7 ms·

I actually do read them. Not in severe detail, but not casually either. 150 pages is really not very long and there doesn't seem to be too much bloat. (I would

I actually do read them. Not in severe detail, but not casually either. 150 pages is really not very long and there doesn't seem to be too much bloat. (I would cut out the moral personhood stuff but that's a political/ideological thing). This is snarky but I am grumpy: I wonder if there's a correlation between me refusing to use LLMs and me being happy to read a novella-sized PDF about them.

unshavedyak 2mo ago
> I wonder if there's a correlation between me refusing to use LLMs and me being happy to read a novella-sized PDF about them. Semi related, but i would hate to read that PDF but i also hate reading what LLMs write lol. LLMs are pretty terrible at being concise. Using an LLM these days means putting up with bizarre and often confusing phrasing, wordy explanations, etc. It's kinda crazy to me how good they are but how bad their writing style is for me personally. Even though i use an LLM constantly i can't stand reading its responses.
abroszka33 2mo ago
> 150 pages is really not very long and there doesn't seem to be too much bloat. Maybe it's just me, but 150 pages is like third of a good book. Quite long. And it's full of LLM slop, they did not even bother to remove the em dashes.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  Sure, but don’t read it like a book, it’s more of a document to skim through
- no_multitudes 2mo ago
  Do you have specific examples you think are LLM-generated? I have only read a few parts, but they did not seem primarily LLM-generated to me. Using em-dashes is really not a good signal for this IMO. I'm not saying you're wrong btw; I'm sure this has many authors and some of them probably used LLMs significantly in the writing process.
  - abroszka33 2mo ago
    Do you honestly believe that there is a person at Anthropic, creators of one of the smartest LLM models, whose only job is to spend months writing 150 pages about a model they are going to release? And this person is not using LLMs? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm more confident about winning the lottery next week.
    - no_multitudes 2mo ago
      No, I think it is the work of many dozens of people, not one person. It's probable that LLM text was pasted directly into early drafts of the document, and plausible that some of that text survives in the final document. However, no section of the final document I have looked at reads to me like un-edited LLM output (which is almost always very obvious to me.) Therefore, I think it is more likely than not that human editors went over the document carefully and rewrote anything that was full of the uselessly punchy sentences or constant over-corrections that hallmark LLM speech.
    - brokencode 2mo ago
      So your complaint is about LLM slop, but can’t point to anything that’s actually wrong about it other than that there are dashes? You can use an LLM to create work that isn’t slop. And you can hand write slop with no computer involvement at all. Most of the people I knew in high school 15 years ago would write slop on a daily basis.
kubb 2mo ago
You mean moral patienthood? There are many ways to read something, model cards are usually skimmed.
aenis 2mo ago
"I wonder if there's a correlation between me refusing to use LLMs and me being happy to read a novella-sized PDF about them." Well, one possible explanation is that you have time on your hands. Lots of people using LLMs do so because they are in a hurry to do or ship something. In your case it would appear you have time budget for reading.

unshavedyak 2mo ago

> I wonder if there's a correlation between me refusing to use LLMs and me being happy to read a novella-sized PDF about them. Semi related, but i would hate to read that PDF but i also hate reading what LLMs write lol. LLMs are pretty terrible at being concise. Using an LLM these days means putting up with bizarre and often confusing phrasing, wordy explanations, etc. It's kinda crazy to me how good they are but how bad their writing style is for me personally. Even though i use an LLM constantly i can't stand reading its responses.

abroszka33 2mo ago

> 150 pages is really not very long and there doesn't seem to be too much bloat. Maybe it's just me, but 150 pages is like third of a good book. Quite long. And it's full of LLM slop, they did not even bother to remove the em dashes.

dgellow 2mo ago
Sure, but don’t read it like a book, it’s more of a document to skim through
no_multitudes 2mo ago
Do you have specific examples you think are LLM-generated? I have only read a few parts, but they did not seem primarily LLM-generated to me. Using em-dashes is really not a good signal for this IMO. I'm not saying you're wrong btw; I'm sure this has many authors and some of them probably used LLMs significantly in the writing process.
- abroszka33 2mo ago
  Do you honestly believe that there is a person at Anthropic, creators of one of the smartest LLM models, whose only job is to spend months writing 150 pages about a model they are going to release? And this person is not using LLMs? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm more confident about winning the lottery next week.
  - no_multitudes 2mo ago
    No, I think it is the work of many dozens of people, not one person. It's probable that LLM text was pasted directly into early drafts of the document, and plausible that some of that text survives in the final document. However, no section of the final document I have looked at reads to me like un-edited LLM output (which is almost always very obvious to me.) Therefore, I think it is more likely than not that human editors went over the document carefully and rewrote anything that was full of the uselessly punchy sentences or constant over-corrections that hallmark LLM speech.
  - brokencode 2mo ago
    So your complaint is about LLM slop, but can’t point to anything that’s actually wrong about it other than that there are dashes? You can use an LLM to create work that isn’t slop. And you can hand write slop with no computer involvement at all. Most of the people I knew in high school 15 years ago would write slop on a daily basis.

kubb 2mo ago

You mean moral patienthood? There are many ways to read something, model cards are usually skimmed.

aenis 2mo ago

"I wonder if there's a correlation between me refusing to use LLMs and me being happy to read a novella-sized PDF about them." Well, one possible explanation is that you have time on your hands. Lots of people using LLMs do so because they are in a hurry to do or ship something. In your case it would appear you have time budget for reading.