The other similar site making the rounds, <a href="https://noslopgrenade.com/" rel="nofollow">https://noslopgrenade.com/, is indeed in part written by AI as evaluated by Pangram.
I believe that one was discussed with the author on HN, and that they used AI to 'copyedit'. Unfortunately that's a trap because if you make a general copyediting request most LLMs will absolutely slopify your work-- and make edits that are unambiguously bad as well as just making it look like lazy llm output.
The better use is to ask it to point out grammatical and spelling errors, or phrasing which is unclear.. then go fix yourself (or direct highly targeted fixes that don't let it slopify). Never hand the clanker the pen for your writing unless you're looking to subject everyone to your Honest Take That Recontextualizes Everything.
IME, it's best to ask an AI to criticize your work and suggest changes without providing actual rewrites, and make the changes you agree with in your own voice.
This is an outdated take. It used to be the case, but now detectors have low false positive rates. In other words good precision but not necessarily good recall for detecting AI. So some AI text evades detection, but when it flags something as AI, then it's usually right.
I just wonder how many people smugly cry 'slop' and then immediately go ask chatgpt about something they want to know about. I suspect it's a surprisinly large amount.
There’s a difference between using and sharing. I don’t want to see your notebook. I want to see the finished document. To some of us, the difference is intuitively obvious, so we’re offended by what we’re getting at work these days.
I'm very envious of your workplace if the stuff before AI was somehow well written. If I had AI 10 years ago I would've been mostly using it to interpret most of the corporate speak e-mails and poorly written technical briefs.
Now I get corporate-speak tech docs in addition to irrelevant internal comms. AI doesn't magically make your coworkers put in more effort. It just puts a veneer of professionalism over the same output.
Those are different though. One is just reading your own slop, the other is trying to make others read your slop. I don't love either one, but it's clear that one is a lot worse.
I would not extend it to cases where I’ve made the choice to interact with AI, no. Precisely because there is no pretense. I know that I’m dealing with an intelligent system that has different strengths and weaknesses than a human. I also know that I can (usually) direct that system to dial down its verbosity.
>If it’s not worth writing, it’s not worth reading.
that's why I keep all logging thoroughly disabled across all systems.
Saves a lot of room.
I don't get these new logic statements everyone is coming up with against AI systems.
If the excuse is "I meant literature!" well then I argue that where that line is drawn in the sand is exactly the question these kind of black and white expressions strolling entirely past.
(and that's actually the important question; where does it become neglectful for a human to throw an AI into the drivers seat wrt human read media?)
That’s a funny ad absurdum. But let’s be honest: if a coworker dumps a hundred lines of logs into a Slack channel without contextualization the reaction would understandably be ‘wtf am I supposed to do with this?’ Now what I’ll sometimes get is an accompanying AI-generated analysis of the logs. Out of diligence I’ll read them. To their credit, they usually mention the issue, but it’s buried down deep among so much noise. My time feels wasted. Eight paragraphs of Claudish could have been one sentence. My coworkers could have used AI to reduce it down to that one sentence and then rewrite it in their own words. They chose not to because that would have taken more time for them, not realizing the burden now shifts to me (the more expensive senior engineer).
My personal line in the sand is human-to-human communication. I’m fine with AI use on either end, but keep the channel clean. I see it as a sign of respecting each other’s time.
Btw, there are pre-genAI cases of generated text. Webshop product descriptions and sports news summaries, for instance – both of those are easily templatized. I guess the difference is there is no human name attached to them and they’re fairly short
> If it’s not worth writing, it’s not worth reading.
I mean, you didn't write that, you're just repeating a meme for the 1 millionth time. People have always been saying things they didn't write, and AI is just one new way.
But I still took time to thumb it out on my phone keyboard, just as I’m taking time to write this reply. The time it takes you to read this reply will likely be less than it took me to write. I accept that asymmetry because it’s how we as humans can convey that we thought something was worth saying. Long walls of AI slop flip the equation, placing the burden on the reader. It’s not about originality, not for me at least. It’s about respecting each other’s time as humans
"But I still took time to thumb it out on my phone keyboard"
Is that the part that matters when it comes to writing, the mechanical work of pressing the keys? Not the thinking? What if someone generates some AIslop text, and then re-types it out with their thumbs, is that then worthy of your time to read it, simply because some person felt strongly enough to retype it? Because that's basically what you did by re-posting memeslop.
