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Taste Is All That's Left
521–530 of 573 posts
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#522I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…
I get this is a cheap response but “you’re doing it wrong”. Early last year they were shite. Then they became good enough to write tests. Then they became good enough to write code. Currently they’re good enough to design APIs for “typical” applications. Are they good enough for vibecoding a production app? No. Not yet. Don’t let that confuse you. Many of us are using them effectively, and learning what works and what doesn’t. We’re also learning how to evaluate a new model: can it do more than the last one? Does it need the same level of detail as the last one? Can we go faster?
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...
I'm sceptical, where are all these essays he was supposed to have learned this very distinct style from? I certainly don't remember seeing them.
Yeah if you look back at earlier posts on the same blog, definitely not the same style. I'm guessing the author is either lying to save face or has spent so much time with Claude that they cannot distinguish Claude's voice from their own (we're all vulnerable to this).
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sceptical, where are all these essays he was supposed to have learned this very distinct style from? I certainly don't remember seeing them.
Another thing to consider is that LLMs have become a premier source of reading for the public. If more of what you read is AI generated, how you write is going to be significantly influenced by that. One (slightly frightening) possibility is that many people write like LLMs even without assistance from LLMs. AI writing may have just become the norm for some. Maybe that's what's happening here.
LLM style is in many ways "The Atlantic from Temu". Nearly every article in The Atlantic sounds the same - I think we all know the cliches I am talking about. This doesn't mean that every author underwent a lobotomy (I hope). It just means there's a group of editors enforcing a common style.
Joining these editors used to take years of training in order to write like they do. Now we have their wisdom available on the command line.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a writer with what may be an unpopular opinion. I have a college degree in creative writing; I do technical writing and programming for a living, and I used to publish technical articles on Linux, Python, Elixir, and other topics—complete with em dashes—long before AI was a thing. When confronting AI as a writer and deciding how I feel about it, I've landed on the conclusion that I've never accused mathematicians…
Calculating is not math. Calculators make mathematicians better mathematicians by allowing them to spend their time on actual mathematics. Writing is thinking. LLM writing makes authors worsr authors and even dumber people overall. Also a calculator gives the same answer as a human (except for human errors where the calculator isa strict improvement). LLMs absolutely do not give the same output as humans.
Isn’t that expected, though? If 100 of us were to write a five page essay on the chaffing mechanics of an Underoos wedgie, the likelihood that any of them are the same is pretty small, isn’t it?
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...
I think they're trolling us. Their post-mortem is a very AI-sounding (and Pangram-triggering) claim that they're not using AI: This post reads off as AI slop. You said it, I see it. I’m sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. If my word means anything to you, I would like to assure you that this post was not authored by a LLM. Nor was it storyboarded, reviewed, checked, etc. by…
> the one-word lines
The funny thing is that there are no "one-word lines". This more or less cements the fact that it must be AI in my mind.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll risk sounding antagonistic and ask you this: if LLMs are not "good enough", why are they still around? To quote the parent commenter: > They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but not long term
Breaking down long term problems into small shorter problems we can solve one after another until the long term problem is solved is the essence of engineering.
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Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article is not AI generated. Everyone is asserting it is but the author is well known as a critic of these tools in his communities. Why would he lie and use it to write an article with his genuine views, edit it to assuage the feelings of HN commenters, and then double down? Speedrunning losing his credibility, or, his writing style got on some people's nerves?
"And when the floor goes, the thing that decides what is worth keeping is no longer the cost of making it." I'm 100% confident that a human did not write this sentence unless they were deliberately trying to sound like an LLM. Just look at it! You don't need Pangram. There's a classifier model between your ears that knows how humans write.
That sentence doesn't read as llm to me.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
"And when the floor goes, the thing that decides what is worth keeping is no longer the cost of making it." I'm 100% confident that a human did not write this sentence unless they were deliberately trying to sound like an LLM. Just look at it! You don't need Pangram. There's a classifier model between your ears that knows how humans write.
That sentence doesn't read as llm to me.
Can you give an example of long-form writing that sounds like this from before 2024?
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...
Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.
Pangram said my 100% AI generated cover letter was "57% AI assisted." And the rest was human. lmao