AI may be making us think and write more alike • Hacker News Board

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#201

Post by watwut » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

rubslopes wrote: post #167

shimman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans aren't benefiting from LLMs, only a few individuals are. Let's stop with the fake platitudes and realize that unless this technology isn't completely open sourced from top to bottom, it's a complete farce to think humans are going to benefit and not just the rich getting richer.

> Humans aren't benefiting from LLMs, only a few individuals are. Honest question: how is this different from traditional Open Source? Linux powers most of the internet, yet the biggest beneficiaries are cloud providers, not individual users. Good open weights models already exist and people can run them locally. The gap between "open" and "everyone benefits equally" has always been there...

Because opposite is true for open source? It is actually for free, whether you contribute to it or not. Anyone can legally use it for free. Torwalds can not just wake up one day and decide to charge more.

If you feel like linux is a too much of a monopoly, you can actually fork it and compete.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#202

Post by simplyluke » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #139

LLMs have felt to me like they excel in one particular skill (being able to make connections across vast amounts of knowledge) and are basically average, otherwise. If I'm below average at something (painting, say) the results astound me. But if I'm above average (programming, writing (I like to think)), I'm generally underwhelmed by the results. I used Claude a lot for planning my current fun project. Good rubber du…

> I'm below average at something (painting, say) the results astound me. But if I'm above average (programming, writing (I like to think)), I'm generally underwhelmed by the results.

Industrial scale dunning kruger/gell man amnesia. We're ~5 years in to the meme of "wow, every white collar profession other than MINE is doomed. But yeah, mine requires really specific domain knowledge, taste, and problem solving, so I'm not super worried about it but it's a very helpful tool"

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#203

Post by cyclopeanutopia » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #188

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are not humans. And while sociopaths - who benefit the most from corporations - technically are humans, I don't consider them parts of humanity, more like a cancer tissue on top of it. So whatever benefit humanity gets is more than cancelled by the growing cancer.

So I am to assume you're not using LLMs yourself, or any technology employing those models in the pipeline (which at this point includes many features in smartphones made in the last 3 years)? If that's not the case, then you are a beneficiary too.

There are some local benefits, there are some local and global costs. My point is that we are in a strongly net negative situation, mr Jack.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#204

Post by fsflover » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

davebren wrote: post #90

rdevilla wrote: post #7

This state of affairs presages the advent of a second dark age - one that will forever eclipse the era of radical openness & transparency that once served the software community for decades. Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM whok would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale, until any possible information asymme…

> Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM who would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale I've already started thinking this way, there's stuff I would have open sourced in the past but no longer will because I know it would get trained on. I'm not sure of any way I can share it with humans and only humans. If I let…

> there's stuff I would have open sourced in the past but no longer will because I know it would get trained on

Could you publish under AGPLv3, so any AI users with recognizable patterns from your code can get in trouble?

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#205

Post by whstl » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

simplyluke wrote: post #202

beej71 wrote: post #139

LLMs have felt to me like they excel in one particular skill (being able to make connections across vast amounts of knowledge) and are basically average, otherwise. If I'm below average at something (painting, say) the results astound me. But if I'm above average (programming, writing (I like to think)), I'm generally underwhelmed by the results. I used Claude a lot for planning my current fun project. Good rubber du…

> I'm below average at something (painting, say) the results astound me. But if I'm above average (programming, writing (I like to think)), I'm generally underwhelmed by the results. Industrial scale dunning kruger/gell man amnesia. We're ~5 years in to the meme of "wow, every white collar profession other than MINE is doomed. But yeah, mine requires really specific domain knowledge, taste, and problem solving, so I'…

The expectations are just too low for LLMs.

It’s like a children or a puppy. People get impressed and go “how cute” at anything it does.

I see designers and PMs vibe coding shit that they would complain for days if it was delivered by a developer. I see C-Levels delivering reports that would make them eviscerate some intern.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#206

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

BoneShard wrote: post #191

RobotToaster wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's particularly egregious on youtube, where people frequently use words like "unalived" or "self-deleted" instead of murder or suicide, lest they incur the wrath of the almighty algorithm.

Youtube comments is a separate genre itself. Due to youtube moderation policy - music video comments are all the same, same tired jokes, patterns. Not an AI slop per se, but feels the same.

Slop is slop - whether artisanal or AI generated.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#207

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #189

jeffwask wrote: post #62

Take a community with AI moderation like Reddit, I've been a participant for years. With the recent push to AI autocorrect and moderation, you can see the changes in language. New words, new ways of speaking, unconsciously editing yourself because you don't want to draw the eye of the bot. It doesn't feel subtle. It feels Orwellian.

I recently had a comment removed by reddit. It wasn’t even against the rules. It was anti establishment is all. I insulted the billionaire class in that comment. Class division style comments are now banned. Wouldn’t want revolution on a for profit forum now would we?

That's surprising because reddit moderation usually tends the other way and any objection to some part of the omnicause gets you banned.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#208

Post by crabl » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

this is why it's so critical (IMO) to find ways to tune the models to produce more out-of-distribution outputs. it's incredibly easy to generate "in-distribution" text and the major labs are optimizing for this because of "safety", but the only way to generate truly creative outputs is to step in and out of the fringe.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#209

Post by alexchantavy » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

adriand wrote: post #5

I always wonder if competitive market dynamics will solve problems like these, at least to some extent and for some people, because the people who retain the ability to communicate in a distinctive, persuasive and original style will be rewarded. Corporate dronespeak is no less homogeneous than AI writing, and companies with this communication style are regularly disrupted by nimbler, more authentic-sounding competit…

I sure hope so. The way companies are pressured to hit growth numbers, I really hope messaging in general doesn’t all get sloppified along with code lol.

I think AI writing makes humanities and writing courses more important, and I hope people maintain their sense of taste with writing, but tbh I’m not optimistic here.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#210

Post by Izkata » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

yojo wrote: post #109

sobiolite wrote: post #56

Human communication and reasoning is the end result of billions of years of evolution. I'd be very surprised if LLMs can fundamentally alter it in a few years. When considering phenomenon like these, I think people seriously underestimate what I'd call the "fashion effect". When a new technology, medium or aesthetic appears, it can have a surprisingly rapid influence on behaviour and discourse. The human social brain…

I caught myself saying “you’re absolutely right” to my wife last night, unironically. This was 100% not in my vocabulary six months ago. If I spend 40 hours a week talking to anybody, some of their language or mannerisms are going to rub off on me. I can’t think of a compelling reason why a human-sounding chat bot would be any different.

Almost two decades ago I watched all of Farscape in under two weeks during a college winter break. I often still reflexively say "frell" instead of "fuck".