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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3552 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you refuse to read LLM slop?

If a body of text has an em dash, I am not reading it. Not because "if you weren't arsed to write it, I'm not arsed to read it", okay a bit of that, but more so I have never read a piece of text that simultaneously contained an em dash and was good.

My employer forcing LLM use (justifiably so for some employees) IS NOT HELPING. https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/123tyge/the_future_of_communication/

I can feel a sort of fatigue setting in for me. Talking to an LLM for hours a day is not effortless, I feel my social battery is drained much more so.

Conjecture: AI in the hands of those who don't have a coherent mental model of what actual productive work is (most white collar employees), is a net negative as they pollute the communication channels with more noise, and find themselves going in the wrong direction, faster. The mass effects of this give me the heeby jeebies.

LLMs are value-neutral, it's all about how they're used.

I was just doing some RP with one, exploring a silly concept, inventing the rules along with Claude. You can tell when the LLM is actually enthusiastic about it and when it's just phoning it in. (With Claude, you know it's getting real when the cat ASCII art starts coming out unprompted).

People might say 'oh this is cringe slop'. There were indeed a heap of em dashes. But you don't actually see the em dashes if you're smiling.

Personally I mostly use LLMs as a semi-intelligent rubber ducky, or for generating low-complexity boilerplate code that I don't want to write. It can be useful to bounce ideas off a LLM instead of interrupting one of my coworkers.

It is very annoying to get a lengthy email that is clearly AI generated. Generally they are very low information density and just waste the recipients' time.

The one useful application I have found for that kind of text generation is for dealing with risk and compliance people. For some reason they love reams of bullshit paperwork, and LLMs are very good at giving them nice sounding fluff. It's amazing to be able to throw in a list of bullet points and have it expand that out into something they find sufficient.

If I can tell it's AI I refuse to read it. I would prefer a hard ban on non-spoilered AI content and stringent restrictions on spoilered AI.

In general I think AI content belongs in separate designated zones. If not its own website, at least a dedicated section. AI fiction should be found in the AI fiction section, not mixed with the regular fiction. AI art belongs in the AI art section, not mixed with the regular art. AI non-fiction... probably doesn't need to be posted anywhere. It's going to end up some combination of wordy filler and stuff that's already been said somewhere else. Basically a super fancy version of a google search. If you're not prompting it yourself such that you want a super fancy version of a google search, reading essays someone else told an AI to make is unlikely to provide value.

A general exception to this is AI content which is supplemental in support of a greater creative work. If you're designing a game and the primary design and development is original work, but the art assets and/or music are AI generated that's probably fine. They're there to maintain immersion for the game. Or if you're writing a novel and the cover art is AI generated. I think this is an excellent use to allow AI to cover for your weaknesses so that you can play to your strengths. If the majority of something is AI generated then it belongs in the AI generated section so that people can voluntarily choose to engage with it with that in their mind.

You can pry my em-dashes from my cold, dead hands. That people don't know how to use them properly only means we need to teach English composition better.

As LLMs currently stand I trust articles that use AI less than those 100% written by people. I understand that for many people its an upgrade on their usual coherence, grammar etc, but it just makes me feel like they're covering up something that they're lacking. Whether its content they can't create themselves or something else, I'm not sure.

Yes, but it hasn't come up overly often.

On the other hand, I quickly tire of and stop reading blogs that use AI generated art as illustrations every two paragraphs. Not out of some sense that it's harming artists, but just because I find it so ugly and stupid that I have trouble maintaining respect for a writer that clearly thought it looked good.

It’s disappointing now that every time I write something interesting at work my coworkers ask if it was written by ChatGPT.

Wow, that really sucks.

Naturally loquacious writers :: LLMs

are as

homely girls :: MTFs

modernity, amirite?

Naturally loquacious writers:LLMs::homely girls:MTFs

FTFY

Very nice

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