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danabramov | 24 days ago

I agree with your parent that the AI writing style is incredibly frustrating. Is there a difficulty with making a pass, reading every sentence of what was written, and then rewriting in your own words when you see AI cliches? It makes it difficult to trust the substance when the lack of effort in form is evident.

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InsideOutSanta|24 days ago

My suspicion is that the problem here is pretty simple: people publishing articles that contain these kinds of LLM-ass LLMisms don't mind and don't notice them.

I spotted this recently on Reddit. There are tons of very obviously bot-generated or LLM-written posts, but there are also always clearly real people in the comments who just don't realize that they're responding to a bot.

rustyhancock|24 days ago

I think it's because LLMs are very good at tuning into the what the user wants the text to look like.

But if you're outside that and looking in the text usually screams AI. I see this all the time with job applications even those that think they "rewrote it all".

You are tempted to think the LLMs suggestion is acceptable far more than you would have produced it yourself.

It reminds me of the Red Dwarf episode Camille. It can't be all things to all people at the same time.

dspillett|24 days ago

> people publishing articles that contain these kinds of LLM-ass LLMisms don't mind and don't notice them

That certainly seems to be the case, as demonstrated by the fact that they post them. It is also safe to assume that those who fairly directly use LLM output themselves are not going to be overly bothered by the style being present in posts by others.

> but there are also always clearly real people in the comments who just don't realize that they're responding to a bot

Or perhaps many think they might be responding to someone who has just used an LLM to reword the post. Or translate it from their first language if that is not the common language of the forum in question.

TBH I don't bother (if I don't care enough to make the effort of writing something myself, then I don't care enough to have it written at all) but I try to have a little understanding for those who have problems writing (particularly those not writing in a language they are fluent in).

CleaveIt2Beaver|24 days ago

What is it about this kind of post that you guys are recognizing it as AI from? I don't work with LLMs as a rule, so I'm not familiar with the tells. To me it just reads like a fairly sanitized blog post.

deaux|24 days ago

I see this by far the most on Github out of all places.

terracatta|24 days ago

Will do better next time.

ryandrake|24 days ago

Great that you are open to feedback! I wish every blogger could hear and internalize this but I'm just a lowly HN poster with no reach, so I'll just piss into the wind here:

You're probably a really good writer, and when you are a good writer, people want to hear your authentic voice. When an author uses AI, even "just a little to clean things up" it taints the whole piece. It's like they farted in the room. Everyone can smell it and everyone knows they did it. When I'm half way through an article and I smell it, I kind of just give up in disgust. If I wanted to hear what an LLM thought about a topic, I'd just ask an LLM--they are very accessible now. We go to HN and read blogs and articles because we want to hear what a human thinks about it.

luisln|24 days ago

[deleted]

tencentshill|24 days ago

But they "wrote" it in 10% of the time. It implies there are better uses of their time than writing this article.

freeone3000|24 days ago

Then there are better uses of my time than reading it.

beepbooptheory|24 days ago

There is surely no difficulty, but can you provide an example of what you mean? Just because I don't see it here. Or at least like, if I read a blog from some saas company pre-LLM era, I'd expect it to sound like this.

I get the call for "effort" but recently this feels like its being used to critique the thing without engaging.

HN has a policy about not complaining about the website itself when someone posts some content within it. These kinds of complaints are starting to feel applicable to the spirit of that rule. Just in their sheer number and noise and potential to derail from something substantive. But maybe that's just me.

If you feel like the content is low effort, you can respond by not engaging with it?

Just some thoughts!

deaux|24 days ago

It's incredibly bad on this article. It stands out more because it's so wrong and the content itself could actually be interesting. Normally anything with this level of slop wouldn't even be worth reading if it wasn't slop. But let me help you see the light. I'm on mobile so forgive my lack of proper formatting.

--

Because it’s not just that agents can be dangerous once they’re installed. The ecosystem that distributes their capabilities and skill registries has already become an attack surface.

^ Okay, once can happen. At least he clearly rewrote the LLM output a little.

That means a malicious “skill” is not just an OpenClaw problem. It is a distribution mechanism that can travel across any agent ecosystem that supports the same standard.

^ Oh oh..

Markdown isn’t “content” in an agent ecosystem. Markdown is an installer.

^ Oh no.

The key point is that this was not “a suspicious link.” This was a complete execution chain disguised as setup instructions.

^ At this point my eyes start bleeding.

This is the type of malware that doesn’t just “infect your computer.” It raids everything valuable on that device

^ Please make it stop.

Skills need provenance. Execution needs mediation. Permissions need to be specific, revocable, and continuously enforced, not granted once and forgotten.

^ Here's what it taught me about B2B sales.

This wasn’t an isolated case. It was a campaign.

^ This isn't just any slop. It's ultraslop.

Not a one-off malicious upload.

A deliberate strategy: use “skills” as the distribution channel, and “prerequisites” as the social engineering wrapper.

^ Not your run-of-the-mill slop, but some of the worst slop.

--

I feel kind of sorry for making you see it, as it might deprive you of enjoying future slop. But you asked for it, and I'm happy to provide.

I'm not the person you replied to, but I imagine he'd give the same examples.

Personally, I couldn't care less if you use AI to help you write. I care about it not being the type of slurry that pre-AI was easily avoided by staying off of LinkedIn.