This reads less like LLM output than it does someone just transcribing their brief notes as they did their research. Lot of missing subject nouns, which is not something I'd expect to see from AI output.
You can ask an LLM to write in a different voice—they don't all sound exactly the same, though this one is no different than other examples.
When I use an LLM, it tries to sound like me but there are still tendencies it falls back on, especially when the context window begins to expand.
The 'missing subject nouns' is probably the LLM's way of sounding like an authoritative source in a technical field since many programmers like to write that way.
- Subtitles have the rhetoric turned to 11 with LLMs. (Note: Who has ever had multiple sentences as a blog post heading? It's bizarre) :
- LLM "The Demo Works. Production Does Not."
- Human "AI is why this project exist, and why it's as complete as it is"
- Sources for claims that call for evidence
- LLM "Six months ago, a practitioner could name a preferred OCR engine with confidence. Based on what I read, that confidence is gone." - *What was read?*
- Human "AI coding tools and playing slot machines"[ref]
- Variable paragraph lengths, where things that need more explanation have longer paragraphs (and vice versa)
- LLM *Scroll through—each thing is about the same length*
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There are lots of tells like this. This is a moment to get good at detecting LLM text in case it's surreptitiously used to your detriment.
Absolutely. You got the joke, or? This was the main point of the full article. No primary sources. Only unverified aggregates. Strong contrast to what I did normally once per month.
> Variable paragraph lengths
I tried to compare it to the URL you posted. It's quite similar. I would have rather have said. Shorter sentences. Shorter Paragraphs. But let's not fight on this ;)
Interesting complaint, because many might not share any of their ideas if it weren't for LLMs making it easy. Not everyone has the incentive to dedicate a day to producing writing worth publishing. But maybe they would if it took significantly less time.
Even considering HNs no LLMs for comments rule, which I mostly agree with, I think we would all lose of the same rule were applied to publishing in general.
All of the output beyond the prompt contains, definitionally, essentially no useful information. Unless it's being used to translate from one human language to another, you're wasting your reader's time and energy in exchange for you own. If you have useful ideas, share them, and if you believe in the age of LLMs, be less afraid of them being unpolished and simply ask you readers to rely on their preferred tools to piece through it.
I have also found that LLMs do not help me communicate my ideas in any way because the bottleneck is getting the ideas out of my head and into the prompt in the first place, but I will disagree with the idea that the output beyond the prompt contains no useful information.
In the article you linked the output he is complaining about probably had a prompt like this: "What are the downsides of using Euler angles for rotation representation in robotics? Please provide a bulleted list and suggest alternatives." The LLM expanded on it based on its knowledge of the domain or based on a search tool (or both). Charitably, the student looked it over and thought through the information and decided it was good (or possibly tweaked around the edges) and then sent it over - though in practice they probably just assumed it was correct and didn't check it.
For writing an essay like "I would rather read the prompt" LLMs don't seem like they would speed up the process much, but for something that involves synthesizing or summarizing information LLMs definitely can generate you a useful essay (though at least at the moment the default system prompts generate something distinctively bland and awful).
Pretty balanced take. I think if a human gains information or saves time, it's still worthwhile. Surely, I don't publish those clickbaits. That's AI slop.
How else do you think I would have come to write this comment? I got to the second major heading before realizing that there is little human input in this document.
I use LLMs but I will never impose on Claude's intellectual musings on another person as some sort of intellectual insight.
This is about the same as copying someone else's homework and then presenting the copied work as an example of deep brilliance. The copying isn't great, but the boasting is absurd. Who are we trying to con?
I think I made it obvious what the article is about: no boasting, not "copying someone else's homework". Which text did you last publish? Can you be more specific? I would be genuinely interested in specific changes you would do if you were the editor.
> I mean "a" text! I was just curious how you write. Do you prefer to write comments?
In all fairness, I've been accused of sounding like an LLM this year, which is quite unfortunate as I think we're coming to the end of careful writing.
> Physicians need to have it pounded into them that every hallucination is downstream harm.
I think any person using 'AI' knows it makes mistakes. In a medical note, there are often errors at present. A consumer of a medical note has to decide what makes sense and what to ignore, and AI isn't meaningfully changing that. If something matters, it's asked again in follow up.
