Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Various LLM Smells

shvbsle.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 312 posts

Re: Various LLM Smells

#11

Post by dvt »

Planktonne wrote: post #8

> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

Honestly, I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more. One book a month is hardly an aspirational goal. You don't even have to read Melville or Hemingway or Chaucer or Shakespeare, just pick up any popular NYT best seller, and it'll be significantly better than anything an LLM can generate.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#14

Post by skydhash »

Planktonne wrote: post #8

> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

I dabble in drawing and I find LLM images (and maybe some non LLM one) abhorrent. As for why, the reason I can think of are: no consistency (perspective, small details, and color theory) and too much details making it a visual noise. In most painting, the artist will have a subject that is most detailed (to draw the eyes) and from there, the lost of details will follow some kind of logic. This is how you pinpoint what the artist is most interested in. LLM looks like a filter applied to a montage of pictures.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#15

Post by exe34 »

danielodievich wrote: post #3

All of those are included in the bulk of the documents passing my work input these days. It is infuriating. Out of principle I maintain 100% me in all my writing but I don't know if it matters. Well maybe it does... an interviewee recently complimented me on the "nicest and most human resume" they saw recently. That felt good

Do you send your resume to people before you interview them?

Re: Various LLM Smells

#16

Post by fortyseven »

KronisLV wrote: post #5

> The "JetBrains Mono" font Thought for sure we'd get a critique of Inter overuse. JetBrains Mono is a lovely font, though.

It's my daily driver, so I kind of twitched a bit saying that list in here. I never noticed because I was using it anyway, I guess.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#17

Post by poszlem »

What I find amazing is how HARD it is to make the LLM produce a piece of text that does not sound like slop. I have had dozens of sessions where I tried to make it write like a human would, and yet it still uses those tired writing phrases. I don't understand why neither openai, nor anthropic are able to do anything to make it better, and in some cases it feels like we are actually going backwards.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#18

Post by spdustin »

- “(The) honest caveat:” (or “genuine caveat:”, both with the colon)

- “(The) honest answer:” (again, with colon)

- “The thing to internalize:”

- “The smoking gun:”

(really, sentences that start with “The :” are a strong tell, but those four are the most prolific)

- “load bearing” (when not talking about architecture)

- “blast radius” (when not talking about actual explosives, but rather the effect of an event/action)

- “smoke test” (esp. when “sanity check” is more apropos)

- Lists of three clauses/adjectives where the third is really just a combination of the first two

- Referring to the “shape” of things figuratively

- Social media posts that end with “Curious if anyone…”

- Stories or anecdotes using. “Oh. Oh.” (where the second “oh” is italicized)

Edit: Yes, some of those last ones are terms that we often use as devs...but I would argue about the actual frequency of their use. Plus, these tells live on in prose generated by the latest models.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#20

Post by xienze »

dvt wrote: post #11
Planktonne wrote: post #8

> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

Honestly, I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more. One book a month is hardly an aspirational goal. You don't even have to read Melville or Hemingway or Chaucer or Shakespeare, just pick up any popular NYT best seller, and it'll be significantly better than anything an LLM can generate.

> I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more.

This makes me think you're only exposing yourself to high quality writing online and from an intelligent circle of friends and coworkers. The average person's reading and writing abilities are _atrocious_ and only getting worse. We're almost at the point where kids are communicating through abbreviations and emojis exclusively. LLM prose is significantly better than what the average person can produce.

Post reply on HN