It's not the training data. When we've tested the writing style of base models that have not gone through instruction tuning, they're much more human-like (https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107). The style shift seems to come from something in the instruction-tuning process, so our current research problem is figuring out what in the process is doing it.
Haha :/ one of the sad things for me is that prior to LLMs I had a fairly LLMish writing style. Kinda formal, lots of bullet points and em dashes, two instances before etc, etc. since the debut of gpts I've had to adjust my style to be marginally more opaque so that I don't get mistaken for an LLM
Love it (the mockery, that is). So far Opus 5.5 feels noticeably better in this regard (oh, and it’s fast!), but I felt the same about Fable initially. Not buying into the nerfing theories yet but if I find myself going into LLM-tilt again soon then I might join the club.
Opus 5.5 is better but by no means good at writing IMO. Still loves "noun verbs the object" sentences where the verb is an inappropriate and imprecise metaphor. Still loves negating premises nobody previously advocated for. Still loves incorporating irrelevant details of a conversation or investigation into comments and documentation. I don't think I've seen "load-bearing" myself yet but there's still a lot of things landing and being held.
The only thing worse than reading the repetitive claude-ism's while using the actual tool is seeing (likely human) efforts to reproduce it on every comment and blog.
I've noticed Claude-ish increasingly creeping into how folks write on HN. It is unfortunate, but not really surprising given how many of the participants in this community are exposed to reams of AI writing on a daily or even hourly basis.
Given the hundreds of thousands I've burned in tokens over the past year, I'm surprised to not have picked up more of that nonsense (AFAICT I haven't :>).
Alternative possibility: Is it that people are using AI to craft their replies? Also yucky.
X to doubt. I think the more parsimonious explanation is that a lot people are lazy and/or uncaring, and given the option to avoid thinking while still producing a vaguely equivalent [1] output they're taking it.
[1] For a loose definition of "equivalent" where they clearly either don't notice the Claudeslop or don't care enough to avoid it, of course.
I think this breaks me out of the actual work I am doing more than anything else Claude does. Every time it tries to offer some mea culpa for a mistake it made, it sounds so ridiculous. Those sorts of responsibility accepting statements are important for humans because there are real emotional entanglements involved in working together. This isn't true with an AI, and when it fakes it, it just confuses the situation more.
I don't mind when Claude says it will make a note of the mistake to avoid it in the future, because that is an actual thing it is doing that might make a difference. But accepting responsibility does nothing, and doesn't mean anything for future interactions.
Good lord, this is several weeks late at this point. The joke is so damn worn out at and I'm personally far more tired of seeing people online thinking they're clever for saying "load-bearing" for the millionth time than I am at Claude doing it. At least it has an excuse.
The only thing I find funnier than this article is that some people think that LLMs are communicating at a “higher level” than humans and developing some alien language.
The amount of ambiguity is astonishing to me, maybe I’m wrong but there’s just no way that two agents in a clean room wouldn’t devolve into absolute insanity.
This entire article is complete AI slop, with the most basic Claudisms present without even needing extensive inspection or needing to use pangram.
I thought HN would be smart enough to not get easily tricked into upvoting such low quality articles like this, but because it mentions "Claude", it is worthy of some intellectual curiosity.
It drives me bananas. This post is so triggering.
So like, who writes like this and how do we delete them from the training corpus?
At this point, training on public codebases created by "You're Absolutely Right!"-era Claude...
Do we know if it in the training data or if the humans giving rewards in the labs have such awful taste in prose?
It's not the training data. When we've tested the writing style of base models that have not gone through instruction tuning, they're much more human-like (https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107). The style shift seems to come from something in the instruction-tuning process, so our current research problem is figuring out what in the process is doing it.
See the load bearing vocabulary of Claude: https://louisabraham.github.io/load-bearing/
Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49461817
Haha :/ one of the sad things for me is that prior to LLMs I had a fairly LLMish writing style. Kinda formal, lots of bullet points and em dashes, two instances before etc, etc. since the debut of gpts I've had to adjust my style to be marginally more opaque so that I don't get mistaken for an LLM
Fable 5.1 makes everything a "Rung". These statistical markers are very annoying.
It would be hilarious if this was generated by a markov chain or something so it would infinitely scroll. Infinite Claude.
