000 or think you’ll lose? if you’ll lose, why is it ok to go around writing “YoU uSeD aI” instead of actually assessing the quality of a post?
- internetter 10mo ago
  > I will make a bet for $1,000,000! > I won't actually make this bet! > But if I did make this bet, I would win! ???
  - dkdcio 10mo ago
    if two parties put up $1,000,000 each and I get a large cut I’ll do the work! one commenter already wagered $1,000, which I’d easily win, but I suspect this would take me idk at least a few days of work (not worth the time). and, again, for a million dollars I’d make sure I win see other comment though, the point is that assessing quality of content on whether AI was used is stupid (and getting really annoying)
PKop 10mo ago
That's your issue not ours. It's obvious; if you don't have a problem with it, enjoy reading slop; many people can't stand it and we don't have to apologize for recognizing or not liking it.
- dpark 10mo ago
  I don’t believe you can recognize anything. Like everyone else claiming they can clearly identify AI you can’t actually point to why it’s AI or what parts are clearly AI. If you could actually identify AI deterministically you would have a very profitable product.
  - Jweb_Guru 10mo ago
    I would never claim that we can reliably detect all AI generated text. There are many ways to write text with LLM assistance that is indistinguishable from human output. Moreover, models themselves are extremely bad at detecting AI-generated text, and it is relatively easy to edit these tells out if you know what to look for (one can try to prompt them out too, though success is more limited there). I am happy to make a much narrower claim, however: each particular set of models, when not heavily prompted to do otherwise, has a "house style" that's pretty easily identifiable by humans in long-form writing samples, and content written with that house style has a very high chance of being generated by AI. When text is written in this house style, it is often a sign that not only were LLMs used in its generation, but the person doing the generation did not bother to do much editing or use a more sophisticated prompt that wouldn't result in such obvious tells, which is why the style is commonly associated with "slop." I find it interesting that you believe this claim is wildly conspirational, or that you think the difficulty of reliably detecting AI generated text at scale is evidence that humans can't do pretty well at this much more limited task. Do you also find claims that AIs are frequently sycophantic in ways that humans are not, or that they will use phrases like "you're absolutely right!" far more than a human would unless prompted otherwise (which are the exact same type of narrow claim) similarly conspirational? i.e., is your assertion that people would have difficulty differentiating between a real human's response to a prompt and Claude's response to a prompt when there was no specific pre-prompt trying to control the writing style of the response?