LLM Voice

As someone who is aggressively pro AI, I've also noticed how awful everything is to read lately. It's always so hard to put my finger on the exact thing, but it's a mixture of everything sounding identical and everything being a rambling unconcise mess. I find I routinely start reading interesting posts and just .. stop part way, abandoning it. A site I read stories on has been flooded with AI generated content, all of it terrible, and it just makes me retreat to things created before 2023 as a way of filtering it all out.

I just can't seem to stay interested and read LLM text. It just seems to lack going somewhere, its information density is often really low and its full of odd isms that I don't find very interesting to read. I don't have a good radar for detecting the various LLM particular speech patterns but everytime I have an issue with an article there is always people talking about how its clearly AI written.

I find the same thing with written results out of AI "research", it is a slog to read through it and most of it can be skipped even if it can sometimes be useful its an unenjoyable read.

> As more people delegate writing to LLMs they will also delegate thinking and comprehension to LLMs. I don't want to do that, where's the fun of writing then?

I enjoy cooking from scratch, and I really don't like frozen foods, microwave/TV dinners, or even DoorDashing

but we're past complaining/arguing/shaming folks who don't cook every meal from scratch

you know what, I don't prefer eating it, but if my next door neighbor loves microwaving frozen $3 burritos, then go ahead

to some people, food is art, creativity, life to others, food is fuel

also applies to writing and thinking

It’s also just… disrespectful to the human reader. Quite plainly.

I'll repost a comment I made a while back describing the process I use, which I think balances AI in keeping your voice.

If you care about your voice, don't let LLMs write your words. But that doesn't mean you can't use AI to think, critique and draft lots of words for you. It depends on what purpose you're writing it for. If you're writing an impersonal document, like a design document, briefing, etc then who cares. In many cases (scientific papers, legal documents) you already have to write them in a voice that is not your own. Go ahead and write these in AI. But if you're trying to say something more personal then the words should be your own, AI will always try to 'smooth' out your voice, and if you care about it, you gotta write it yourself.

Now, how do you use AI effectively and still retain your voice? Here's one technique that works well: start with a voice memo, just record yourself maybe during a walk, and talk about a subject you want, free form, skip around jump sentences, just get it all out of your brain. Then open up a chat, add the recording or transcript, clearly state your intent in one sentence and ask the AI to consider your thoughts, your intent and ask clarifying questions. Like, what does the AI not understand about how your thoughts support the clearly stated intent of what you want to say. That'll produce a first draft, which will be bad. Then tell the AI all the things that don't make sense to you, that you don't like, just comment on the whole doc, get a second draft. Ask the AI if it has more questions for you, you can use live chat to make this conversation go smoother as well, when the AI is asking you questions, you can talk freely by voice. Repeat this one or two more times, and a much finer draft will take shape that is closer to what you want to say. During this drafting state, the AI will always try to smooth or average out your ideas, so it is important to keep pointing out all the ways in which it is wrong.

This process will help you with all the thinking involved being more up-front. Once you're read and critiqued several drafts, all your ideas will be much more clear. Then, sit down and write your own words from scratch, they will come much easier after all your thoughts have been exercised during the drafting process.

I’ve started embracing my grammar flaws and typos. Emails and chats may get a proof, but only from me or another human, then I send it. I’ve deleted Grammarly because I think the flaws make the comms more authentic in the age of AI.

And of course I’ve dropped my use of the em-dash after being accused of being AI myself.

Couldn't agree more with the post.

I wrote down a few of my thoughts a few weeks ago at https://notes.pault.ag/why-write/ -- I find myself scanning text to see if it's LLM before I actually engage with the content.

It is getting harder to do by the day, and has slowly moved from a mental exercise (look for specific markers) into a "gut feel" based on how the pieces fit together.

Just do what I do: capture everything I've ever written and ask AI to cobble together what I said using my own sentences.

No more LLM voice! Every now and then you might get a nonsensical artifact or two, but that's the price you pay for better groceries.

> I'm wary of them, partly due skeptism about their accuracy, but also because it rather misses the point.

Here this reader wonders whether "to" was omitted intentionally to make a point? :-)

> But I also would prefer rather a genuine human's clunky prose to the smooth but soulless LLM.

Amen. This reminds me of a bit from Kitchen Confidential about how Anthony Bourdain would prefer a simple and plain home cooked meal over an ornate restaurant meal any day of the week. I read because I want to hear what a human has to say. It's the errors and malapropisms and style that give a unique and human voice.

There's a fine line between using an llm to write a personal blog vs using it to help you come up with an account plan on why you want to sell to a company that will be used internally.

i noticed something similar yet different. because, sadly, most of what i read today is llm output (the chain of thoughts, or the summary at the end of a big chunk or work), i tend to "adopt" this style in my writing, hence, writing as an llm without using one. humans are an amazing creatures at copying stuff and adapting to our environment

I recently read DDIA for the first time, and I was surprised by how enjoyable it was after reading AI slop for a year.

personally, i'm for LLM and AI usage in writing if it helps the writer communicate ideas, their stories, and triumphs in ways they may never have been able to before. I just had one of my posts removed from the front page here which was disheartening because it feels as though what was judged was prose rather than the technical insight in to a niche problem, which seems counterintuitive considering i've always thought of Hacker News being an inclusive place for the technical and engineering skills rather than their level of the english language.

> In time it may be that LLMs will be so good that we can't tell the difference.

I have to believe that we are within a couple of years if not months of this. This problem is too well-known to not be a major focus of the frontier labs' efforts.

One reason it grates is that it is our brain's way of telling us that there is nothing to be gained from engaging the material; it is trite.

> But if I want to communicate with humans, my humanity has to shine (or at least ooze) out of my prose.

Yeah. I want to be able to touch a human being (or at least have one touch me) through the words. LLMs poison that, even if a human prompted the LLM.

Translation... I think I object to translation less than Martin does. There's a human back there, and they're writing all the words, and then an LLM is translating them. The LLM may not translate them perfectly, but they aren't going to introduce "load-bearing" when it wasn't there.

The bit about using LLM when you're writing for a bureaucratic process rather than a human was interesting, at least to me. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I think it makes sense.

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