I can't fucking stand this AI slop writing. If the author couldn't spend time writing it, I won't spend time reading it
WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#42Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, well, I'm getting very tired of all of the terrible AI-generated articles. I made a longer reply that discusses why I think this article is bad on top of the fact that the writing is absolutely fucking horrid, but a single person could theoretically pump out hundreds of these per day if they wanted, so having a nuanced critique for each of these is going to be pretty hard. There's only one solution, and that is f…
Just because some people choose to write poorly using an LLM doesn't in itself make all AI generated content bad. In can in fact be far better than an article written by a human if instructed reasonably.
And again, it's a practical issue anyways. You can have Claude generate hundreds of these. I've already personally seen multiple blogs where there are multiple fully written long articles being posted per day. These even occasionally make it to Hacker News. Did the person who generated these actually read them? Probably not.
Most importantly, it is unacceptable to pass off AI generated prose or images as if it is human expression. It's one thing with code where the primary point of it is to be executed, but I have zero interest in people who can't formulate their own thoughts into writing. I don't see how it is any better to submit AI generated articles to Hacker News than it is to respond to people with AI generated comments.
Humans aren't infallible, but the point of content isn't the content, it is the ideas, and the ideas are valuable because of the work put into them. AI slop articles are a serious problem because they superficially look like something where a lot of effort is put in, as the models will happily make bold claims and justify them into the ground no matter how untrue or unjustified those claims are. There is a feasible future where AI generated content is also valuable because of the effort put into them. It certainly happens on occasion today. It just isn't what we're seeing here right now on Hacker News. And because many people here (certainly myself included from time to time) often skim the articles or sometimes don't even actually read them, it is important that the community put some effort into weeding out slop content, AI or human, that fails to justify its claims. The rising tide of AI generated crap is making this task harder and more annoying.
This isn't something I'm ever going to relent on, either. So I will have to leave it up to HN to decide if they would rather ban us all for complaining or come to reasonable senses and agree that there is no sustainable way to allow blatantly AI-generated content onto the front page. I don't view this as an ultimatum so much as just an observation extrapolating off of what we're seeing today: nobody has really made me feel there is any compelling point to allowing AI generated crap on here. If anything the further it gets the less supported arguments in favor of it are seeming justified.
The explosion in quality from better models is always around the bend.
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now, Telegram doesn't use End-to-End encryption by default at all, does it? Underrated fact. Also, no one knows who exactly operates Telegram and IIRC they don't even have an office. But we know Russian authorities have intense interest in it so it's hard to imagine FSB wouldn't figure out who it is and knock on their (or their relatives still in Russia) door. We know that Russian authorities previously banned Tele…
AFAIK, the FSB knocked on Durov’s previous company’s door, VKontakte, a Russian Facebook knock-off. They asked for info on some of their users, were told “no” and… they told Durov that “it would be a good idea if you sold this thing to someone else”. Which he did, for decent money but probably a lot less than it was worth. He then used that money to start Telegram, at first from Berlin and later on from Dubai, from 2…
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#45Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because some people choose to write poorly using an LLM doesn't in itself make all AI generated content bad. In can in fact be far better than an article written by a human if instructed reasonably.
Yeah, no, if I can tell it's AI generated, that means it has the same garbage writing style that for some reason LLMs can't help but pump out. And if some human person thinks that's fine to post, they either don't care/didn't read their own post, or they have terrible taste. And again, it's a practical issue anyways. You can have Claude generate hundreds of these. I've already personally seen multiple blogs where the…
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#47Feels AI generated ("linkedin-style" short sentences, blob of malformated text towards the bottom), so I'll give myself the permission to skim and take shortcuts. The most interesting claim is the weakness of groups (the article claims the server controls who is a group member, without cryptographically secured authorization by an existing member). The other key points are correct to my knowledge but unsurprising to…
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, no, if I can tell it's AI generated, that means it has the same garbage writing style that for some reason LLMs can't help but pump out. And if some human person thinks that's fine to post, they either don't care/didn't read their own post, or they have terrible taste. And again, it's a practical issue anyways. You can have Claude generate hundreds of these. I've already personally seen multiple blogs where the…
Like I said, the model quality is not a problem. They can trivially write professionally. Even a two year old model can. If they write poorly, it's because they are asked to appeal to the lowest common denominator of clickbait.
The exact way in which the models are fucked up seems to depend on circumstances, but I think right now one thing I've noticed out of the latest versions of Claude Opus is that it really really likes to use the word "honest" in its summaries. "What Remains (The "Honest" Part)". I figured this was maybe something to do with it just repeating the system prompts but no. It turns out the word "honest" does appear in some fragments of system prompts in Cluade Code, but it doesn't appear to be anywhere where it would've been in the context of my recent runs.
I think this is a tuning issue and that eventually, someone will figure out a good way to prevent models from getting skewed this way.
Still, the bad prose quality is not really the biggest issue. In fact, it's kind of handy that the prose quality is shit because it makes it easier to tell when someone just doesn't seem to care about what they're writing. If the prose quality was really good, yet the amount of effort put in was the same, we would be having an even worse problem right now.
Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#49Re: WhatsApp's "End-to-End Encryption" Is the Biggest Lie in Tech History
#50The article opens with a statement by Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov who claims that WhatsApp shared Messages with third parties while Telegram "never did and never will" do that. Now, Telegram doesn't use End-to-End encryption by default at all, does it? What I mean is: The message is encrypted on the sender's device and can only be decrypted on that and the receiver's device. Telegram uses transport layer encrypti…