Comment by TonyAlicea10
3 days ago
“Money was never the constraint. Knowledge was.”
The irony is how difficult it is to read this obviously AI-generated article due to its unnatural prose and choppy flow full of LLM-isms. The ability to write is also a skill that atrophies.
Even when AI is understandably used due to language fluency, I’d prefer to read an AI translation over a generated article.
If you don’t care enough to write it, why should I care enough to read it?
I am really amazed at how we are really okay with LLMs writing code end to end (without human in the loop) / dark factory concept but when it comes articles, HN is suddenly against LLMs writing words. I do not see the difference between writing code and writing prose. Both have keywords, grammars, syntax, meaningful combinations (function or chaining in code / collocations in words). If we think that AI-generated words are not meaningful or easy to follow that same must apply to AI-generated code, which may be harder to read or understand since it is not written by human. Let's stop being hypocrites.
Note: My comment is not specific to this comment. I just wanted to express myself at somewhere and this is where I think it may be suitable.
Who is the 'we' here? When did I become ok with LLMs writing code end to end or against LLMs being used to assist writers? I wasn't aware I held either of these positions.
That's because the purpose of code is to be used, not to be read.
The only purpose of the written word is to be read.
I've always tried to write code for future maintainers first. That is often me.
The 1s and 0s are meant to be used, the code is meant to be read
That's the difference to me. Code is used as instructions to computers. Written human language is used to to communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings to other humans.
I disagree with the premise that "we" are all OK with AI slop computer code however. Even if it's just for consumption by machines, for at least some developers it is a creative outlet.
The purpose of writing is to get your thoughts across in words. A prompt sufficient enough to get out an article with zero chance of it adding things you don't mean has to contain as much information as the article itself would. Just write the article.
> I do not see the difference between writing code and writing prose.
That’s the problem.
This is a funny point. People don't want to read LLM code either, so who knows where that puts us.
It puts us in a secondary, less-rare, less-valuable role out of the driving economic loop we've grown up in.
Since I cannot edit my comment, I replied my comment. I did not mean to insult HN moderators. I am actually very happy that they are protecting HN by removing and flagging AI content. I only wanted to attract attention to the topic that for some areas AI is promoted but then for some areas AI is demoted and I do not get it.
What I mean with "we" is that there is a general perception that using AI is okay and mandatory. This idea is becoming more and more prevalent in management positions and it disturbs me deeply.
I got some replies since I commented, but I am still in the same mind. I did not see a strong refutation to my idea. Why are some people (I didn't want to use the word "we" again) are okay with AI use in code but not in prose? I know that they are not exactly same but they have some similarities. If we are unhappy with sloppy prose, why are we happy with sloppy, potentially buggy or hard to maintain code?
What hypocrisy is there in distinguishing between the qualitative value of prose vs code? They serve entirely different purposes; your failure to recognize that is no one else's fault.
I would say that the simple reason is that writing is often artistic and coding very rarely is.
I don’t listen to AI music or watch AI videos, I don’t want to read AI articles
> I am really amazed at how we are really okay with LLMs writing code end to end
Speak for yourself. Sounds like you're mostly referring to CTOs
I've been opposed to all of it the whole time. But yes, let's stop being hypocritical.
We are not okay with slop code. There was healthy and widespread dissent in 2024 and beginning of 2025. Ycombinator cracked down on the dissent first by installing another moderator and then by downranking and banning anti-AI people.
What you read here are bots and those invested in AI and an occasional retired person who uses AI as a crutch.
Such unsubstantiated claims against the integrity of HN moderators should not be thrown around so casually.
Slop is slop.
It didn't feel at all AI written to me. It's much better than the AI written junk that HN laps up without noticing.
It is full of these short sentences that AI writing loves, sort of to feel "punchy". Normally you would copy-edit that stuff, join them up, have the writing have some rhythm. I agree with GP, the article is hard to read because it seems to have a lot of https://tropes.fyi/
Twitter is full of strung together short punchy sentences, and it spread to articles long before AI.
Not discounting the possibility that it's AI, but it didn't have the same repetition, contradiction, and inaccuracies I notice in other AI content. Though even that isn't exclusive to AI.
I love writing these short, punchy sentences. It makes the impact much better IMO. But maybe it’s just me.
1 reply →
LLMs are trained on real life grammar written by humans. Sometimes the characteristic traits you see by LLMs are written again by human hands.
Not the factory floor. The receiving end.
It wasn’t one bottleneck. It was all of them.
Not the nuclear material. The pattern.
Money was never the constraint. Knowledge was.
...
On the other hand articles mistakes (missing the, a or wrong the). So it'z not AI translated, but also not fully AI generated...
The advantage of Bored Ape NFTs is that one could very quickly visually identify one and block or scroll past without much thought. On the other hand, reading AI slop takes a few extra cycles to parse out and categorise appropriately, with the occasional false evaluations and second guesses. It will be a fine day, indeed, when this pattern of writing fucks off forever.
Is it really so obvious? It didn’t seem AI-written to me.
Every day I seem to encounter (and skip over in disgust) a dozen or so AI-generated articles at the top of web searches, but this wasn’t anything at all like those.
Even the title is likely AI-generated, as are all the subject headings. I worry we're all getting inured to these writing patterns.
> obviously AI-generated article
how can you tell?
#1 rule of slop: anything that can be written, can be AI-generated now
#2 rule of slop: even posts critical of pervasive AI usage and how it's ruining the world can be AI-generated