We're losing our voice to LLMs • Hacker News Board

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#141

Post by mtlynch » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

randycupertino wrote: post #124

AstroBen wrote: post #67

There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it As soon as I know something is written by AI I tune out. I don't care how good it is - I'm not interested if a person didn't go through the process of writing it

I had a weird LLM use instance happen at work this week, we were in a big important protocol review meeting with 35 remote people and someone asks how long IUDs begin to take effect in patients. I put it in ChatGPT for my own reference and read the answer in my head but didn't say anything (I'm ops, I just row the boat and let the docs steer the ship). Anyone this bigwig Oxford/Johns Hopkins cardiologist who we pay $…

>her answer is VERBATIM reading off the ChatGPT language word for word

How could it be verbatim the same response you got? Even if you both typed the exact same prompt, you wouldn't get the exact same answer.[0, 1]

[0] https://kagi.com/assistant/8f4cb048-3688-40f0-88b3-931286f8a...

[1] https://kagi.com/assistant/4e16664b-43d6-4b84-a256-c038b1534...

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#142

Post by area51org » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

Lapel2742 wrote: post #23

ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

> it's how the algorithms promote engagement. They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.

We've seen what happens when we pretend the market will somehow regulate itself.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#143

Post by LightBug1 » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

zavg wrote: post #68

In one of the WhatsApp communities I belong to, I noticed that some people use ChatGPT to express their thoughts (probably asking it to make their messages more eloquent or polite or whatever). Others respond in the same style. As a result, it ends up with long, multi-paragraph messages full of em dashes. Basically, they are using AI as a proxy to communicate with each other, trying to sound more intelligent to the r…

LOL ... in whatssap! ... sorry, we're fucked ...

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#144

Post by jfindper » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

boxerab wrote: post #91

glitchc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do LinkedIn as well. I got rid of it earlier this year. The "I am so humbled/blessed to be promoted/reassigned/fired.." posts reached a level of parody that I just couldn't stomach any longer. I felt more free immediately. N.B. Still employed btw.

This. Linkedin is garbage, yet I still use it because there are no competitors. This is what happens in a monoculture.

As someone who doesn't, and never has, had a linkedin. What would a "competitor" look like? There's plenty of job boards. What are you using linkedin for?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#145

Post by actualwitch » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

vanviegen wrote: post #87

chemotaxis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. I guess, but I'm on quite a few "algorithm-free" forums where the same thing happens. I think it's just human nature. The reason it's under control on HN is rigorous moderation; when the moderators are asleep, you often see dubious political stuff bubble up. And in the comments, there's often a fair…

On HN everybody sees the same ordering. Therefore you get to read opinions that are not specifically selected to make you feel just the perfect amount of outrage/self-righteousness. Some of that you may experience as 'dubious political stuff' and 'patently incorrect takes'. Edit, just to be clear: I'm not saying HN should be unmoderated.

Only when certain people don't decide to band together and hide posts from everyone's feed by abusing "flag" function. Coincidentally those posts often fit neatly in the categories you outlined.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#146

Post by ashton314 » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

bachittle wrote: post #135

If you give an LLM enough context, it writes in your voice. But it requires using an intelligent model, and very thoughtful context development. Most people don't do this because it requires effort, and one could argue maybe even more effort than just writing the damn thing yourself. It's like trying to teach a human, or anyone, how to talk like you: very hard because it requires at worst your entire life story.

* it writes in an imitation of your voice.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#147

Post by tucnak » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #129

tucnak wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it Speak for yourself. Some of the most fascinating poetry I have seen was produced by GPT-3. That is to say, there was a short time period when it was genuinely thought-provoking, and it has since passed. In the age of "alignment," what you get with commerical offerings is dog shite... But this is more a statement on Americ…

"inhabited by characters ACTUALLY living in the computer" It's hard to imagine these feeling like characters from literature and not characters in the form of influencers / social media personalities. Characters in literature are in a highly constrained medium, and only have to do their story once. In a generated world the character needs to be constantly doing "story things". I think Jonathan Blow has an interesting…

Please share! Computational literature is my main area of research, and constraints are very much in the center of it... I believe that there are effectively two kinds of constraints: in the language of stories themselves, as thing-in-itself, as well as those imposed by the author. In a way, authorship is incredibly repressive: authors impose strict limits on the characters, what they get to do, etc. This is a form of slavery. Characters in traditional plays only get to say exactly what the author wants them to say, when he wants them to say it. Whereas in computational literature, we get to emancipate the characters! This is a far-cry from "prompting," but I believe there are concrete paths forward that would be somewhat familiar (but not necessarily click) for game-dev people.

Now, there's fundamental limits of the medium (as function of computation) but that's a different story.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#148

Post by Aurornis » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #131

Aurornis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive. I’m not the biggest Twitter user but I didn’t find it that difficult to get what I wanted out of it. You already discovered the secret: You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content. Unfollow people wh…

> You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content. The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”, and acting like it does makes people think what they’re seeing is a reflection of who they are, which is incorrect. The designers of these algorithms are trying to figure out which “mainstream category” you are. And if you aren’t…

> The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”,

That’s literally what the complaint was that I was responding to.

You even immediately contradict yourself and agree that the algorithm shows you what you engage with

> But you make one three word comment about Brexit and the algorithm goes up

> Now your feed is trash forever, unless you engage with content from another mainstream category

This is exactly what I already said: If you want to see some content, engage with it. If you don’t want to see that content, don’t engage with it.

Personally, I regret engaging with this thread. Between the ALL CAPS YELLING and the self-contradictory posts this is exactly the kind of rage content and ragebait that I make a point to unfollow on social media platforms.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#149

Post by nusl » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

Sometime within the next few years I imagine there will be a term along the lines of "re-humanise," where folks detox from AI use to get back in touch with humanity. At the rate we're going, humanity has become a luxury and will soon demand a premium.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#150

Post by rcxdude » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #98

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that some folks dislike it, but Bluesky and atproto in particular have provided the perfect tools to achieve this. There are some people, largely those who migrated from Twitter, who mostly treat Bluesky like a all-liberal version of Twitter, which results in a predictably toxic experience, like bizarro-world Twitter. But the future of a less toxic social media is in there, if we want it. I've created my own f…

I personally dont feel like an ultra filtered social media which only shows me things I agree with is a good thing. Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people. To me, only seeing things you know you are already interested in is no better than another company curating it for me.

At least when you do this you are aware of it happening. Algorithmic feeds can shift biases without you even noticing.