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The English language has no words (yet) to capture that special combination of nausea and embarrassment one feels when they commit in good faith to reading a lo

The English language has no words (yet) to capture that special combination of nausea and embarrassment one feels when they commit in good faith to reading a long piece of prose... only to slowly realize the whole thing is AI generated. But I'm feeling it more and more often these days.

echelon 2mo ago
[flagged]
- stymaar 2mo ago
  > AI prose is better than the average human There's no objective measurement of “better”, which in itself refutes your argument, but I personally feels AI prose to be very annoying for mostly two reasons: - it's the same everywhere. People could use AI to write in different styles by prompting and through few-shots learning, but they don't and as a result every AI generated prose looks like something I've already read. Its junk prose the same way way Mac Donalds is junk food. - if someone doesn't make the effort of writing or even customizing the AI output, then what I'm reading is a low effort post and it's highly unlikely that I'm going to learn anything in the process. As a result as soon as I realize that I'm reading AI slop, I feel the immediate disappointment of having committed some time to reading something that wasn't worth my time. > Historians will look back at all the silly dead humans in the past that icked and yucked about AI. Like we look at the silly dead humans in the past who fought back against opium, cigarettes and leaded gasoline?
- madewithdrama 2mo ago
  even in death, Elliot Roger serves the omnissiah
jottinger 2mo ago
Does that have something to do with OP's post, though? I mean, it's written like someone who's mostly formally familiar with English. Maybe your infamiliarity with formal English itself is factoring in, because the AIs are ALSO formal in diction? I didn't get the same "AI wrote this" that you did, but I get a lot of people saying "AI wrote this" to stuff I definitely wrote by hand, all the way.
- echelon 2mo ago
  It's a witch hunt. Everything gets labeled AI, flagged, and canned. I'm getting annoyed at HN now and wish I could join an AI-positive / tech-positive version.
  - graypegg 2mo ago
    Genuinely curious, do you find HN to be AI-negative? (For whatever that mostly meaningless label is worth.) Would an "AI-positive / tech-positive" version of HN be just the same site, but with a smaller user base that holds similar opinions to you? There's a wide spectrum of folks with different opinions on everything here, but I wouldn't say there's some lean towards LLM-hate. I'm not a fan of AI projects, but I can live with the (frankly) very high proportion of AI content co-habitating on this site. For that reason, I don't think the root post here should be flagged really. That might get reversed, I think there's a flag-count threshold that triggers it automatically. But thinking HN is actively against AI projects stands in preeeetty stark contrast to the front page of HN! It's highly likely that people consider the concept of this metaframework to be bad, and they clicked the flag button instead of not interacting/leaving a curious comment, which is generally the way HN works. Saying that, you should make one! Hacker mindset and all. It wouldn't be for me, but you might find a less confrontational atmosphere in your own space.
    - luckydata 2mo ago
      I think the comments on AI related projects are filled with negativity and uninformed opinions and I too find the atmosphere around here pretty off-putting lately.
      - graypegg 2mo ago
        I won't say that HN is some bastion of objectivity, but I do find people tend to be a little more direct on here. Individual comments can be pretty harsh as a result, but I tend to put at least some weight in the "HN hivemind" simply because I know there's a lot of people in important fields participating here. You absolutely don't have to agree with that, but I've rethought some things before because of that "negativity" that in hindsight; were indeed not great ideas. If it feels that AI-generated projects are getting negative feedback, it might be worth interrogating why that is. It might not be because they're made with AI, it could be because they're not a great idea/not well implemented.
staticshock 2mo ago
I think it lands differently for different kinds of prose (e.g. informational, persuasive, etc.) Persuasive prose, in particular, which is probably the majority of the things that get posted here, is less persuasive to the extent to which it includes obvious "AI tells". Even in the cases where AI is more articulate, (1) the emotional weight of the text feels manipulative when it is clear that the emotions were, at best, "vetted" by a human as opposed to having been produced by one, and (2) I think we have a built-in "bullshit-proximity" sensor, and have recently been trained to expect AI to be more willing to engage in bullshit than humans due to their obsequious disposition. (For the record, I think humans are also full of bullshit, so this one's more of a toss-up.)
btschaegg 2mo ago
There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery. SCNR :)

