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Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

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Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#151

Post by coke12 »

folbec wrote: post #99
barrkel wrote: post #3

This is a good statement of what I suspect many of us have found when rejecting the rewriting advice of AIs. The "pointiness" of prose gets worn away, until it doesn't say much. Everything is softened. The distinctiveness of the human voice is converted into blandness. The AI even says its preferred rephrasing is "polished" - a term which specifically means the jaggedness has been removed. But it's the jagged edges,…

I think it is also fairly similar to the kind of discourse a manager in pretty much any domain will produce. He lacks (or lost thru disuse) technical expertise on the subject, so he uses more and more fuzzy words, leaky analogies, buzzwords. This maybe why AI generated content has so much success among leaders and politicians.

Every group want to label some outgroup as naively benefiting from AI. For programmers, apparently it's the pointy haired bosses. For normies, it's the programmers.

Be careful of this kind of thinking, it's very satisfying but doesn't help you understand the world.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#152

Post by prerok »

lyu07282 wrote: post #13

> The model performs a statistical substitution, replacing a 1-of-10,000 token with a 1-of-100 synonym Do we see this in programming too? I don't think so? Unique, rarely used API methods aren't substituted the same way when refactoring. Perhaps that could give us a clue on how to fix that?

I think that's different because refactoring usually involves calling the same functions/methods albeit in a bit more readable way.

When not given a clear guideline to "just" refactor, I have had problems with LLMs hallucinating functions that don't exist.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#153

Post by doomslayer999 »

Great article and exactly why I use AI less and less. I basically find it to be rotting my brain towards the middle of the distribution. It's like all the nuance and critical thinking that actually goes into things gets stripped out.

Once a company perfects an agent that essentially performs condensed search and coding boilerplate making, that is probably where LLMs end for me. Perplexity and Claude are on the right track but not at all close.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#154

Post by doomslayer999 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #11

The "AI voice" is everywhere now. I see it on recent blog posts, on news articles, obituaries, YT channels. Sometimes mixed with voice impersonation of famous physicists like Feynman or Susskind. I find it genuinely soul-crushing and even depressing, but I may be over sensitive to it as most readers don't seem to notice.

Literally the worst thing that happened to the internet after addictive doomscroll feeds and ads everywhere.

And, the worst part is noone will ever make a new internet because of the founder effect. We are basically in the worst timeline.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#155

Post by archagon »

causal wrote: post #142
stephc_int13 wrote: post #11

The "AI voice" is everywhere now. I see it on recent blog posts, on news articles, obituaries, YT channels. Sometimes mixed with voice impersonation of famous physicists like Feynman or Susskind. I find it genuinely soul-crushing and even depressing, but I may be over sensitive to it as most readers don't seem to notice.

I find it extremely difficult to focus on any piece of writing the moment I see the patterns. Can’t tell if it’s an attitude problem I need to get over or if it’s just that all AI writing really is that bad.

I just close the tab. My reading backlog is too long as it is.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#156

Post by doomslayer999 »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #42

I personally think “generative AI” is a misnomer. More I understand the mathematics behind machine learning more I am convinced that it should not be used to generate text, images or anything that is meant for people to consume, even if it is the most blandest of email. Sometimes you might get lucky, but most of the time you only get what the most boring person in the most boring cocktail party would say if forced to…

Precisely. If companies would just focus on what it could be good at - deductive search, coding boilerplate with assistance, etc. then it would be a great tool. Instead you have dario, altman, and co. trying to pump stock and give us more spaghetti agents.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#157

Post by piker »

barrkel wrote: post #3

This is a good statement of what I suspect many of us have found when rejecting the rewriting advice of AIs. The "pointiness" of prose gets worn away, until it doesn't say much. Everything is softened. The distinctiveness of the human voice is converted into blandness. The AI even says its preferred rephrasing is "polished" - a term which specifically means the jaggedness has been removed. But it's the jagged edges,…

Bryan Cantrill referred to it as "normcore" on a podcast, and that's the perfect description.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#158

Post by ziml77 »

matwood wrote: post #105
barrkel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen it any time you put any substantial bit of your own writing through an LLM, for advice? I disagree pretty strongly with most of what an LLM suggests by way of rewriting. They're absolutely appalling writers. If you're looking for something beyond corporate safespeak or stylistic pastiche, they drain the blood out of everything. The skin of their prose lacks the luminous translucency, the subsurface…

> If you're looking for something beyond corporate safespeak AI has been great for removing this stress. "Tell Joe no f'n way" in a professional tone and I can move on with my day.

If you tell me "no fucking way" by running it through an LLM, I will be far more pissed than if you had just sent me "no fucking way". At least in that case I know a human read and responded rather than thinking my email was just being processed by a damned robot.

Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring

#160

Post by samdjstephens »

doomslayer999 wrote: post #154
stephc_int13 wrote: post #11

The "AI voice" is everywhere now. I see it on recent blog posts, on news articles, obituaries, YT channels. Sometimes mixed with voice impersonation of famous physicists like Feynman or Susskind. I find it genuinely soul-crushing and even depressing, but I may be over sensitive to it as most readers don't seem to notice.

Literally the worst thing that happened to the internet after addictive doomscroll feeds and ads everywhere. And, the worst part is noone will ever make a new internet because of the founder effect. We are basically in the worst timeline.

Maybe. Another potential, more positive, timeline is that semantically ablated content filling everyone’s feeds turns people off, and slowly kills the social feed paradigm.
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