Moreover, let's say you read something and you learned something from it and actually enjoyed reading it, but only afterwards find out it was written by AI. Does that mean you had wasted your time?
"Long walls of AI slop flip the equation"
Not really, there's always been long walls of human slop text to figure out if there's thinking behind it. You ever been manic or known someone with mania? Got ADHD and racing thoughts? The vast output of corporations and politicians? Nuff said.
Is there more now? Probably but it doesn't "flip the equation"; that was true after radio, tv, the internet, heck even the printing press. It's always been incumbent upon the reader to figure out the intent and quality of a piece of writing, no matter the source, and that's never been an easy or automatable task. Inb4 "but it used to be that writing something at least indicated a modicum of thought" memeslop, because that actually isn't true for the reasons I stated already.
lemontheme · · focus · HN ↗
That said, wouldn’t it be funny if this site, too, were AI generated?
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
nullc · · focus · HN ↗
The better use is to ask it to point out grammatical and spelling errors, or phrasing which is unclear.. then go fix yourself (or direct highly targeted fixes that don't let it slopify). Never hand the clanker the pen for your writing unless you're looking to subject everyone to your Honest Take That Recontextualizes Everything.
AlexCoventry · · focus · HN ↗
lemontheme · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
breezybottom · · focus · HN ↗
E-Reverance · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
breezybottom · · focus · HN ↗
justhw · · focus · HN ↗
slopinthebag · · focus · HN ↗
ragequittah · · focus · HN ↗
DragonStrength · · focus · HN ↗
ragequittah · · focus · HN ↗
DragonStrength · · focus · HN ↗
andrewflnr · · focus · HN ↗
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
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rexer · · focus · HN ↗
Would you extend that approach to the conversations you have with AI? If not, why not?
lemontheme · · focus · HN ↗
serf · · focus · HN ↗
that's why I keep all logging thoroughly disabled across all systems.
Saves a lot of room.
I don't get these new logic statements everyone is coming up with against AI systems.
If the excuse is "I meant literature!" well then I argue that where that line is drawn in the sand is exactly the question these kind of black and white expressions strolling entirely past.
(and that's actually the important question; where does it become neglectful for a human to throw an AI into the drivers seat wrt human read media?)
lemontheme · · focus · HN ↗
My personal line in the sand is human-to-human communication. I’m fine with AI use on either end, but keep the channel clean. I see it as a sign of respecting each other’s time.
Btw, there are pre-genAI cases of generated text. Webshop product descriptions and sports news summaries, for instance – both of those are easily templatized. I guess the difference is there is no human name attached to them and they’re fairly short
ModernMech · · focus · HN ↗
I mean, you didn't write that, you're just repeating a meme for the 1 millionth time. People have always been saying things they didn't write, and AI is just one new way.
lemontheme · · focus · HN ↗
ModernMech · · focus · HN ↗
Is that the part that matters when it comes to writing, the mechanical work of pressing the keys? Not the thinking? What if someone generates some AIslop text, and then re-types it out with their thumbs, is that then worthy of your time to read it, simply because some person felt strongly enough to retype it? Because that's basically what you did by re-posting memeslop.
Moreover, let's say you read something and you learned something from it and actually enjoyed reading it, but only afterwards find out it was written by AI. Does that mean you had wasted your time?
"Long walls of AI slop flip the equation"
Not really, there's always been long walls of human slop text to figure out if there's thinking behind it. You ever been manic or known someone with mania? Got ADHD and racing thoughts? The vast output of corporations and politicians? Nuff said.
Is there more now? Probably but it doesn't "flip the equation"; that was true after radio, tv, the internet, heck even the printing press. It's always been incumbent upon the reader to figure out the intent and quality of a piece of writing, no matter the source, and that's never been an easy or automatable task. Inb4 "but it used to be that writing something at least indicated a modicum of thought" memeslop, because that actually isn't true for the reasons I stated already.