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Various LLM Smells

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Re: Various LLM Smells

#211

Post by thefz »

Planktonne wrote: post #8

> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

> What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

This is why code generation is a disaster waiting to happen. Hunderds of thousands of "programmers" with no idea of what they are pushing to production.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#212

Post by ruszki »

YZF wrote: post #210
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have…

I disagree this is the source of the polarization. Maybe it's part of it. I have been coding since about 1983 or so. I shipped high quality products that have been used by millions of people. From embedded software to desktop applications to distributed systems. I don't think I'm in the "don't understand what code should look like camp" (I mean you never know but the evidence seems to show that I do know what I'm doi…

I’ve seen people coding for 4 decades, thinking the same as you about themselves, and were bad coders. Unfortunately, nobody can tell you whether you’re good or bad without seeing your code. Your claims means nothing on the internet.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#213

Post by zkmon »

I think we should stop discriminating or the pursuit of detecting LLM-generated content. This is not helping to stop the slop, it causing a harm - making the genuine human-generated content being branded as something bad. It's like branding words like "segregation, black/white" as racist. It is hijacking the common a language patterns and make them unusable in common human expression.

Re: Various LLM Smells

#214

Post by dropbox_miner »

Planktonne wrote: post #8

> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at.

Naah I disagree with this. I think LLM's are good at gas-lighting you into thinking that good writing only comes in one flavor. And LLMs prefer a very "textbook/technical-manual" coded flavor of writing because maybe that way they are more useful to us humans. But human writing is not just about crafting the most elegant sentences. Sometimes great writing is just this doggo-drawing meme:

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2160304-the-winner-of-this-c...

Re: Various LLM Smells

#215

Post by Derbasti »

spdustin wrote: post #18

- “(The) honest caveat:” (or “genuine caveat:”, both with the colon) - “(The) honest answer:” (again, with colon) - “The thing to internalize:” - “The smoking gun:” (really, sentences that start with “The :” are a strong tell, but those four are the most prolific) - “load bearing” (when not talking about architecture) - “blast radius” (when not talking about actual explosives, but rather the effect of an event/action…

I wonder, could we use these catch phrases to track down what data was used dor training? They must have occurred in abundance in some training corpus. Perhaps some specific company's email culture?

Re: Various LLM Smells

#216

Post by srigbok157 »

Derbasti wrote: post #215
spdustin wrote: post #18

- “(The) honest caveat:” (or “genuine caveat:”, both with the colon) - “(The) honest answer:” (again, with colon) - “The thing to internalize:” - “The smoking gun:” (really, sentences that start with “The :” are a strong tell, but those four are the most prolific) - “load bearing” (when not talking about architecture) - “blast radius” (when not talking about actual explosives, but rather the effect of an event/action…

I wonder, could we use these catch phrases to track down what data was used dor training? They must have occurred in abundance in some training corpus. Perhaps some specific company's email culture?

[flagged]

Re: Various LLM Smells

#217

Post by nicbou »

tptacek wrote: post #50

The LLM writing sameness is bad. Use LLMs to help your writing! But don't include a word they generate, even just a vocabulary adjustment, in your own output. Have them critique structure and flow, spot overused words and passive constructions and dumb picks for topic sentences. It's great for that, and those are all objective improvements in your writing that won't mess up your style. The LLM sameness in web design…

I use them as a metaphor search and advanced dictionary. Every word is mine, but I get to improve my English and use some lesser-known (to me) expressions.

I have not used to review my writing yet. Is it that good?

Re: Various LLM Smells

#218

Post by dropbox_miner »

zkmon wrote: post #213

I think we should stop discriminating or the pursuit of detecting LLM-generated content. This is not helping to stop the slop, it causing a harm - making the genuine human-generated content being branded as something bad. It's like branding words like "segregation, black/white" as racist. It is hijacking the common a language patterns and make them unusable in common human expression.

I support this. There is a mass psychological effect emerging out of this AI-content-witch-hunt where people are manufacturing "flaws" to beat the AI-slop allegations.

To list out a few personal examples:

1. Several students I knew at GaTech in 2024 taking the algorithm class (which is notoriously hard) started submitting assignments with sub-optimal/brute-force algorithms cuz the TAs kept reporting them for academic misconduct on optimal solutions.

2. I've started avoiding "em-dashes" in all my writing

3. Junior engineers leaving "typos" in their code reviews or submitting code-reviews with absolutely 0 comments (LLMs love to leave verbose comments)

Gotta stop shaming people for using AI fr

Re: Various LLM Smells

#220

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

onion2k wrote: post #85
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have…

Well, I have bad news for camp 1.. It's bad if they work in a part of the industry where code quality or efficiency matters. That's maybe 10% of the total though.

Are you seriously implying that technical debt is something that doesn't exist or something that managers don't care about??
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