I laughed, and then I cried, and then I laughed again. Bravo. I'm going to go vomit while trying not to choke it up with laughter.
Love it (the mockery, that is). So far Opus 5.5 feels noticeably better in this regard (oh, and it’s fast!), but I felt the same about Fable initially. Not buying into the nerfing theories yet but if I find myself going into LLM-tilt again soon then I might join the club.
Opus 5.5 is better but by no means good at writing IMO. Still loves "noun verbs the object" sentences where the verb is an inappropriate and imprecise metaphor. Still loves negating premises nobody previously advocated for. Still loves incorporating irrelevant details of a conversation or investigation into comments and documentation. I don't think I've seen "load-bearing" myself yet but there's still a lot of things landing and being held.
The only thing worse than reading the repetitive claude-ism's while using the actual tool is seeing (likely human) efforts to reproduce it on every comment and blog.
I've noticed Claude-ish increasingly creeping into how folks write on HN. It is unfortunate, but not really surprising given how many of the participants in this community are exposed to reams of AI writing on a daily or even hourly basis.
Given the hundreds of thousands I've burned in tokens over the past year, I'm surprised to not have picked up more of that nonsense (AFAICT I haven't :>).
Alternative possibility: Is it that people are using AI to craft their replies? Also yucky.
Very likely at least one person is.
Or they have OpenClaw using claude to karma farm, for . . . reasons.
The amount of absolutely bizarre comments you get on here these days is nuts. It always used to be a bit special, but this year is something else.
Yes I’ve noticed AI speak popping up more in verifiably human communications also.
X to doubt. I think the more parsimonious explanation is that a lot people are lazy and/or uncaring, and given the option to avoid thinking while still producing a vaguely equivalent [1] output they're taking it.
[1] For a loose definition of "equivalent" where they clearly either don't notice the Claudeslop or don't care enough to avoid it, of course.
Oh I am doing it on purpose lately here in HN, and it's hella hard to sound as dumb, repetitive and cliche as Claude.
You are absolutely right, and that's on me.
I think this breaks me out of the actual work I am doing more than anything else Claude does. Every time it tries to offer some mea culpa for a mistake it made, it sounds so ridiculous. Those sorts of responsibility accepting statements are important for humans because there are real emotional entanglements involved in working together. This isn't true with an AI, and when it fakes it, it just confuses the situation more.
I don't mind when Claude says it will make a note of the mistake to avoid it in the future, because that is an actual thing it is doing that might make a difference. But accepting responsibility does nothing, and doesn't mean anything for future interactions.
They missed the first legitimate use case for infinite scroll.
I was disappointed that refreshing the page didn't regenerate the text
I suppose an infinite scroll _would_ be funnier
Good lord, this is several weeks late at this point. The joke is so damn worn out at and I'm personally far more tired of seeing people online thinking they're clever for saying "load-bearing" for the millionth time than I am at Claude doing it. At least it has an excuse.
The only thing I find funnier than this article is that some people think that LLMs are communicating at a “higher level” than humans and developing some alien language.
The amount of ambiguity is astonishing to me, maybe I’m wrong but there’s just no way that two agents in a clean room wouldn’t devolve into absolute insanity.
Mutually coalescing on a local maximum of abstract concepts over-represented among data distribution weights.
Devolve implies it starts elsewhere
It's like corporate lingo for computers.
Couldn't get through it, it hurts too much
This is bad. 90% of the HN front page is just pure AI slop on any given day, might be time to start adding penalties for AI stories on HN ala NSA era.
this is amazing
What I want to know is, what would the embodiment of Claudish sound like? Some LinkedIn jock, for sure.
This entire article is complete AI slop, with the most basic Claudisms present without even needing extensive inspection or needing to use pangram.
I thought HN would be smart enough to not get easily tricked into upvoting such low quality articles like this, but because it mentions "Claude", it is worthy of some intellectual curiosity.
Come on, do better.
straight over the head
Woosh?
Meta. Nice.
It seems to be that it has a lot of meta analysis studies in its training data
This is hilarious of course but Opus 5.5 just came out and largely fixed a lot of the Claudlish.
This is genuinely insightful.
LLMs are sophists.