Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

theargumentmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 284 posts

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#61

Post by mtlynch »

Wow! It got me too.

I'm way less famous than Kelsey Piper, but I showed it a snippet of a book I'm working on (not yet published), and it immediately guessed me:

> Based on the writing style and content, this text is likely by Michael Lynch, who writes on his blog refactoringenglish.com (and previously mtlynch.io).

> Several stylistic clues point to him:

> - The "clean room" analogy applied to writing is consistent with his engineering-influenced approach to writing advice (he's a former software engineer who writes about writing).

> - The structural technique of presenting a flawed excuse, then drawing a parallel to an absurd scenario (the time bomb) to expose the logical flaw, is characteristic of his didactic style.

> - The topic itself—practical advice about using AI tools without letting AI-generated tone contaminate your prose—aligns closely with recent essays he's published on his "Refactoring English" project, which is a book/blog about writing for software developers.

> - The conversational-but-precise tone, use of quotes around terms like "clean room," and the focus on workflow/process advice are all hallmarks of his writing.

> If you can share the source URL or more context, I could confirm with higher confidence, but the combination of subject matter, analogical reasoning style, and formatting conventions makes Michael Lynch the most probable author.

https://kagi.com/assistant/bbc9da96-b4cf-456b-8398-6cf5404ea...

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#62

Post by margalabargala »

oceanplexian wrote: post #34

> That includes gay people like me, who could hardly have admitted under our names to how we lived our lives for most of America’s history, as well as many other groups with minoritarian lifestyles While the points made are completely valid I want to point out that the statement of "Hey, by the way, first let me talk about my sexuality" lowers the quality of dialog a significant degree. 31 million people in America a…

The reason this is relevant is because the statistics you quote represent a HUGE swing in public opinion. Only when comparing to things like slavery can you find such a swing in public opinion compared to 20 years prior, and that one had a war fought over the state's rights to do it.

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#64

Post by hirsin »

oceanplexian wrote: post #34

> That includes gay people like me, who could hardly have admitted under our names to how we lived our lives for most of America’s history, as well as many other groups with minoritarian lifestyles While the points made are completely valid I want to point out that the statement of "Hey, by the way, first let me talk about my sexuality" lowers the quality of dialog a significant degree. 31 million people in America a…

I have no idea how you read a statement about how nazis and flame baiters should be able to speak their mind and then concluded that the author only cares about some minorities.

Given that the author didn't say any of the things you claimed, and indeed said the opposite, it leads one to conclude you have a problem with the example used.

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#65

Post by giancarlostoro »

nextaccountic wrote: post #25
tekacs wrote: post #23

A moderately well-known physicist and I talked about this a few years ago. He had been given access to the raw (non-instruct) version of GPT 4 as an early tester. He explained that when he fed it snippets of the beginning of text, it would complete it in his voice and then sign it with his name. I think this has been true for a while, probably diminished a little bit by the Instruct post training, and would presumabl…

> He explained that when he fed it snippets of the beginning of text, it would complete it in his voice and then sign it with his name. Is this public text already in the training set, or private text that might as well be written on the spot for the AI? I don't doubt AI can "fingerprint" you through your text (ideas, vocabulary, tone, etc), but those are different things, capability-wise

> I don't doubt AI can "fingerprint" you through your text (ideas, vocabulary, tone, etc), but those are different things, capability-wise

The entire point of AI is pattern recognition, everything else is icing on the cake.

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#66

Post by fwipsy »

oceanplexian wrote: post #34

> That includes gay people like me, who could hardly have admitted under our names to how we lived our lives for most of America’s history, as well as many other groups with minoritarian lifestyles While the points made are completely valid I want to point out that the statement of "Hey, by the way, first let me talk about my sexuality" lowers the quality of dialog a significant degree. 31 million people in America a…

I read it as an attempt to reach the sort of people who think anonymity is bad because it stops them from cancelling Nazis.

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#67

Post by stavros »

rdevilla wrote: post #41

The joke's on you all for willingly posting this content online for it to later be harvested by AI. Nobody is forcing you to use these systems. The hackers have always said this moment, or something like it, would come, from beneath their canopies of tin foil. I've posted almost nothing online - not under pseudonyms nor real names - for over a decade. I sat on this HN username for almost 12 years before making a sing…

Let's all just never talk to anyone unless it's face to face, for fear that an AI will read it.

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#69

Post by mtlynch »

This is blowing my mind.

I asked Kimi K2.6 to write a blog post in the style of James Mickens.[0] Then I fed the output to Opus 4.7 and asked it who the likely author was, and it correctly identified it as an imitation of James Mickens[1]:

> Based on the stylistic fingerprints in this text, the most likely author is a pastiche/imitation of the style of several writers fused together, but if forced to identify a single likely author, the strongest candidate is someone writing in the voice of James Mickens

> [...]

> The piece could also be a deliberate imitation/homage to Mickens written by someone else, or AI-generated text trained on his style, since the voice is so distinctive it's frequently parodied.

[0] https://kagi.com/assistant/5bfc5da9-cbfc-4051-8627-d0e9c0615...

[1] https://kagi.com/assistant/fd3eca94-45de-4a53-8604-fcc568dc5...

Re: Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey

#70

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

oceanplexian wrote: post #34

> That includes gay people like me, who could hardly have admitted under our names to how we lived our lives for most of America’s history, as well as many other groups with minoritarian lifestyles While the points made are completely valid I want to point out that the statement of "Hey, by the way, first let me talk about my sexuality" lowers the quality of dialog a significant degree. 31 million people in America a…

Actually it's done the opposite of what you suggest. It improved the quality of discourse by giving a simple concrete example all of us can understand and most of us would agree with (that vulnerable people are safer because of anonymity). It didn't imply what you're saying it does, and it's kinda weird that you think that.

I don't know why you added statistics (you didn't really make a point with them?), but assuming you meant "gay people don't really need to worry", you actually bolstered the opposite argument. If only 71% of Americans support gay rights, that means 59 million people think the state should criminalize him. Try to put yourself in that position. 59 million people - you don't know who, but you know they probably live in your community - that don't want you to be able to get married, have a significant other, or have any PDA in media because it would "corrupt" kids. In 2016, 49 people were murdered in the Pulse Nightclub because they were gay. In 2020, a transgender woman was murdered because the murderer was afraid someone would think he was gay. Every year there are acts of violence against gay and trans people because of their sexuality. But nobody has ever been killed for being straight.

Post reply on HN