echelon 2mo ago

[flagged]

stymaar 2mo ago
> AI prose is better than the average human There's no objective measurement of “better”, which in itself refutes your argument, but I personally feels AI prose to be very annoying for mostly two reasons: - it's the same everywhere. People could use AI to write in different styles by prompting and through few-shots learning, but they don't and as a result every AI generated prose looks like something I've already read. Its junk prose the same way way Mac Donalds is junk food. - if someone doesn't make the effort of writing or even customizing the AI output, then what I'm reading is a low effort post and it's highly unlikely that I'm going to learn anything in the process. As a result as soon as I realize that I'm reading AI slop, I feel the immediate disappointment of having committed some time to reading something that wasn't worth my time. > Historians will look back at all the silly dead humans in the past that icked and yucked about AI. Like we look at the silly dead humans in the past who fought back against opium, cigarettes and leaded gasoline?
madewithdrama 2mo ago
even in death, Elliot Roger serves the omnissiah

jottinger 2mo ago

Does that have something to do with OP's post, though? I mean, it's written like someone who's mostly formally familiar with English. Maybe your infamiliarity with formal English itself is factoring in, because the AIs are ALSO formal in diction? I didn't get the same "AI wrote this" that you did, but I get a lot of people saying "AI wrote this" to stuff I definitely wrote by hand, all the way.

echelon 2mo ago
It's a witch hunt. Everything gets labeled AI, flagged, and canned. I'm getting annoyed at HN now and wish I could join an AI-positive / tech-positive version.
- graypegg 2mo ago
  Genuinely curious, do you find HN to be AI-negative? (For whatever that mostly meaningless label is worth.) Would an "AI-positive / tech-positive" version of HN be just the same site, but with a smaller user base that holds similar opinions to you? There's a wide spectrum of folks with different opinions on everything here, but I wouldn't say there's some lean towards LLM-hate. I'm not a fan of AI projects, but I can live with the (frankly) very high proportion of AI content co-habitating on this site. For that reason, I don't think the root post here should be flagged really. That might get reversed, I think there's a flag-count threshold that triggers it automatically. But thinking HN is actively against AI projects stands in preeeetty stark contrast to the front page of HN! It's highly likely that people consider the concept of this metaframework to be bad, and they clicked the flag button instead of not interacting/leaving a curious comment, which is generally the way HN works. Saying that, you should make one! Hacker mindset and all. It wouldn't be for me, but you might find a less confrontational atmosphere in your own space.
  - luckydata 2mo ago
    I think the comments on AI related projects are filled with negativity and uninformed opinions and I too find the atmosphere around here pretty off-putting lately.
    - graypegg 2mo ago
      I won't say that HN is some bastion of objectivity, but I do find people tend to be a little more direct on here. Individual comments can be pretty harsh as a result, but I tend to put at least some weight in the "HN hivemind" simply because I know there's a lot of people in important fields participating here. You absolutely don't have to agree with that, but I've rethought some things before because of that "negativity" that in hindsight; were indeed not great ideas. If it feels that AI-generated projects are getting negative feedback, it might be worth interrogating why that is. It might not be because they're made with AI, it could be because they're not a great idea/not well implemented.

staticshock 2mo ago

I think it lands differently for different kinds of prose (e.g. informational, persuasive, etc.) Persuasive prose, in particular, which is probably the majority of the things that get posted here, is less persuasive to the extent to which it includes obvious "AI tells". Even in the cases where AI is more articulate, (1) the emotional weight of the text feels manipulative when it is clear that the emotions were, at best, "vetted" by a human as opposed to having been produced by one, and (2) I think we have a built-in "bullshit-proximity" sensor, and have recently been trained to expect AI to be more willing to engage in bullshit than humans due to their obsequious disposition. (For the record, I think humans are also full of bullshit, so this one's more of a toss-up.)

btschaegg 2mo ago

There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery. SCNR :)