The revolt of the reader

If something is obvious then by definition it’s obvious. Additionally the formula is simple: AI + effort = writing we can generally tolerate (unless you’re just a bad writer). AI + no effort = writing most people can’t tolerate regardless of your skill as a writer.

LLM writing, unless someone puts in the time to improve it, typically follows the exact same patterns and favors the same words. You can’t reas a thread here without people talking about “Claude speak.” It is readily apparent, I do not need to show you a 10 year study with n=100,000 to make this point. The article isn’t hallucinating a problem, we are all nodding along because we all see it every goddamn day lmao. He even cited a study and makes a pretty strong case for why it’s a useful metric here in TFA.

If the AI writing is indistinguishable from human writing, then it is not lazy copy and pasting of AI outputs and isn’t just raw LLM output with no work done on it. So in that case it’s no longer a problem.

LLM’s cannot write in a natural, human way that distinguishes it from the typical LLM output on the first try. If they could, we wouldn’t have this problem. Maybe one day they will. Hell maybe it’ll even be next week. But currently they do not so I do not understand why we are having this discussion.

I agree!

Both versions are great: the former is poetic and grand and would fit right in in a fantasy text; the latter is dry and informative and requires much less mental effort to translate and extract meaning from (though still more than "normal" text.

I could imagine a third version that's clearer than the second and still nearly as poetic as the first.

I agree that it's not great style for just conveying information clearly and plainly (e.g I'd hate to read documentation written like this) but I'd argue that here, the medium is part of the message.

It's supposed to sound dry and depressing and somewhat sterile.

> It's hostile to the reader with the side of flaunting author's superiority.

I think if someone deliberately obfuscates meaning to sound fancier when the point is to communicate information directly, sure, I'd agree. But writing is often art, and I think demanding effort from the reader is fair in that case. I wouldn't make a blanket generalization like that.

My guess is that if you were betting on a race, you would put your money on the swift to win, and "sometimes fast runners trip over" wouldn't seem as smart.

The rewrite stinks of a consultant's report where humor is frowned upon, business is serious, and there's no way we could write in plain words that the CEO got there by chance. Objective consideration distances the author compared to the subjective original I have returned and [I saw]. The original gives examples, the rewrite's contemporary phenomena is vague enough to avoid calling out the board of directors. A compelled conclusion is one the author is - reluctantly, you understand - forced into. Innate capacity leaves an escape hatch for a education from a good school and life experience to excuse the board again. It's not an honest rewrite of the same sentiment - a subjective take that life isn't fair and it's not just here, and us.

A plenitude of observations undertaken in a multitude of geographically and culturally diverse locations has convinced this author of the incompleteness of the following claims: races are won by the swift, battles are won by the strong, bread is earned by wisdom, riches are earned through applied understanding, and favours return to skilled persons. Absent are the effects of time and chance on all situations, of which experience has made abundantly clear. Other phenomena may too have their inputs, e.g. underhanded manipulation.

(Swiftness is still the best available predictor of who will win a race, though, and training cardio, muscles, diet, electrolytes, mental endurance, is the best available way to increase your chances of winning and not dropping out, tripping over from tiredness, or getting cramp, even though you can't change your innate ability or age, and time and chance happeneth to ye regardless).

I’ve seen several false (or apparently false) accusations of LLM authorship on HN/Lobsters.

However, we have to distinguish a few hypotheses:

1. No careful readers will notice when a piece is AI written.

2. Careful readers will generally not notice AI writing.

3. Everyone who writes comments on HN will reliably classify writing as AI or not.

Yes, 3 is not true, but Bryan’s point depends on something in the area of 2.

The ability to distinguish AI writing depends on having a good ear. For people who lack it, they either don’t notice and don’t care, or they make paranoid accusations against anything that is remotely non-standard (“you used an em-dash, you must be AI!”).