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LLMs can get "brain rot"

llm-brain-rot.github.io

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Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#151

Post by jgalt212 »

turtletontine wrote: post #101
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes

I just use two dashes and make sure they don't connect into one em dash.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#152

Post by jojobas »

dist-epoch wrote: post #116
andai wrote: post #65

I encourage everyone with even a slight interest in the subject to download a random sample of Common Crawl (the chunks are ~100MB) and see for yourself what is being used for training data. https://data.commoncrawl.org/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2025-38/segm... I spotted here a large number of things that it would be unwise to repeat here. But I assume the data cleaning process removes such content before pretraining? ;) Al…

Karpathy made a point recently that the random Common Crawl sample is complete junk, and that something like an WSJ article is extremely rare in it, and it's a miracle the models can learn anything at all.

From the current WSJ front page:

Paul Ingrassia's 'Nazi Streak'

Musk Tosses Barbs at NASA Chie After SpaceX Criticism

Travis Kelce Teams Up With Investor for Activist Campaign at Six Flags

A Small North Carolina College Becomes a Magnet for Wealthy Students

Cracker Barrel CEO Explains Short-Lived Logo Change

If that's the benchmark for high quality training material we're in trouble.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#153

Post by cindyllm »

askafriend wrote: post #48
avazhi wrote: post #47

“Studying “Brain Rot” for LLMs isn’t just a catchy metaphor—it reframes data curation as cognitive hygiene for AI, guiding how we source, filter, and maintain training corpora so deployed systems stay sharp, reliable, and aligned over time.” An LLM-written line if I’ve ever seen one. Looks like the authors have their own brainrot to contend with.

If it conveys the intended information then what's wrong with that? You're fighting a tsunami here. People are going to use LLMs to help their writing now and forever.

[dead]

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#154

Post by afavour »

nemonemo wrote: post #60
avazhi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can’t understand the irony inherent in getting an LLM to write about LLM brainrot, itself an analog for human brainrot that arises by the habitual non use of the human brain, then I’m not sure what to tell you. Whether it’s a tsunami and whether most people will do it has no relevance to my expectation that researchers of LLMs and brainrot shouldn’t outsource their own thinking and creativity to an LLM in a pa…

What you are obsessing with is about the writer's style, not its substance. How sure are you if they outsourced the thinking to LLMs? Do you assume LLMs produce junk-level contents, which contributes human brain rot? What if their contents are of higher quality like the game of Go? Wouldn't you rather study their writing?

> What you are obsessing with is about the writer's style, not its substance

They aren’t, they are boring styling tics that suggest the writer did not write the sentence.

Writing is both a process and an output. It’s a way of processing your thoughts and forming an argument. When you don’t do any of that and get an AI to create the output without the process it’s obvious.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#155

Post by codebje »

janderson215 wrote: post #110
turtletontine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes

The em dash usage conundrum is likely temporary. If I were you, I’d continue using them however you previously used them and someday soon, you’ll be ignored the same way everybody else is once AI mimics innumerable punctuation and grammatical patterns.

You're absolutely right! ... is a phrase I perhaps should have used more in the past.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#156

Post by antegamisou »

0xFEE1DEAD wrote: post #150
wholinator2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I've spoken to about that phenomena agrees that it happens to them. Whatever we are reading at the time, it reformats our language processing to change writing and, I found, even the way i speak. I suspect that individuals consistently exposed to and reading LLM output will be talking like them soon.

Apparently, they already do https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01754

Omg you mean everyone's becoming an insufferable Redditor?

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#157

Post by landdate »

turtletontine wrote: post #101
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes

Suddenly I see all these people come out of the woodworks talking about "em dashes". Those things are terrible; They look awful and destroy coherency of writing. No wonder LLM's use them.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#158

Post by landdate »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #146
astrange wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't always em-dash. I expect it's intentional as a watermark. Other buzzwords you can spot are "wild" and "vibes".

If they wanted to watermark (I always felt it is irresponsible not to, if someone wants to circumvent it that's on them) - they could use strategically placed whitespace characters like zero-width spaces, maybe spelling something out in Morse code the way genius.com did to catch google crawling lyric (I believe in that case it was left and right handed aposterofes)

Which could be removed with a simple filter. em dashes require at least a little bit of code to replace with their correct grammar equivalents.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#159

Post by JumpCrisscross »

turtletontine wrote: post #101
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes

> I love using em dashes

Keep using them. If someone is deducing from the use of an emdash that it's LLM produced, we've either lost the battle or they're an idiot.

More pointedly, LLMs use emdashes in particular ways. Varying spacing around the em dash and using a double dash (--) could signal human writing.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

landdate wrote: post #157
turtletontine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes

Suddenly I see all these people come out of the woodworks talking about "em dashes". Those things are terrible; They look awful and destroy coherency of writing. No wonder LLM's use them.

> Those things are terrible; They look awful and destroy coherency of writing

Totally agree. What the fuck did Nabokov, Joyce and Dickinson know about language. /s

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