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Comment by huevosabio | Hacker News Reader

I love this experiment and am surprised that the Claude models performed that much better than the competition. Opus was particularly impressive both in the quality itself and the ability to iterate meaningfully.

Now... Was this article LLM written?

This part triggered all my LLM flags: ``` Adding a bicycle chain isn’t just decoration—it shows understanding of mechanical relationships. The wheel spokes, the adjusted proportions—these are signs of vision-driven refinement working as intended. ```

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Did not feel LLM written to me - at least not overtly so. LLM editing/assisted perhaps?

It was a fun little post that felt accurate (ie confirmed my own biases ;)) about the current state of LLM models in a silly, but real, use-case.

The continual drive to out "llm written" articles feels a bit silly to me at this point. They are now part of the tools and tech we use, for better or worse. And to be clear, I think in a lot of cases it leans towards 'worse'.

But do you question if a video or photo was made with digital editing or filters or 'ai' tools (many of which we've had for years, just under different names) ? Do you worry about what tech was used in making your favorite album or song?

I get it, LLMs make it easy to produce trash content, but this is not a new problem. If you see trash, call it out as trash on its flaws, not on a presumption of how it was made.

What an insightful comment! (sorry, couldn’t help it)

I agree about the silliness. God forbid i am a non-native English speaker and I have a bit of an of odd writing style in a real Brits eye. Or that I use ‘—‘ instead of ‘-‘ because usually typing two dashes converts to the long one on Mac (try even four, technology is crazy these days), and it just feels a bit nicer. OR that I adopt occasional use of ‘;’ because I feel like it (Yes. English is supposed to have short sentences. Unlike other languages. Beautiful. Sue me.)

I don’t care if they helped themselves with AI to improve writing or turn a bullet point into a sentence. It’s when the volume of text doesn’t justify the lack of content or value that I call bs and go to the next one. At this point it might as well be human generated content, but I don’t care, outcome’s the same.

Regarding the post — it’s a cute little article and the pelicans do seem be making a point with their funky shapes

No, I don't have anything against using LLMs to write. My problem is that I enjoy reading people in part for diversity of style.

I already spend too much time reading LLM outputs on my own interactions. And I get sick of their style because of it. So when I read it during leisure time, it just triggers a gut rejection.

Especially because they are so formulaic / template-y.

I get sick not only due to overexposure to LLM style, but also because I associate it now with a very poor substance-to-style ratio. LLMs tend to not only overuse but also misuse those turns of phrases it returns to obsessively. For example, enumerating three items where one is just another way to reference one of the first two, or it's of a different kind and doesn't really fit with the other two items. Or it will use "it's not just A, it's B" where B is unrelated to A, so "it's A and B" would have been more appropriate. Sacrificing logic for reasons of style. It also signals I should be on the lookout for possible hallucinations.

Oh spot on. Forcing the logic to fit the formula is an obvious giveaway.

I wish it had the Wikipedia style of writing as a default, as in, much more matter-of-fact writing (even if not everything is a fact).

I think part of the problem is that people overwhelmingly vote for this style with up votes and revealed preferences.

Maybe there should be a more meticulous feedback / prompt system where I can highlight a paragraph or sentence and ask annotate my feedback so that it doesn't go for that style.

I mean at some point you have to evaluate the content on its merit and they have a point — a chain is functional not just decorative in its precise placement.

That phrase template isn’t just overdone—it's something some text models are obsessed with. The em-dashes, the contrastive language—these are signs of LLMs being asked to summarize or expand a compelling blog post.

Evaluating the content on its merit I'd question whether the author has seen a bicycle before. Yes, in the final iteration with Opus it added a chain, but it's missing a triangle which clearly shows a lack of understanding of mechanical relationships.

Ignoring the wording, em-dashes, etc. I'd assume an LLM not only wrote the article but also judged the pictures. That or the author has a much more relaxed opinion on what a pelican on a bicycle should actually look like. I don't think I would call Sonnet's arms and handlebars improved, nor would I call Haiku's legs and feet "proper." And if you overlay GPT-5 Medium's two photos the shapes proportions are nearly identical.

If you give it credit for the chain, you need to also notice that that bike has a fixed front wheel. It literally can not be turned.

Humans are super bad at drawing bikes: https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/

Does being bad at drawing bikes make a machine more intelligent/human?

How do you know the wheel is fixed?

There's a bar going from the front wheel axis to the saddle. The only way that wheel can be twisted is if that bar allows in-axis rotation. That's now how steering on a bike works.

Ahhh yes of course - turned. For some reason my mind ran with that as spun. Thanks!

haha, yea then I understand the confusion :P

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