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Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

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Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#11

Post by alex43578 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #4

They cannot. Unfortunately many believe they can, and it is impossible to disprove. So now real people need to write avoiding certain styles, because a lot of other people have decided those are "LLM clues." Bullets, EM Dash, certain common English phases or words (e.g. Delve, Vibrant, Additionally, etc)[0]. Basicaly you need to sprinkle subtle mistakes, or lower the quality of your written communications to avoid ac…

Someone with native fluency in American English can (should) be able to tell the difference between human writing and unpolished AI copy-paste.

Essentially 0 people use emoji to create a bulleted list. Nobody unintentionally cites fake legal precedents or non-existent events, articles, or papers. Even the “it’s not X, it’s Y” structure, in the presence of other suspicious style/tone cues signals LLM text.

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#12

Post by rcxdude »

sanex wrote: post #10
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key insight is to avoid – em dashes. You’re absolutely right. It’s not the content, it’s the style.

Ironically one of the big tells for me is the "It's not this. It's that." Your comment uses a comma though so you're probably a real person :)

I assume they were aping those terms ironically (especially given the 'you're absolutely right')

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#14

Post by m_w_ »

I don’t think there’s a reliable system or API for doing so, unclear that arms race will ever favor the side of the detectors.

As far as how I / other people do it, there are some obvious styles that reek of LLMs, I think it’s chatgpt.

There’s a very common structure of “nice post, the X to Y is real. miscellaneous praise — blah blah blah. Also curious about how you asjkldfljaksd?"

From today:

This comment is almost certainly AI-generated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658796

And I'm suspicious of this one too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660070 - reads just a bit too glazebot-9000 to believe it's written by a person.

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#16

Post by fortran77 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #4

They cannot. Unfortunately many believe they can, and it is impossible to disprove. So now real people need to write avoiding certain styles, because a lot of other people have decided those are "LLM clues." Bullets, EM Dash, certain common English phases or words (e.g. Delve, Vibrant, Additionally, etc)[0]. Basicaly you need to sprinkle subtle mistakes, or lower the quality of your written communications to avoid ac…

And I'm sure we've all seen what happens if you run the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address or the book of Genesis through an AI "detector". They usually come back as AI.

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#17

Post by loloquwowndueo »

sanex wrote: post #10
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key insight is to avoid – em dashes. You’re absolutely right. It’s not the content, it’s the style.

Ironically one of the big tells for me is the "It's not this. It's that." Your comment uses a comma though so you're probably a real person :)

Busted!!!!

Staccato (too may short sentences with periods) is also a telltale for me. Most humans prefer longer sentences with more varied punctuation; I, for example, am a sucker for run-on sentences.

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#18

Post by loloquwowndueo »

LoganDark wrote: post #9
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key insight is to avoid – em dashes. You’re absolutely right. It’s not the content, it’s the style.

That's an en-dash.

Sorry! Is this ok? —

Re: Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM

#19

Post by prmph »

alex43578 wrote: post #11
Someone1234 wrote: post #4

They cannot. Unfortunately many believe they can, and it is impossible to disprove. So now real people need to write avoiding certain styles, because a lot of other people have decided those are "LLM clues." Bullets, EM Dash, certain common English phases or words (e.g. Delve, Vibrant, Additionally, etc)[0]. Basicaly you need to sprinkle subtle mistakes, or lower the quality of your written communications to avoid ac…

Someone with native fluency in American English can (should) be able to tell the difference between human writing and unpolished AI copy-paste. Essentially 0 people use emoji to create a bulleted list. Nobody unintentionally cites fake legal precedents or non-existent events, articles, or papers. Even the “it’s not X, it’s Y” structure, in the presence of other suspicious style/tone cues signals LLM text.

Also one big tell that is hard to hide is making verbose lists with fluff but little actual informative content.

Ask an LLM to read your project specs and add a section headed: Performance Optimizations, to see an example of this

Another is a certain punchy and sensationalist style that does not change throughout a longer piece of writing.

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