[echelon]

Wow. What a good giveaway.

I wonder what others there are.

I occasionally use bullet points, emdashes (unicode, single, and double hyphens) and words like "delve". I hate it think these are the new heuristics.

I think AI is a useful tool (especially image and video models), but I've already had folks (on HN [1]!) call out my fully artisanal comments as LLM-generated. It's almost as annoying as getting low-effort LLM splurge from others.

Edit: As it turns out, cow-orkers isn't actually an LLMism. It's both a joke and a dictation software mistake. Oops.

[1] most recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44482876

[Velorivox]

I like to use em-dashes as well (option-shift-hyphen on my macbook). I've seen people try to prompt LLMs to not have em-dashes, I've been in forums where as soon as you type in an em-dash it will block the submit button and tell you not to use AI.

Here's my take: these forums will drive good writers away or at least discourage them, leaving discourses the worse for it. What they really end up saying — "we don't care whether you use an LLM, just remove the damn em-dash" — indicates it's not a forum hosting riveting discussions in the first place.

[furyofantares]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding - but I don't think LLM's say cow-orkers. Or is that what you mean?

[ffsm8]

As this error seems to be going back a lot longer then LLMs existed (17 yrs), it could be an auto in-correct situation.

Might be incorrectly saved in some spell check software and occasionally rearing it's head

[furyofantares]

Oh I see the confusion then. It's not an error, it's a joke, and a very old one at that. Like saying Micro$oft.

[chaps]

https://ask.metafilter.com/15649/coworkers-why/amp

This goes back a loooooong while.

[Buttons840]

Use two dashes instead of an actual em dash. ChatGPT, at least, cannot do the same--it just can't.

[Jtsummers]

It can't use two dashes? Is that like how Data couldn't use contractions (except he did)?

[Buttons840]

I've asked it before, "please rewrite that but replace the em dashes with double hyphens", and then it says "sure, here you go", and continues to use em dashes.

[Ancapistani]

Were you using the web interface? If so, that’s likely why. It renders output dynamically on the frontend.

I bet if you did the same through the API, you’d get the results you want.

[Buttons840]

Yes, I was using the web interface.

[xeonmc]

I thought the convention for en-dash is two hyphens straddled between spaces, and three hyphens without spacer for em-dash?

[JoshTriplett]

Conventionally, in various tools that take plain text as input, two dashes is an en-dash, and three dashes is an em-dash.

[chaps]

As a frequent user of two dashes.. I hate how people now associate it with AI.

Also, that "cow-orkers" doesn't look like AI-generated slop at all..? Just scrolling down a bit shows that most of them are three years and older.

[skeledrew]

ChatGPT: "Hold my beer..."

[scarface_74]

How is that a “giveaway”? The search turns up results from 7 years ago before LLMs were a thing? More than likely it’s auto correct going astray. I can’t imagine an LLM making that mistake

[lupusreal]

Give away for what, old farts? That link contains a comment citing the jargon file which in turn says that the term is an old Usenet meme.

[chaps]

Soon HN is going to be flooded with blogs about people trying and failing miserably to find AI signal from noisy online discussions with examples like this one.