All these forced metaphors and clumsy linguistic flourishes made me cringe. Just add some typos and grammar mistakes like the rest of us to prove that your human.
Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
171–180 of 234 posts
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#172Yes I noticed this as well. I was last writing up a landing page for our new studio. Emotion filled. Telling a story. I sent it through grok to improve it. It removed all of the character despite whatever prompt I gave. I'm not a great writer, but I think those rough edges are necessary to convey the soul of the concept. I think AI writing is better used for ideation and "what have I missed?" and then write out the c…
I've found LLMs to be terrible with ideation. I've been using GPT 5.x to come up with ideas and plot lines for a Dungeon World campaign I've been running. I'm no fantasy author, and my prose leaves much to be desired. The stuff the LLM comes up with is so mind numbingly bland. I've given up on having it write descriptions of any characters or locations. I just use it for very general ideas and plot lines, and then co…
That‘s also my experience. I use AI to help me generate the overall structure of a narrative. Apart from the hallucinations (e.g. June is not in spring), it‘s ok to spot inconsistencies, somewhat acceptable to brainstorm some ideas if you‘re new to a certain genre, but the prose it generates (talking about Opus 4.6) feels like an interpolation of all existing texts.
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is doubtful. Most of the content on people's feed was basically converging to the same paradigm anyways. Think the Mr. Beast "I gave someone 1 million dollars to try a potato" content.
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#174The "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.
> The "AI voice" is everywhere now. Maybe I'm going crazy but I can smell it in the OP as well.
Yeah the article smells extremely strongly of AI to me, but I've been told here before that that's just the register's house style, so I have no idea.
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#175[dead]
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#176The "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.
It's almost disgusting to me tbh, for the first time I find it actually easy to unplug and go do offline things, whatever I want to explore online is hidden behind a forest of synth slop I can't even bother looking at anymore
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
A sloppy mixed metaphor?
I'm learning to like 'em more, along with every other human idiosyncracy. Besides, it makes a kind of sense, the idea of some resonance occuring in one's gusset. Timber timbre. Flangent thrumming.
Just like in Asimov's "Monkey's Finger".
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write. Really? Here's some alternatives. Some are clunky. But, some aren't. …just like you can tell whose pubes those are on the shared bar of soap without launching a formal investigation. …just like you can tell who just wanked in the shared bathroom by the specific guilt radiating off them when they finally emerge. …just like you can tell which of your mates just shitted a…
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One shouldn’t expect the ‘joke’ to have identical tone. (As if that’s even measurable.)
The point was simply that these examples are not trending towards the average or ‘ablating’ things as the article puts it. They seem fairly creative, some are funny, all are gross… and they are the result of very brief prompt… you can ‘sculpt’ the output in ways that go way beyond the boring crap you typically find in AI-generated slop.
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#179In Essays in the Art of Writing (1), Robert Louis Stevenson says:
"And perhaps there is no subject on which a man should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be, which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his tool to earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy, stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on the shoulders of labouring humanity. On that subject alone even to force the note might lean to virtue’s side. It is to be hoped that a numerous and enterprising generation of writers will follow and surpass the present one; but it would be better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our old, honest English books were closed, than that esurient book-makers should continue and debase a brave tradition, and lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. Better that our serene temples were deserted than filled with trafficking and juggling priests."
And in the first essay, speaking on matters of style:
"The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. His pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer, or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound. Pattern and argument live in each other; and it is by the brevity, clearness, charm, or emphasis of the second, that we judge the strength and fitness of the first."
AI doesn't "write" in the sense used above. It has no ear, no wit, no soul. "A reflection of a mind is not a mind", as Phillip Ball writes in "AI Is the Black Mirror" (2).
1: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/492/pg492-images.html#p...
Re: Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is generic and boring
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And THAT is a sentence an LLM would not write. Really? Here's some alternatives. Some are clunky. But, some aren't. …just like you can tell whose pubes those are on the shared bar of soap without launching a formal investigation. …just like you can tell who just wanked in the shared bathroom by the specific guilt radiating off them when they finally emerge. …just like you can tell which of your mates just shitted a…
It's still on you to pick what the LLMs regurgitate. If you don't have a style or taste you will simply make choices that would give you away. And if you already have your own taste and style LLMs don't have much to offer in this regard.
Indeed. Wholeheartedly agree.
Just as it’s on you to pick the word you want when using Roger’s Thesaurus.
My workflow, when using it for writing, is different than when coding.
When coding, I want an answer that works and is robust.
When writing, I want options.
You pick and choose, run it through again, perhaps use different models, have one agent critique the output of another agent, etc.
This iterative process is much different than asking an LLM to ‘write an article about [insert topic)’ and hope for the best.
In any case, I’ve found the LLMs when properly used greatly benefit prose and knee-jerk comments about how all LLM prose sound the same are a bit outdated… (understandable as few authors are out there admitting they are using AI… there’s a stigma about it. But, trust me, there are some beautiful soulful pieces of prose out there that came out of a properly used LLM… it’s just that the authors aren’t about to admit it.)