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We're losing our voice to LLMs

tonyalicea.dev

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Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#231

Post by kentm »

AstroBen wrote: post #67

There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it As soon as I know something is written by AI I tune out. I don't care how good it is - I'm not interested if a person didn't go through the process of writing it

Art, writing, and communication is about humans connecting with each other and trying to come to mutual understanding. Exploring the human condition. If I’m engaging with an AI instead of a person, is there a point?

There’s an argument that the creator is just using AI as a tool to achieve their vision. I do not think that’s how people using AI are actually engaging with it at scale, nor is it the desired end state of people pushing AI. To put it bluntly, I think it’s cope. It’s how I try to use AI in my work but it’s not how I see people around me using it, and you don’t get the miracle results boosters proclaim from the rooftop if you use it that way.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#232

Post by afavour »

actualwitch wrote: post #145
vanviegen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN everybody sees the same ordering. Therefore you get to read opinions that are not specifically selected to make you feel just the perfect amount of outrage/self-righteousness. Some of that you may experience as 'dubious political stuff' and 'patently incorrect takes'. Edit, just to be clear: I'm not saying HN should be unmoderated.

Only when certain people don't decide to band together and hide posts from everyone's feed by abusing "flag" function. Coincidentally those posts often fit neatly in the categories you outlined.

I don’t know why this is being downvoted, I’ve witnessed it many times myself.

It’s true that HN has a good level of discussion but one of the methods used to get that is to remove conversation on controversial topics. So I’m skeptical this is a model that could fit all of society’s needs, to say the least.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#233

Post by IMTDb »

Frieren wrote: post #197
IMTDb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should be heavily regulated. By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences. But if picturing that guy running the sh…

> But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape. For example, we can forbid corporations usage of algorithms beyond sorting by date of the post. Regulation could forbid gathering data about users, no gender, no age, no all the rest of things. > Calling it “regulation” is ju…

> or example, we can forbid corporations usage of algorithms beyond sorting by date of the post

Hacker News sorted by "new" is far less valuable to me than the default homepage which has a sorting algorithm that has a good balance between freshness and impact. Please don't break it.

> It is you that may have misinterpreted what regulations are.

The definition of regulation is literally: "a rule or directive made and maintained by an authority." I am just scared about who the authority is going to be.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#234

Post by anonymouskimmer »

mold_aid wrote: post #172
mentalgear wrote: post #28

I've been thinking about this as well, especially in the context of historical precedents in terms of civilization/globalization/industrialization. How LLMs standardize communication is the same way there was a standardization in empires expanding (cultural), book printing (language), the industrial revolution (power loom, factories, assembly procedures, etc). In that process interesting but not as "scale-able" (or s…

>How LLMs standardize communication is the same way there was a standardization in empires expanding (cultural), book printing (language), the industrial revolution (power loom, factories, assembly procedures, etc). Explain to me how "book printing" of the past "standardized communication" in the same way as LLMs are criticized for homogenizing language.

I'm taking "same way" to be read as "authoritative", whether de facto or de jure. Basically by dint of people using what's provided instead of coming up with their own.

Everyone has the same few dictionary spellings (that are now programmed into our computers). Even worse (from a heterogeneity perspective), everyone also has the same few grammar books.

As examples: How often do you see American English users write "colour", or British English users write "color", much less colur or collor or somesuch?

Shakespeare famously spelled his own last name half a dozen or so different ways. My own patriline had an unusual variant spelling of the last name, that standardized to one of the more common variants in the 1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_grammars

"Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modelled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534).[9] Lily's grammar was being used in schools in England at the time, having been "prescribed" for them in 1542 by Henry VIII.[5]"

It goes on to mention a variety of grammars that may have started out somewhat descriptive, but became more prescriptive over time.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#235

Post by ori_b »

coffeecoders wrote: post #195
acedTrex wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you typed something by your own hand it is in your voice. The fact that everyone tried to EMULATE the same corporate tone does not at all remove peoples individual ways of communicating.

I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment. You can type something "by hand" and still have almost no voice in it if the incentives push you to flatten it out. A lot of us spent years optimizing for clarity, SEO, professionalism etc. But that did shape how we wrote, maybe even more than our natural cadence. The result wasn’t voice, it was everyone converging on the safe and optimized template.

If you chose to trade your soul to 'incentives', and replace incisive thought with bland SEO and professionalism -- you chose this. Your voice has become the bland language of business.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#236

Post by stonecharioteer »

ruuda wrote: post #194

I wholeheartedly agree, I wrote about this at https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2025/llm-interactions .

Your post reminded me how I could tell my online friend was pissed just because she typed "okay." or "K." instead of "okay". We could sense our emotional state from texting. One of those friendships you form over text through the internet. I wouldn't recommend forming these too deeply since some in person nuance is lost, we could never transition to real life friends despite living close by. But we could tell what mood we were in just from typing. It was wild.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#237

Post by baiac »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29
ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

I know that some folks dislike it, but Bluesky and atproto in particular have provided the perfect tools to achieve this. There are some people, largely those who migrated from Twitter, who mostly treat Bluesky like a all-liberal version of Twitter, which results in a predictably toxic experience, like bizarro-world Twitter. But the future of a less toxic social media is in there, if we want it. I've created my own f…

Doesn’t Bluesky have a set of moderation rules that guarantee that it will turn into bizarro-world Twitter?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#238

Post by afavour »

IMTDb wrote: post #71
Lapel2742 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's how the algorithms promote engagement. They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.

> should be heavily regulated. By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences. But if picturing that guy running the sh…

I’d favour regulation towards transparency if nothing else. Show what factors influence appearance in a feed.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#239

Post by [deleted] »

ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

[deleted]

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#240

Post by LunaSea »

riazrizvi wrote: post #171
coffeecoders wrote: post #99

I actually think we’re overestimating how much of "losing our voice" is caused by LLMs. Even before LLMs, we were doing the same tweet-sized takes, the same medium-style blog posts and the same corporate tone. Ironically, LLMs might end up forcing us back toward more distinct voices because sameness has become the default background.

Content recycling has become so cheap, effort-wise, it’s killed the business. Thank god.

It doesn't it just makes it cheaper by not requiring human effort.
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