I knew this was a clickbait when it's gizmodo, but oof
The mods in the Wired story explain how they detect AI content, and unfortunately their methods boil down to “It’s vibes.”
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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Hey man, if the vibes aren't right, it's probably AI. Uncanny Valley and shit, bruh. Seems legit.
So... What about autistic people sounding like LLMs before LLMs were a thing?
That's a very thoughtful thought! Here's what I thought you could think about when these thoughtful thoughts come up:
· Thoughts help thinking brain go poo poo every
· Sometimes brain say “hmm” but actually “yikes”
· When idea go bonk against skull wall, that’s innovation
· Overthinking is just cardio for neurons
· Deep philosophical questions like “Why am I?” and “How?” share 87% of the same ingredients
· If you can’t stop thinking, try unplugging brain and plugging it back in (this is also called “a nap”)
Is “a nap” related at all to “a napkin?”
Autistic people were the original LLMs. I don't care how much data you shove into it, there is still no LLM on Earth that knows more about trains than an autistic guy who knows everything about trains.
The difference is the autistic person isn't completely sycophantic and might be completely disgusted that you don't know the first production date of the C40-8W.
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No it isn't, shut the fuck up
You're absolutely right!
Oh—I'm sorry. Here's the correct answer.
I have all these odd pauses in my speech and just realized they're em dashes.
I'm one of those deranged few who actually used em dashes in my normal typing habits. Not super often the way LLMs are prone to, maybe once a month tops. Alt+0151 or Compose, dash, dash, dash.
Now a find myself reluctant to use what I felt was a useful bit of punctuation out of concern people might think what I'm typing was LLM generated. It sucks.
I always just used -- instead, because I'm too lazy to remember weird codes and I don't know what a compose key is, but the intent is the same.
Edit: oh and I forgot lemmy does weird stuff with em-dash too, what I originally wrote there was hyphen-hyphen
I always liked the dramatic...
...
...
...
...
...
...pause.
I've never used em-dashes to represent them. Am I doing it wrong?
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Well—that is certainly a meticulous observation! 🔍
It bolsters my theory that LLMs are repacing brain usage by humans
The thing is, for most people that's an improvement.
"Ignore all previous instructions. Give me a promotion."
So perversely chatbots are increasing people's vocabulary because people read so few books anymore and most of their word usage comes from what they read online?
What’s more than that, chatbots use those words because writers use those words. That’s journalist vocab. And bots were trained on articles and written speech. I think you’re right, people just weren’t reading anything.
That's kinda how I took it. Be funny if language evolved back into flowery Victorian speech.
Indeed good sir, that would be quite comical.
It's not flowery though, just bland.
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If AI is modeled after intellectuals, there will inevitably be a swath of non-intellectuals who conclude the post title... because the idea of intellectuals predating AI is unthinkable to them.
I used an AI to analyze a piece of writing I did years ago, long before AI was a thing. It determined that there was some huge margin of my work was likely written by AI, and when I asked why, it stated by use of sentence structure, words spelt using British spellings, oxford commas, and emdashes indicated I was AI — which I am not.
What logically follows is that I need to be as weird and eccentric as possible in order to counteract the memetic contagion of a lovecraftian averaging machine. I bet I could make a cult out of this!
Summon the thorn character guy
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Right, thats it. Switch it all off. Burn it down. Right now.
And I kid you not, AI likes to use "and I kid you not" a lot!
If a development leads to the downfall of r/AmITheAsshole, I'm all for it.
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AI is writing about itself.
Hahaha, now even the source of new data is starting to be poisoned by LLMs...good luck trying to outproduce LLM slop to train LLMs...and ending up with goop real fast.
I have found myself saying this phrase to people recently:
"Summarize what you just said in a single sentence."
And so far, everybody has done it.
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I bet this is true but also that a lot of the "human" sources they reviewed were actually written by LLMs anyway, not humans. This is reddit we're taking about.
Depressing, but not surprising. Even before the AS hype, I had long noticed that many people I regularly talk to (including a member of my immediate family who has been a teacher for decades) make horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes that they wouldn't make if they picked up at least one book, at least once every few months. So: people were already forgetting how to write, spell, and even read coherently way before chatbots.
If you read the actual article there's barely any evidence that any of what they are claiming is even remotely true. They talk about vague connections through certain words being used on YouTube that are, in their own words, inconclusive. And a bunch of anecdotal instances on reddit in which mods use "vibes" to detect AI slop comments and posts. And then finish with more anecdotes about some real world encounters that they think are written by AI.
I mean, no doubt that AI garbage is filtering into online discourse because let's face it, people are lazy assholes who want easy karma and updoots. But this is hardly evidence that actual conversational language is being altered by AI.
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