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  • sayrersayrer@mastodon.social
    Sep 5, 2026, 9:25 PM

    @bcantrill Be careful. The phrase you are looking for is "contempt for the reader". That is a better way of putting it. It places the blame on the author of the shitty text.

    Most of your paragraphs there start with a brief preposition. Something like "In case you didn't know,". That smells like grammar.ly or something, or maybe just a tic.

    The general point is correct. It's very easy to detect inauthentic prose if you can actually read, no matter the source.

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  • sayrersayrer@mastodon.social
    Sep 5, 2026, 9:31 PM

    @bcantrill It is the first thing to reach for if you want to sound conversational and welcoming. You just can't use it ten times.

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  • Wolf480plwolf480pl@mstdn.io
    Sep 5, 2026, 11:35 PM

    @bcantrill
    > We readers are left with pointed questions for those promoting LLM-authored pieces: do you think readers can’t tell? Or do you think readers don’t care?

    My guess is, the writer doesn't care. The writer probably hates the fact he has to write the message at all, and just wants to be done with it.

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  • Yvan ー イボん 🗺️ :ferris: :go:YvanDaSilva@hachyderm.io
    Sep 9, 2026, 9:59 PM

    @wolf480pl @bcantrill Or are forced to use it or be let go.
    Specially on companies blog posts, newsletters etc. This seems to be the norm.
    Company slides being slopified, emails, ui design, FAQs, documentation, etc.
    And of course code.

    I can imagine that some contracts are too.

    It's definitely something... I personally stop reading when I see too much slop.

    Having tools to identify it, is ethically the bare minimum we can do, glad some companies are honestly and successfully working on it.

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  • Fazal Majidfazalmajid@vivaldi.net
    Sep 6, 2026, 12:29 AM

    @bcantrill the consequence of something like Pangram is that slop-slingers will use it to evade detection, just as spammers run their emails through spam filters first to hone them to avoid detection. Conversely, innocent people with a fondness for em-dashes (I am one of them, and also the much less common en-dash) will be falsely accused.

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  • Bryan Cantrillbcantrill@mastodon.social
    Sep 6, 2026, 12:39 AM

    @fazalmajid Don't worry: few love the em-dash more than I do -- and Pangram doesn't identify any of my writing as anything less than 100% human authored.

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  • jon ellisjon_ellis@chaos.social
    Sep 6, 2026, 6:29 AM

    @bcantrill reviewing generated code left me with the same feeling - that there was no consistent thread of thought to follow what the author was doing, no idiomatic consistency, no sense that local conventions had been understood or even considered... i'm rambling.

    do you draw a distinction between prose and code?

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  • Wolf480plwolf480pl@mstdn.io
    Sep 6, 2026, 10:44 AM

    @bcantrill
    > writing not only allows us to convey our ideas, but the very act forces us to test and distill them — at once making our ideas more robust while providing the vehicle by which to share them.

    that is what writing code is to me

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  • Lennard van Otterloolennardvanotterloo@mastodon.social
    Sep 6, 2026, 9:05 PM

    @bcantrill This is great, thanks!

    I was always sceptical about LLM detectors (and shuddered to think of all the university students unfairly accused of using AI due to false positives) but I may need to revise my view on this.

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  • AzuaronAzuaron@cyberpunk.lol
    Sep 9, 2026, 1:37 PM

    @bcantrill I don't remember who said it, but:

    If no one bothered to write it, why would I bother to read it?

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