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by jwong_ 210 days ago
Wish there was a bit more technical details in how the prompt iterations looked like.

> We didn’t just replace a model. We replaced a process.

That line sticks out so much now, and I can't unsee it.

5 comments

Right? This one is also very clear ChatGPTese

> That’s not a marginal improvement; it’s a different way of building classifiers.

They've replaced an em-dash with a semi-colon.

They are really getting to the heart of the problem!
You're absolutely right! They didn't just replace an em dash with a colon, they invented a whole new way of speaking.

/s if it wasn't obvious

One of the benefits of being immersed in model usage is being able to spot it in the wild from a mile away. People really hate when you catch them doing it and call them out for it.
And people like you will hate it even more when the normies immunize themselves from being obviously caught by such tells:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061

Ah ha! But now the complete lack of emdash and bullet pointed lists from antislop will be the tell! Riposte!
It didn't stick out to me because "corporate success story" articles already tend to sound like that, which is at least in part where I imagine the popular LLMs get it from. (The other part being pop nonfiction books.)
> That line sticks out so much now, and I can't unsee it.

I thought maybe they did it on purpose at first, like a cheeky but too subtle joke about LLM usage, but when it happened twice near the end of the post I just acknowledged, yeah, they did the thing. At least it was at the end or I might have stopped reading way earlier.

I dunno, ending with a short, punchy insight is a common way to make an impactful conclusion. It's the equivalent of a "hook" for concluding an article instead of opening. I do it often and see others (e.g. OpEds) use that tactic all the time.

I think we're getting into reverse slop discrimination territory now. LLMs have been trained on so much of what we consider "good writing", that actual good writing is now attributed by default to LLMs.

Seems like a very natural fit for fine tuning - would have loved to see more on the LLM side.