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Various LLM Smells

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Re: Various LLM Smells

#111

Post by bobmarleybiceps »

tptacek wrote: post #50

The LLM writing sameness is bad. Use LLMs to help your writing! But don't include a word they generate, even just a vocabulary adjustment, in your own output. Have them critique structure and flow, spot overused words and passive constructions and dumb picks for topic sentences. It's great for that, and those are all objective improvements in your writing that won't mess up your style. The LLM sameness in web design…

I've been using claude while trying to setup a new personal site. It's very nice to be able to say "I want a nice looking menu with links to other pages" and it spits out something good enough.

I would feel very weird using LLMs for writing, except for filing out stupid applications. I've had collaborators use LLMs for some technical writing and it's pretty much always borderline nonsense that has the aesthetic of something correct. For creative writing, I feel like heavily using an LLM would defeat the purpose :shrug:

Re: Various LLM Smells

#112

Post by NicuCalcea »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #24

The LLM doesn't smell like authentic writing but it does a great job for fast and cheap words. We've gained something similar to fast food. Words made very cheap, very fast, easily digestible, but they have no emotion. In short stints it does have a place in the world.

To me, it's more like prison loaf [0] than fast food. It contains the basic information it was intended to convey, but in a very bland, irritating shape. At least fast food gives you a dopamine hit that I certainly don't get from AI writing.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutraloaf

Re: Various LLM Smells

#113

Post by bitwize »

tempest_ wrote: post #78
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have…

It isnt though. The industry largely has selected for camp 1 long ago. If you don't get immediate negative feedback camp 1 can go quite a ways before problems surface.

Camp 1 is winning because we did it. We built an artificial brain. Frontier models can think, reason, and produce code better than the average human programmer. (You have not met many actual programmers slaving away on enterprise code bases if you do not understand that this is the case; the self-selecting HN crowd does not represent the profession as a whole by a long shot.) It's just a matter of, how committed are you (is your organization) to really learning and leveraging the tools?

Re: Various LLM Smells

#114

Post by cortesoft »

xtracto wrote: post #48
xienze wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abbrevia…

Someone way more eloquent than me should write a column titled "Why do we read?" Way back in the past (around 30 years ago) I remember reading an article on "how to read a book" or a similar subject. They argued that, you should not skip the acknowledgments, preface and other "personal" related sections of a book, because it was there where you got a glimpse of the person that was writing the book. The idea being tha…

> Way back in the past (around 30 years ago) I remember reading an article on "how to read a book" or a similar subject. They argued that, you should not skip the acknowledgments, preface and other "personal" related sections of a book, because it was there where you got a glimpse of the person that was writing the book. The idea being that, you should had in mind that the person writing was explaining something through you

Maybe? That is one reason to read, but there are a lot of other reasons, too. It doesn't mean you are doing it wrong if you want to read something and don't care at all about the person who wrote it.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#115

Post by soneca »

cortesoft wrote: post #110
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.

So what does this mean in practice, though? Let's say you are correct. You ask an LLM to write something for you, and to you it looks really, really good. So based on your conjecture, that means I am not a very good writer. Ok, but how does that change what I should do? If I am not a very good writer, that means an LLM IS actually better than me, even if it might not be objectively good to an expert writer. My two ch…

Well, practice to get better at writing (and, therefore, judging writing) yourself. It seems obvious. Your skills are not frozen in time and set in stone.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#116

Post by thoughtpeddler »

Does anyone else use the 'smells' as a sort of 'game' to ensure you properly go through a given LLM output (of any kind, be it document, presentation, code, etc) and 'make it your own' by eliminating them? I have a high bar for sharing content so I always do a rigorous pass to eliminate the em dashes, the contrastive negations, the 'quietly', and any other extraneous verbosity, and find that it helps me just really thoroughly polish it up.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#117

Post by floren »

bitwize wrote: post #105
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have…

Eric S. Raymond has basically stopped writing code by hand altogether. He consistently delivers high quality code without intervening to fix the LLM's output himself, much faster than he would have been able to alone. This is very bad news for camp 2 because it means one of three things: 1) he is extraordinarily lucky 2) he is extraordinary brilliant at manipulating LLMs 3) you really are "holding it wrong" and you a…

"Better and faster than ESR" is not a particularly high bar to clear.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#118

Post by dvt »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #107
dvt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, this is like saying "I judge a carpenter based on how straight they can cut a piece of plywood." Or like saying "I judge an artist on how accurately they can draw a circle by hand." I mean that's certainly one way of looking at it, and both can be impressive technical feats. But most people judge carpenters and artists on their end products, their overall vision, their motifs, their philosophy, and so on. On the…

No, it's more like saying "I judge an artist on my terms regardless of how well they sell on the market". > artists on their end products, their overall vision, their motifs, their philosophy, and so on The main output of programmer's work is their understanding of the system they work with, the rest comes from that. Behind the code there's its author's intention, vision, their tastes, philosophy and experience that…

> No, it's more like saying "I judge an artist on my terms regardless of how well they sell on the market".

I feel like I need to push back here, because some of the best programmers around: Carmack, Torvalds, Johnathan Blow, even folks that make programming languages like K&R, Rob Pike, etc. are judged on their respective end products, not on minutia found in code reviews. For example, if I asked you "why do you think Stroustrup is a good programmer?"—you wouldn't cite some obscure optimization he came up with, but would rather talk about his overall vision for C++, his ideas of evolving C, his staunch anti-GC takes over the years (and their justification), etc.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#119

Post by robgibbons »

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.

Cuts very close to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#120

Post by cootsnuck »

GrinningFool wrote: post #27
n42 wrote: post #2

No ___, no ____. Just _____ or using "honest" to describe an approach.

Jab, jab, thrust is how I think about that pattern. Or tap tap whack, if you prefer. And it shows up for for positives too: "Smooth. Effortless. A perfect fit for your needs". In any style of informal or persuasive writing this shows up , as if it has to drive the point in. I kind of wish we'd stop talking openly about what the tells are. It's nice to be able to determine with fair accuracy - but it couldn't last for…

I call it "I'm not like other girls" writing.
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