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It's Not Just X. It's Y

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11–20 of 155 posts

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#11
post #6
post #4

Another bunch of dead give aways in code bases with READMEs is the repetitive: - "No X, No Y, No Z." pattern - "Here is X - it makes Y" The worst and most obvious one is the constant over use of emoji ticks and crosses.

For calibration purposes, I offer you a pre-LLM README I wrote that includes an em-dash* followed by "No X, No Y, No Z": https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/stelf-loader *actually a hyphen but it's functioning as an em dash.

"Hyphen functioning as an em dash" is an expected human thing as it's what's easy to type. It's specifically an actual em dash which got bulldozed, much to the dismay of those who bothered to put the unicode character in.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#12
post #6
post #4

Another bunch of dead give aways in code bases with READMEs is the repetitive: - "No X, No Y, No Z." pattern - "Here is X - it makes Y" The worst and most obvious one is the constant over use of emoji ticks and crosses.

For calibration purposes, I offer you a pre-LLM README I wrote that includes an em-dash* followed by "No X, No Y, No Z": https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/stelf-loader *actually a hyphen but it's functioning as an em dash.

and we will now hold you responsible!

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#15
> In the end, shaming people for writing that gets flagged as AI can lead people to sidestep structures the model has learned from us

It's interesting why LLMs generate constructions like this more frequently than they presumably exist in the training set. I wonder if this is some sort of mode collapse caused by post training, and/or maybe because they are training on synthetic data so these things become self-perpetuating and self-amplifying (a feedback loop)?

The lesson for humans worried about being falsely identified as AI is just learn to write better! It doesn't matter where your repertoire of phrasing comes from (copying AI or not), but one of the basic rules of writing is not to repeat yourself unless you are doing so deliberately for a purpose. Go ahead and use "It's not just X. It's Y" if you want to, but if you use it multiple times in the same short piece of writing, then you may deserve to be called out for poor style, if not for being an AI.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For calibration purposes, I offer you a pre-LLM README I wrote that includes an em-dash* followed by "No X, No Y, No Z": https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/stelf-loader *actually a hyphen but it's functioning as an em dash.

"Hyphen functioning as an em dash" is an expected human thing as it's what's easy to type. It's specifically an actual em dash which got bulldozed, much to the dismay of those who bothered to put the unicode character in.

If you read The Mac is Not a Typewriter in 1992—thus burning Option-Shift-hyphen into your typing patterns for life, along with a dogmatic love for serif body fonts—you're the real victim here.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For calibration purposes, I offer you a pre-LLM README I wrote that includes an em-dash* followed by "No X, No Y, No Z": https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/stelf-loader *actually a hyphen but it's functioning as an em dash.

"Hyphen functioning as an em dash" is an expected human thing as it's what's easy to type. It's specifically an actual em dash which got bulldozed, much to the dismay of those who bothered to put the unicode character in.

I prefer the double dash "--", but Microsoft products will convert this to a proper em-dash if you press space afterwards, I think...

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#18
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For calibration purposes, I offer you a pre-LLM README I wrote that includes an em-dash* followed by "No X, No Y, No Z": https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/stelf-loader *actually a hyphen but it's functioning as an em dash.

"Hyphen functioning as an em dash" is an expected human thing as it's what's easy to type. It's specifically an actual em dash which got bulldozed, much to the dismay of those who bothered to put the unicode character in.

A lot of the LLM bots on HN (and elsewhere) will find-and-replace their em dashes with hypens in an attempt to evade detection.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#19
post #4

Another bunch of dead give aways in code bases with READMEs is the repetitive: - "No X, No Y, No Z." pattern - "Here is X - it makes Y" The worst and most obvious one is the constant over use of emoji ticks and crosses.

Alternatively, no one sounds like an llm, an llm sounds like someone, typically those close to the median of the training corpus. If AI were genuinly capable of novelty, it would be a big deal, tech bros having enough work ethic to design new detectable prose for an llm is a mssive reach and has no real evidence supporting it, else why do tech bros only tackle the easier issues? Things we have massive well labelled corpi for? Why is it never dishwashing and folding laundry?

I put to you, if you see a trope in AI writing it's because that trope appeared in the training corpus. Therefore, sure, being predjudice against it lets you catch some AI, but you'll also flag human outout. I think that may not be worth it in the end.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#20
nice article, but i think as a non native english speaker, i always use the model in english for reasoning and then translate the output to my language. most of these considerations do not apply. because the translation step is taking out alot of these language artifacts
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