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Comment by syspec | Hacker News Reader

> This announcement is more than just a headline—it's validation of our pioneering work with General AI Agents.

Anyone else thought this was satire when they read that as the second line in the announcement?

I literally laughed, then clicked the top left logo, to check out the homepage and see if this `ManuAI` was a real website.

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You would think that they would know better to at least edit that out.

It's not just ironic -- it's cosmically poetic.

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Perhaps "our PR team is a prompt" is what they mean to convey? Or "let's make this obviously AI so more people comment pointing that out" is their social media strategy?

I don't get it.

They are saying the announcement means more to them than just a headline that most will scroll past. Maybe you are seeing something I'm not.

Op is saying it sounds like it was written like an LLM

ok... it's an AI company, It'd be odd if it weren't written by AI, no?

It is odd that they didn’t care or have the wherewithal to make it not sound obviously like an LLM wrote it.

Still getting paid either way.

Eh if anyone is all in on AI and it replacing human writing it would be an AI company

But then that means if you're a PR or communications person working at this startup (or at Meta?) your job is not secure and that your days there are probably numbered, which I'm sure is great for morale...

Would that be odd? AI companies are still staffed by people, and large announcements like acquihires certainly feel like they could use a slightly more human touch if they truly mean a lot to the company.

I'm all for dogfooding but if you work for a bicycle company it shouldn't mean you can't drive to work. The right tool for the right job.

I don't get it either.

Since LLMs emulate human writing, what is it about that sentence that gives away that it was written by an LLM rather than human? Haven't we seen plenty of hollow-sounding self-aggrandizing marketing copies like this one pre-LLMs? What is it that is wrong with this sentence?

Please don't say it's an em-dash...

It’s a sentence structure that LLMs over-use: “this isn’t just X, it’s Y”.

It sounds like corporate meaningless drivel. Everyone is dogging on it because it's no different than when startups of yore would say "making the world a better place." As if the meaningless platitude was some incantation you had to whisper or the funding wouldn't close.

it's always the em-dash

Give this a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...

I linked "Negative Parallelisms" because it's relevant here, but the article in general covers a lot of AI writing styles

Some context:

> Fun fact: Manus is currently SOTA on the Remote Labor Index (RLI) benchmark that @scale_AI and @ai_risks released earlier this year.

> https://remotelabor.ai

Source: https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/2005766469771223106

If you've been following Manus and their work on context engineering, or have used the product, that line doesn't come off as satire IMO.

To anyone who isn't deep in the AI hype space it reads like satire to include such an obvious AI tell but I think it's a positive in the eyes of the AI hype world. It's like how anyone not a lizard is repulsed by LinkedIn speak and yet it dominates the platform.

I saw this in a past hype cycle. What happens is that it becomes a "performative" art in an echo-chamber for startups, startup founders, VCs. Performative meaning doing things one thinks others want to see rather than when it makes sense.

Management is quizzing their tech teams on injecting agents into their workflows whatever the f that means. Some of these big companies will acquire startups in the space so they are not left behind on the hype-train. So, they can claim to have agentic talent on their teams.

Those of us who have seen this movie play out know the ending.

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