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jorl17 4 hours ago

What got me was "I keep seeing the same shape next to billing events in other people's reports".

Clicked off after that.

I'm extremely bullish on AI, but I am tired of people not using their own words. Is everyone so insecure about the personality they project in writing that they need to replace it with some AI bullshit?

(To the author: if you didn't do this, which I accept is a possibility, I'm sorry -- you've been caught by the storm of fatigue that has plagued us due to those who do replace their words with AI crap)

dsign 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hmm. You are making a good point, and I wouldn’t give the benefit of the doubt to this post’s author. But you can’t just unsee “this is twice load bearing”. Some people will wonder if it’s a training, self-reinforcing feedback artifact. For others, it will work like a memetic virus[^1].

The paradoxical thing is that those of us who have English as a second language should have an easier time producing non-AI-English by the mere act of directly writing what we want to write.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind

jorl17 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree.

I am catching myself distrusting what people write ever so often. I've got cases of e-mails I'm CC'ed in and I am left wondering: "Has this person always written like this? Is this just an angle in this specific thread (e.g. for sales purposes)? Or are they really relying so much on what the blandness-machine spits out? Am I going mad and wielding my hammer looking for everything in the ....shape (eheh)...of a nail?"

Actually, now that I've written that, it's clear I need to have a talk with some people....sigh...

cft 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you thought about the fact that the author is in the Philippines and English isn’t his first language?

jorl17 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I did think about that possibility. Using a tool to translate to english doesn't mean we don't proofread it.

Ok, I hear you: one could argue that they simply don't realize this is a very non-idiomatic way of writing precisely because english isn't their first language. And that simply giving a preamble "sorry, my english comes from a translation tool, excuse any mistakes" would seem obtuse next to every english text they write.

Ok, I'll concede that. In which case I just have to accept the fact that, perhaps, if LLMs don't solve the problem of writing like garbage, and people keep using them to translate, a bunch of us will simply not want to read what you translate because it reads terribly and messes my brain up.

However, I find it hard to believe that an LLM would translate anything they've written into such a clear LLM trope. I would find it much more believable that they simply brainstormed to an LLM in their language and had the LLM build (at least that part of) the article from it. Even if they proofread it, since english is not their language, it slipped by. Either way, in this hypothetical scenario, the LLM was still used to write (at least a part of) the article, not just translate it.

I also find it somewhat hard to believe that someone who I believe is a developer (and has been using claude for a very long time) does not know enough of both english and claude to identify this specific pattern in the text they are putting their own name to it.

So, sure, maybe the author doesn't predominantly write in english or interact with claude in english, and they did write everything and simply piped it through an LLM to get a translation and, after proofreading the best they could, just didn't notice that.

Alternatively, maybe they just don't give a fuck, something which I can absolutely respect. They lose a reader (at least for now), but stand by what makes sense to them and I genuinely don't think less of them because of it -- I just can't read what they produce. I _would_ probably think less of them if I had to work every day with them and this were a repeated pattern of interaction, but that's not what's being discussed at all.

(Disclaimer: English isn't my first language either, which I think also does come across)

avazhi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And? I’d rather reader poorly written English written by a person about his actual experience - or just read nothing at all - as opposed to reading thinking and writing that has been outsourced to a machine. Being able to think and write confers privileges on those who can do both; the idea that somebody should be able to benefit by doing neither is pretty fucking perverse.