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

It's Not Just X. It's Y

mail.cyberneticforests.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 155 posts

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#61

Post by vonunov »

card_zero wrote: post #48
karim79 wrote: post #40

"So, if we publicly shame people whose text looks like it might have been written by a machine – because it mimics the language used for human reasoning – and people stop writing in ways that they internalize as "AI writing" out of fear of false detection, it sends a signal that your language for reasoning must be policed, or you too could be held up to public scrutiny." This is honestly both terrifying and well arti…

There are plenty of idioms, find a different idiom, tough titties.

Surely it hasn't escaped your notice that the LLMs don't tend to stick to just the one set of idioms/devices. They're constantly running new batches of them into the ground

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#62

Post by Loughla »

huflungdung wrote: post #3

You’re absolutely right. This is the smoking gun. This changes everything.

That is actually what I'm firmly convinced is the most dangerous thing about llm's. No matter what you put, it will always agree with you, and what's worse, it will try to make you think that you're unbelievably smart for saying x.

I used one to help me plan a sales route, and it kept fucking it up. Every time I corrected it, it tried that hand wringing vizier sort of ass kissing. It's very off-putting, but I can see how someone struggling with social interaction could be sucked into that nonsense.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#63

Post by martincsweiss »

I liked everything in this post, with one exception. I'm less sure that avoiding speaking like an AI is robbing us of language useful in critical thinking. I'm far more worried about people offloading their critical thinking to AI systems and losing the habit.

Also, the Greeks were worried about rhetoric and, in my opinion, rightly so. The skill to argue a point well is different than those that are needed to be correct. To become a skilled rhetoritician was viewed as dangerous (and right now AIs are only moderately good... though they are improving fast).

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#65

Post by BLKNSLVR »

pvillano wrote: post #53

In one of the essays posted here, which was, ironically, about AI in education, a sentence, that an AI could not possibly write, that I could possibly write, because of its length and unusual structure, before finally reaching the verb, went on for 25 words. I don't know if it was written that way to show trust in the reader's intelligence, show disregard for reaching a wide audience, show a demonstration of skill, o…

Your first sentence is 45 words and contains 9 commas.

> I don't know if it was written that way to show trust in the reader's intelligence, show disregard for reaching a wide audience, show a demonstration of skill, or was artifact of someone just thinking at that level.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#67

Post by jltsiren »

ai_slop_hater wrote: post #44

> Because if Pangram's AI system found me guilty, that's the end of my career. That's literally extortion. How is this different from humans? When I went to high school, my teachers extorted me too. Especially subjects like English and unlike Math, where evaluation is 100% subjective.

I don't how the English evaluation works in the average (US?) school, or even what's in the exams. But it's possible to have useful native language exams with objective evaluation.

Until 2006, the national Finnish/Swedish (as a native language) exam at the end of high school in Finland consisted of two essays. One was based on materials that were provided, and another on a topic that was given. I believe there were a few options to choose from. Both essays were scored independently, and your score was the better of the two. If you had learned to write essays, it was effectively an intelligence test and a good predictor of future academic success across many fields.

Including CS, as my department found out. In particular, the ability to write essays was a better predictor of success in CS studies than the scores in mathematics and natural sciences. Probably because there has always been a large subset of CS students who are otherwise good at CS but can't handle anything resembling mathematics.

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#68

Post by SubiculumCode »

thewebguyd wrote: post #35
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the entire point of the article is that they're not AI idioms. They're not "watermarks for text." They're legitimate language constructions that LLMs tend to overuse, but that real humans also use . Real humans do, in fact, say "align with" all the time, just as often as "corresponds." And you can pry my em dashes from my cold, dead hands.

What's worse is neurodivergent writing, including my own, often resemble AI output. Now it feels like I'm having to alter my own voice in online discussions just to specifically avoid being accused of pasting an AI response. The "AI Detection" tools employed by schools also regularly flag writing from those with Autism, ADHD, and non-native English speakers as being AI generated as well. So, naturally, I can't stand…

That is an empirical question. Do you have empirical sources you'd care to share?

Re: It's Not Just X. It's Y

#70

Post by fragmede »

Loughla wrote: post #62
huflungdung wrote: post #3

You’re absolutely right. This is the smoking gun. This changes everything.

That is actually what I'm firmly convinced is the most dangerous thing about llm's. No matter what you put, it will always agree with you, and what's worse, it will try to make you think that you're unbelievably smart for saying x. I used one to help me plan a sales route, and it kept fucking it up. Every time I corrected it, it tried that hand wringing vizier sort of ass kissing. It's very off-putting, but I can see…

My custom instructions to ChatGPT starts with "Never apologize", which seems to work.
Post reply on HN