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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

#271

Post by shevy-java »

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 eliminated twitter when a certain rich guy took over.

Actually, I deleted my account there before, as twitter sent me spam mail trying to lecture me what I write. There was nothing wrong with what I wrote - twitter was wrong. I can not accept AI-generated spam by twitter, so I went away. Don't really miss it either, but Elon really worsened the platform significantly with his antics.

> Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive.

Yeah, I can relate to this, but mostly what annoyed me was that twitter interfered "we got a complaint about you - they are right, you are a troublemaker". I don't understand why twitter wants to interfere into communication. Reddit is even worse, since moderators have such a wild range of what is "acceptable" and what is not. Double-standards everywhere on reddit.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#272

Post by trinsic2 »

everdrive wrote: post #210
chemotaxis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. I guess, but I'm on quite a few "algorithm-free" forums where the same thing happens. I think it's just human nature. The reason it's under control on HN is rigorous moderation; when the moderators are asleep, you often see dubious political stuff bubble up. And in the comments, there's often a fair…

When video games first started taking advantage of behavioral reward schedules (eg: skinner box stuff such as loot crates & random drops) I noticed it, and would discuss it among friends. We had a colloquial name for the joke and we called them "crack points." (ie, like the drug) For instance, the random drops that happen in a game like Diablo 2 are rewarding in very much the same way that a slot machine is rewarding…

Thanks for this. I didn't realize until you said it why this issue might not be observable to a certain group of people. I think this is a cognitive awareness issue. You cant really see it until you have an awareness of it through experience. I came from a drug abuse background and my wife was never involved in the level of addiction I was involved in and she has a hard time seeing how algorithms like this effect behavior

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#274

Post by tptacek »

If you care about voice, you still can get a lot of value from LLMs. You just have to be careful not to use a single word they generate.

I've had a lot of luck using GPT5 to interrogate my own writing. A prompt I use (there are certainly better ones): "I'm an editor considering a submitted piece for a publication {describe audience here}. Is this piece worth the effort I'll need to put in, and how far will I need to cut it back?". Then I'll go paragraph by paragraph asking whether it has a clear topic, flows, and then I'll say "I'm not sure this graf earns its keep" or something like that.

GPT5 and Claude will always respond to these kinds of prompts with suggested alternative language. I'm convinced the trick to this is never to use those words, even if they sound like an improvement over my own. At the first point where that happens, I get dial my LLM-wariness up to 11 and take a break. Usually the answer is to restructure paragraphs, not to apply the spot improvement (even in my own words) the LLM is suggesting.

LLMs are quite good at (1) noticing multi-paragraph arcs that go nowhere (2) spotting repetitive word choices (3) keeping things active voice and keeping subject/action clear (4) catching non-sequiturs (a constant problem for me; I have a really bad habit of assuming the reader is already in my head or has been chatting with me on a Slack channel for months).

Another thing I've come to trust LLMs with: writing two versions of a graf and having it select the one that fits the piece better. Both grafs are me. I get that LLMs will have a bias towards some language patterns and I stay alert to that, but there's still not that much opportunity for an LLM to throw me into "LLM-voice".

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#275

Post by diob »

chemotaxis wrote: post #48
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…

> It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. I guess, but I'm on quite a few "algorithm-free" forums where the same thing happens. I think it's just human nature. The reason it's under control on HN is rigorous moderation; when the moderators are asleep, you often see dubious political stuff bubble up. And in the comments, there's often a fair…

The thing is, the people on those "algorithm-free" forums still get manipulated by the algorithm in the rest of their life. So it seeps into everything.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#276

Post by encyclopedism »

BoredomIsFun wrote: post #183
freejazz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In that way, perhaps we now have a monotexture of writing, but also perhaps more interesting ideas being shared. They aren't your ideas if its coming out of an LLM

counterargument: they still are your ideas even if they went through LLM.

Unsubstantiated

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#277

Post by encyclopedism »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #78
LaGrange wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate when people hijack progressive language - like in your case the language of accessibility - for cheap marketing and hype. Writing is one of the most accessible forms of expression. We were living in a world where even publishing was as easy as imaginable - sure, not actually selling/profiting, but here’s a secret, even most bestselling authors have either at least one other job, or intense support from their c…

I'm anon, but also the farthest thing from a progressive, so I find this post amusing. I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying but I also have a different frame. Even if we take your claim that LLMs don't make people better writers as true (which I think there's plenty to argue with), that's not the point at all. What I'm saying is people are communicating better. For most ideas, writing is just a transport…

> What I'm saying is people are communicating better. For most ideas, writing is just a transport vessel for ideas. And people now have tools to communicate better than they would have been.

You would have to define 'better'.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#278

Post by shevy-java »

ryandrake wrote: post #216
actualwitch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Abuse of the flagging system is probably one of the worst problems currently facing HN. It looks like mods might be trying to do something about it, as I've occasionally seen improperly-flagged posts get resuscitated, but it appears to take manual action by moderators, and by the time they get to it, the damage is done: The article was censored off the front page.

It seems really so small compared to reddit.

I think I never downvoted anyone on hackernews yet - it just does not seem important.

On reddit on the other hand, I just had to downvote wrong opinions. This works to some extent, until moderators interfere and ban you. That part made me stop use reddit actually, in particular since someone made a complaint and I got banned for some days. I objected and the moderators of course did not respond. I can not allow random moderators to just chime in arbitrarily and flag "this comment you made is a threat", when it clearly was not. But you can not really argue with reddit moderators.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#279

Post by pixl97 »

everdrive wrote: post #210
chemotaxis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. I guess, but I'm on quite a few "algorithm-free" forums where the same thing happens. I think it's just human nature. The reason it's under control on HN is rigorous moderation; when the moderators are asleep, you often see dubious political stuff bubble up. And in the comments, there's often a fair…

When video games first started taking advantage of behavioral reward schedules (eg: skinner box stuff such as loot crates & random drops) I noticed it, and would discuss it among friends. We had a colloquial name for the joke and we called them "crack points." (ie, like the drug) For instance, the random drops that happen in a game like Diablo 2 are rewarding in very much the same way that a slot machine is rewarding…

>If any game had anything like a scoreboard, or a reward for input, he'd say "it's crack points!"

I don't think it's exactly wrong, you just have to look at it on a spectrum of minimal addictiveness to meth level addiction. For example in quarter fed games getting a high score displayed to others was quite the addictive behavior.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#280

Post by ori_b »

O_H_E wrote: post #245
ori_b wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So in that case, would someone willing to publish LLM-speak under their name be similarly adopting that "voice". Does that entail that LLMs are not in fact erasing our societal voices, only making it easier to adopt bland-corporate en-mass?

That's a reasonable interpretation. People are choosing to mute their voices, and replace their identity with ChatGPT.

It's not a passive loss of voice. Their voice didn't fall off and slip between the couch cushions.

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