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You'll just have to take my word for it, I'm afraid.
As far as I'm concerned, the most compelling reason to not worry too much about anything but the most-blatant usage of LLMs is that it is almost impossible to tell. There are obviously hints, but they are noisy ones. Anyone who opts to be careful can get away with it easily. About 70% of our effort-posts, if posted on Reddit, would immediately face accusations of being AI. Even things written in, say, 2020.
I am deeply annoyed by implicit accusations of cheating by generating even a substantial portion of my work with AI, or worse, trying to disguise and launder LLM-usage. I consider even the weaker claims that I use LLMs to help me write to be as farcical as accusing SS of being an anti-semite. For once in my life, like him, I'd go "yeah? And?".
(This is not a personal attack on you, I know we have probably irreconcilable differences of opinion, but you're one of the "LLM-skeptics" here who is open to alternative arguments and willing to engage in proper debate. My blood pressure doesn't rise when talking to you, and I'm grateful for that)
I've already shared screenshots. I would even share the very first draft, which I was writing in the text box as a response here. This post is from 4 hours back, and about an hour before I submitted the final essay. I think that's a sufficient amount of time to write said essay from scratch. I can't fake the time stamps without a time machine, and even GPT-5 can't build those yet. I think it's the version in one of the Gemini 2.5 screenshots, but god only knows at this point. I'm not kidding about staying up still almost 7 am.
If after that much time and hard work, I face such concerns, then what can I even say? I bother now both because I'm definitely not getting any sleep, and so I have something to link to if this happens again.
I actually had this happen to me!
I made a detailed comment about a particular video game strategy in the game's subreddit, probably around 2020, long before writing it with AI would have been plausible.
This year someone responded with "if this wasn't written when it was I would think it was AI"
I guess given the context that's a compliment?
I've cried myself hoarse trying to reason with people who reflexively think LLM=bad. They're tools, tools that have serious flaws, but which are so useful it makes you wonder how you managed before. It's like trying to navigate the internet before Google.
I suspect that if Scott, Gwern, or any of the other big names were obscure today, and broke containment, they'd go nuts trying to fend off accusations of being AI. There is good reason why the LLMs were taught, intentionally or inadvertently, to mimic such a style. Nearly formatted essays with proper markdown are not the sole domain of AI. They make things more pleasant, at the cost of a very small amount of individuality. I promise you that every one of my essays screams self_made_human regardless of how many models I ask for advice. You should take it as a compliment, in this particular scenario.
xkcd on the pulse on this one
Yup, just came here to mention XKCD. Gotta love the emdash in the disclaimer, too!
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