[ForceBru]

LLM tell? Inanimate objects and concepts are treated as actors all the time: the series converges, the function reaches its maximum, the sun shines, the wind blows, history repeats itself, words rhyme, interest compounds, etc.

What's wrong with "configs store parameters"? I guess "parameters are stored in configs" could be more correct, but IMO it means exactly the same thing and sounds just as natural. "Six bytes match ten" is shorthand for "the performance of the algorithm that uses six bytes of storage matches the performance of the algorithm that uses ten bytes of storage". But here we have "performance matches", which is an inanimate concept doing something, so is this an LLM smell too?

[jstanley]

It's not wrong, I tried to make this clear. It's good. It's just unusual, in my experience, for humans to use that kind of wording.

Yes everyone says the sun shines and the wind blows, those are specific idioms. Noone says bias compounds or variance diffuses or six bytes beat ten.

I'm not saying they shouldn't! They probably should! It's just that LLMs say it much more than humans do.

> "Six bytes match ten" is shorthand for "the performance of the algorithm that uses six bytes of storage matches the performance of the algorithm that uses ten bytes of storage".

Yes, I understand this and support it. I am emphatically not saying it is bad writing. It's an unbelievably brilliant piece of terse writing that most human writers would not stumble upon in the course of writing the post.

[strogonoff]

I recommend to think twice before penalising potential human creativity by saying that a novel to you turn of speech is a sign of LLM use. If you base your judgement on “unusual phrase”, it should be a sign that you are probably unable to tell.

[jstanley]

It's not novel to me! I see it all the time... when talking to LLMs.

[strogonoff]

If you have only seen it in LLM output, then it is clearly novel to you when it comes to actual writing. “Speech” in “this turn of speech is novel to you” is intended to mean human written speech.

I will rephrase: if you see a phrase in human speech that you have not seen used in human speech before, don’t penalise human creativity by saying it came from an LLM.

More specifically, the pattern you continue to latch onto dominates writing and has done so for decades. Right here on HN you can find instances of not merely “inanimate subject + verb” but specifically the phrase “bias compounds” from 5 years ago and beyond.

Other examples in use by humans all the time:

— River overflows

— Camera clicks

— LLM hallucinates

— Engine roars

— Secrets rest

— CD player stutters

— Ecosystem explodes

— Door invites

— Stock dips

— Airplane crashes

Antropomorphisation more generally and metaphor even more generally have existed since forever. Authors have played with form and tried to convey the point in different interesting ways since forever. Do you think Homer vibe-wrote The Odyssey?

Yes, LLM chatbots make it exceedingly easy—and it is one of their societal harms—but please do not discredit creativity by insinuating the author didn’t do the work themselves.

[jstanley]

In all of your examples, a human author would usually prefix with the word "the".

Nobody routinely says the things in your example without some supporting words.

And it's not just presence -- it's density.

And, to be clear: are you making the claim that this post was not LLM-generated or at least LLM-assisted? Or are you merely making the claim that people saying things like "nouns verb" might not be LLMs even though in this case the text is in fact most likely from an LLM?

[strogonoff]

> In all of your examples, a human author would usually prefix with the word "the".

Not really. At least one of my examples is literally based on a real headline from pre-LLM days[0]. If we are talking about a generalised idea of bias, there is no need for “the”. In fact, it would be wrong.

> Nobody routinely says the things in your example without some supporting words.

This is a post. One is expected to put more creativity into public speech. Good writing can be expected to be full of metaphors and denser than casual speech. Some writing purposefully uses headline style for impact. It doesn’t mean the author routinely talks like that.

> it's density

If it’s a wall of text with filler, it’s LLMs. If it’s dense, it’s LLMs.

You can find plenty of examples of denser, less legible posts from days before LLMs.

> are you making the claim that this post was not LLM-generated or at least LLM-assisted

I am making the claim I am making: don’t say someone used an LLM based on such a weak foundation and nothing else.

People will sound like LLMs. Blurring the line with actual writing is the entire point of LLMs and is fully by design; if you encounter a text with zero “tells”, it might as well be made with an LLM if the product works as intended.

[0] Here’s another one: https://ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/25/blockchains-never-forget/

[thaumasiotes]

> It's not wrong, I tried to make this clear. It's good. It's just unusual, in my experience, for humans to use that kind of wording.

But... it's not unusual in the slightest.

[jstanley]

It's unusual to use it in the way LLMs do, in the extremely terse style where "noun verbs" or "nouns verb" are basically considered sentences all on their own.