This is because we’re paying people to get into shape to the point where they can be considered for service. And that began before the current presidential administration, who I think are planning to cancel this initiative
Are there good command-line interfaces for spreadsheets? I don't do anything super financially-important and I'd prefer to stay in the terminal for quick editing of things, especially if I can have Vi keybindings.
Neat, thank you! sc-im looks amazing, and it's even in the Fedora repos (though the repo version doesn't support xlsx, so I'll compile myself and try it out)
Edit: Quite painless! Opened some test xlsx files without issue. Did get a stack trace on a very complicated one, so when I have time I'll try and dig in deeper. Added a doc to the wiki in case it's helpful to other: https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im/wiki/Building-sc%E2%80...
It's weird but visidata is my favorite spreadsheet.
"But... visidata is not a spreadsheet"
I know, that's what makes it so weird.
On contemplation, I think I grew dissatisfied with the normal spreadsheet data model, I wanted something bettered structured than the "it's a big bag of cells" that spreadsheets present, I wanted row security. The best I found was the relational database. I currently use a local postgres db for most things I would have used a spreadsheet for. The interfaces sort of suck in comparison but at least I have sane data structures.
I want to mention teapot. First an apology, it's not actually a good match for for question, sure, it's a curses spreadsheet, but it was made by someone who thought about the fundamentals of the problem a little too much. So it is probably a little too weird for someone who just wants to spreadsheet as Dan Bricklin intended.
In short cell address are normalized @(1,2,3) instead of A1 or r1c1. real references so address rewriting hacks($A$1) are not needed. formula references so you can use a single master formula, and clocked expressions which allow circular dependencies/simulation.
Probably a little too different for casual use but worth taking a look at, if nothing else to challenge your ideas of what a spreadsheet has to be.
While looking up the website I found a rewrite in rust, which is cool I guess, someone is keeping the dream alive, I will leave a link to that as well.
This might be programmer-brain, but I find sqlite is pretty nice for things people would use a spreadsheet for. It’s a little bit higher friction, but when I started designing a Improv-like terminal spreadsheet a while ago, I eventually realized I was just reinventing databases.
A slightly larger implementation at the end of the post does that to some extent - https://github.com/zserge/kalk (CSV import export, Excel-like "locking" of rows/columns like $A$1). If there's a need for such a project - I'm happy to add ODF or XLSX, more compatibility with Excel formulas etc. I'm not sure about Vi keybindings, I personally find spreadsheets easier to use in a non-modal manner.
Pretty sure I can build one based on code I already have. If others are interested in this, please let me know and I'll bang it out in the next couple of weeks.
> kinda the same technique Democrats want to use as well with their "pack the SCOTUS" campaigns. They want to shove a bunch more justices in there so they can get their way.
> I hate how weaponized each side is.
To be clear, one of these things has happened. The other has been hyped on Fox News.
It is really a stretch to "Both Sides" this issue.
> so if after all that I'm still not clear on what is meant by academic research or the point in the practice as presented to me during that time it's hardly my fault.
Perhaps, but the mindset of delegating your intellectual advancement to others really is not compatible with being in academia, let alone getting a PhD.
Apologies if that's the way I'm coming across, my intent was the opposite. My mindset isn't one of delegating my intellectual advancement to others, my experience of academia is that academia actively stifled it. I almost dropped out of my bachelors be ause I felt I wasn't learning anything, but my wife talked me out of it.
I'm certainly interested in learning and exploring and finding out stuff, but my experience so far is that the academic processes stand in the way of this.
> San Diego does have a bunch of health tech, but it pales in comparison to Boston.
I don't have firm data on this, but colloquially among medical people, San Diego is seen to have more biotech startups than any other metro, including Boston/SF.
Boston has more research, of course, though SD is competitive there as well.
We can disagree about numbers etc, but 'pales' doesn't reflect reality.
I have worked in tech in many different cities and when I worked for a startup in San Diego, we were surrounded by health tech companies of all sizes. I've never worked in Boston, but I would say San Diego is definitely a health tech hub.
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