JamesTRexx 7 minutes ago
I see the same point when it comes to fiction writing. Tested (via duck.ai) a while ago with creating fiction stories in less than 500 characters and it came up with generics and repeats that even went above the limit. Tried again just now with 5o mini, and although it waxed poetically, there were cracks and gaps, still felt rather generic, and certainly failed at twists and humour.

It can write about a spark, but the content has no spark.

bschne 2 hours ago
> Was this physically difficult to write? If it flowed out effortlessly in one go, it's usually fluff.

Probably my best and most insightful stuff has been produced more or less effortlessly, since I spent enough time/effort _beforehand_ getting to know the domain and issue I was interested in from different angles.

When I try writing fluff or being impressive without putting in the work first, I usually bump up against all the stuff I don't have a clear picture of yet, and it becomes a neverending slog. YMMV.

jaapz 8 minutes ago
Right? I think some of my best work flowed out effortlessly, it's amazing when you get into the flow state and just churn out line after line.
graemep 19 minutes ago
My most successful blog post was written about something I felt strongly about, backed by knowledge and a lot of prior thought. It was written with passion.

People asked for permission to repost it, it got shared on social media, it ended up showing higher in Google than a Time magazine (I think) interview of Bill Gates with the same title.

mcny 2 hours ago
> If I subconsciously detect that you spent 12 seconds creating this, why should I invest five minutes reading it?

The problem is it isn't easy to detect it and I'm sure the people who work on generated stuff will work hard to make detection even harder.

I have difficulty detecting even fake videos. How can I possibly I detect generated text in plain text accurately? I mean I will make plenty of false positive mistakes, accusing people of using generated text when they wrote it themselves. This will cause unnecessary friction which I don't know how to prevent.

fhd2 2 hours ago
First thought: In my experience, this is a muscle we build over time. Humans are pretty great at pattern detection, but we need some time to get there with new input. Remember 3D graphics in movies ~15 years ago? Looked mind blowingly realistic. Watching old movies now, I find they look painfully fake. YMMV of course.

Second thought: Does it _really_ matter? You find it interesting, you continue reading. You don't like it, you stop reading. That's how I do it. If I read something from a human, I expect it to be their thoughts. I don't know if I should expect it to be their hand typing. Ghost writers were a thing long before LLMs. That said, it wouldn't even _occur_ to me to generate anything I want to say. I don't even spell check. But that's me. I can understand that others do it differently.

_tk_ 3 hours ago
Big LinkedIn post on a concept with little proof.
Growtika 2 hours ago
Fair point. This is more mindset than case study. The proof is still being built across client work. Though I'd say the same was true for SEO in the early days. People speculating on what made Google rank certain sites higher, what made pages index faster, etc. The frameworks came before the proven playbooks
jmkd 2 hours ago
The central idea that we all have the same tools which now represent an infrastructure baseline, therefore we need to look harder to establish our moats (not just in knowing things although that's one) is sound and well put. Thanks.
jongjong 2 hours ago
I think the most valuable intellectual skill remaining is contrarian thinking which happens to be correct.

LLMs are naive and have a very mainstream view on things; this often leads them down suboptimal paths. If you can see through some of the mainstream BS on a number of topics, you can help LLMs avoid mistakes. It helps if you can think from first principles.

I love using LLMs but I wouldn't trust one to write code unsupervised for some of my prized projects. They work incredibly well with supervision though.

pjc50 3 minutes ago
> contrarian thinking which happens to be correct

Important qualifier there. There's a massive oversupply of contrarian thinking; it's cheap, popular (populist), and incorrect. All you have to do is take some piece of conventional wisdom and write the opposite. You don't have to supply evidence, or if you do then a single cherry-picked piece will suffice.

I'd say something more like "Chesterton's Fence Inspection Company": there are reasons why things are the way they are, but if you dig into them, maybe you will find that the assumptions are no longer true? Or they turn out to be still true and important.

jdthedisciple 3 hours ago
Ironically this reads like AI slop.
Growtika 2 hours ago
Genuinely curious, what felt off? Ideas are mine, AI just helped clean up the English (I added a disclaimer)
duskdozer 55 minutes ago
The writing style just has several AI-isms; at this point, I don't want to point them out because people are trying to conceal their usage. It's maybe not as blatant as some examples, but it's off-putting by the first couple paragraphs. Anymore, I lose all interest in reading when I notice it.

I would much, much, much rather read an article with imperfect English and mistakes than an LLM-edited article. At least I can get an idea of your thinking style and true meaning. Just as an example - if you were to use a false friend [1], an LLM may not deal with this well and conceal it, whereas if I notice the mistake, I can follow the thought process back to look up what was originally intended.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

Jensson 7 minutes ago
You admit it yourself here:

> I run a marketing agency. We use Claude, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, Semrush. Same tools as everyone else. Same access to the same APIs.

Since you use it for your job of course you use it for this blog, and that will make people look harder for AI signs.

edent 12 minutes ago
> AI just helped clean up the English

Why?

I get using a spell checker. I can see the utility in running a quick grammar check. Showing it to a friend and asking for feedback is usually a good idea.

But why would you trust a hallucinogenic plagiarism machine to "clean" your ideas?

djeastm 2 hours ago
For me it's a general feel of the style, but something about this stands out:

>We're not against AI tools. We use them constantly. What we're against is the idea that using them well is a strategy. It's a baseline.

The short, staccato sentences seem to be overused by AI. Real people tend to ramble a bit more often.

ares623 10 minutes ago
It reads like an Apple product page.
xnorswap 58 minutes ago
Most of the subheadings starting with "The" and "What Actually" is a bit of a giveaway in my view.

Not exclusive to AI, but I'd be willing to bet any money that the subheadings were generated.

zvqcMMV6Zcr 2 hours ago
No, it reads like Linkedin post. That said, do we now have to check if the text we wrote doesn't look like something AI generated?
burakemir 15 minutes ago
You're absolutely right.
Jensson 6 minutes ago
If its a problem for you, then yeah. If you never get accused of using AI then no.