Models have proclivities, and many people use the same model.
Imagine all books on earth were written by just 5 people - and worse, they could not remember what they had written yesterday. You would quickly get tired of reading the same flourishes and patterns over and over.
Whatever style models currently in use have, that's what people are going to be tired of, and it's what they're going to recognize as "AI".
The most difficult thing in doing it yourself is knowing what to ask for. I can ask my model to talk like a caveman or like a Baltic pirate. But asking for something more nuanced, in the range of regular speech, requires the correct lingo
I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics, just as it's trivial for me to ask an LLM for tenant-isolation using row-level security in an app
You could try taking a body of your own writing and asking it to characterize it/come up with a prompt (or fine tune if you can) describing your style and quirks.
> I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics…
But you know what you like, and you know what bothers you, and the good news is that you don't have to one-shot a solution. You can create a skill and refine it over time. As you test and/or use it, identify copy you don't like and tell the LLM what you prefer instead, and ask it to distill and generalize that feedback into the skill.
I don't understand why this is a feature and what it brings other than shout "you are being watched by random others".
Exited the site before ending the first block.
Why kill the em dashes? They are a legitimate mark — one that I have been using for years. On a Mac, you quickly get used to pressing shift-option-hyphen. Em dashes are typographically correct and should be used.
for https://slopwash.com I’ve started approaching this more as an eval problem than something to go post-training for. I’m excited to be trying these new Jev-type models in more of a harnessed approach. maybe some heavy LLM to measure preservation of intent
Side note but the multi-user cursors was a super cool feature, not sure it was relevant to this article but would love to see it on more interactive pieces (a la The Pudding, etc.)
Why would you support this sort of projects?
LLM text should be spottable for as long as possible, otherwise human communication and expression on the internet will be killed.
In what sense will it be killed? I don't plan to stop writing my own messages or notes, just because AI can write, and I seriously doubt many other people who prefer their own voices will change either.
I stopped using reddit entirely because it's bots talking to other bots on threads posted by bots, I stopped making posts at the start of this year because I no longer know if a human being is ever reading them. I then deleted the account.
The tell tell sign for me is that it's still incredibly hard to read. AI tend to write in a style that I'm unable to easily read (humans does that as well sometimes). I constantly have to go back and re-read the previous sentence, because the text simply doesn't register.
A next step I'd suggest is asking the LLM to use shorter words when available.
Is it still capable of writing an essay about AI writing tics or has the very means of producing said tics, even when the model is asked to do so to demonstrate, now abitterated?
Applause earned. Neat results especially out of such a small model.
Separately we have overlap between AI slop styles and right for the situation writing styles which this highlights.
Using the new CRM example, the clean version looks like a millennial student who rambled on a page, and the AI slop version looks like a draft I could send for PR to corporate managers. I buy the former looks more real, but it also looks sloppy and doesn’t work for most of my use cases.
When I was in school, the structured essay style of the “slop” examples was encouraged and I see it continue to resonate in corporate. The cleaned up versions here def have use cases - reviews for example.
Main point - different styles for different situations and our AI slop versions vs humanized versions both overlap different areas of the “ideal” we continue to look for.
Imagine all books on earth were written by just 5 people - and worse, they could not remember what they had written yesterday. You would quickly get tired of reading the same flourishes and patterns over and over.
Whatever style models currently in use have, that's what people are going to be tired of, and it's what they're going to recognize as "AI".
You can already do that in your agents.md file, of course, or ask for a re-write and dodge the sameness.
I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics, just as it's trivial for me to ask an LLM for tenant-isolation using row-level security in an app
But you know what you like, and you know what bothers you, and the good news is that you don't have to one-shot a solution. You can create a skill and refine it over time. As you test and/or use it, identify copy you don't like and tell the LLM what you prefer instead, and ask it to distill and generalize that feedback into the skill.
A total, artificial lack of em dashes can in itself be perceived as another sign of AI writing.
I am increasingly feeling that way about HN, too.
A next step I'd suggest is asking the LLM to use shorter words when available.
Separately we have overlap between AI slop styles and right for the situation writing styles which this highlights.
Using the new CRM example, the clean version looks like a millennial student who rambled on a page, and the AI slop version looks like a draft I could send for PR to corporate managers. I buy the former looks more real, but it also looks sloppy and doesn’t work for most of my use cases.
When I was in school, the structured essay style of the “slop” examples was encouraged and I see it continue to resonate in corporate. The cleaned up versions here def have use cases - reviews for example.
Main point - different styles for different situations and our AI slop versions vs humanized versions both overlap different areas of the “ideal” we continue to look for.
I want my boss to know I'm a Good Boy using AI.
(*defeated chuckles and gazes towards my Claude session*)