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Comment by ossa-ma | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to hijack this thread to promote but I believe it's for a good and relevant cause: directly identifying and calling out AI writing.

I was literally just working on a directory of the most common tropes/tics/structures that LLMs use in their writing and thought it would be relevant to post here: https://tropes.fyi/

Very much inspired by Wikipedia's own efforts to curb AI contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Lmk if you find it useful, will likely ShowHN it once polished.

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This is a very bad idea unless you have 100% accuracy in identifying AI generated writing, which is impossible. Otherwise, your tool will be more-often used to harass people who use those tropes organically without AI.

This behavior has already been happening with Pangram Labs which supposedly does have good AI detection.

I agree with the risks. However the primary goal of the site is educational not accusatory. I mostly want people to be able to recognise these patterns.

The WIP features measure breadth and density of these tropes, and each trope has frequency thresholds. Also I don't use AI to identify AI writing to avoid accusatory hallucinations.

I do appreciate the feedback though and will take it into consideration.

> However the primary goal of the site is educational not accusatory.

How then is it different from the Wikipedia page you linked?

The obvious question is: was it vibe coded? :)

As much as I'd like to know whether a text was written by a human or not, I'm saddened by the fact that some of these writing patterns have been poisoned by these tools. I enjoy, use, and find many of them to be an elegant way to get a point across. And I refuse to give up the em dash! So if that flags any of my writing—so be it.

Absolutely vibe coded, I'm sure I disclosed it somewhere on the site. As much as I hate using AI for creative endeavours I have to agree that it excels as nextjs/vercel/quick projects like this. I was mostly focused on the curation of the tropes and examples.

Believe me I've had to adjust my writing a lot to avoid these tells, even academics I know are second guessing everything they've ever been taught. It's quite sad but I think it will result in a more personable internet as people try to distinguish themselves from the bots.

> It's quite sad but I think it will result in a more personable internet as people try to distinguish themselves from the bots.

I applaud your optimism, but I think the internet is a lost cause. Humans who value communicating with other humans will need to retreat into niche communities with zero tolerance for bots. Filtering out bot content will likely continue to be impossible, but we'll eventually settle on a good way to determine if someone is human. I just hope we won't have to give up our privacy and anonymity for it.

This matches how LinkedIn feeds and thougth-leadership-pieces looked even before AI.

It's not just AI generated -- it's human slop. And here's the kicker: people believe it works.

The reality is simple. People try to sound smart so they can sell something. They don't know how to write. Don't care. Don't have time. They use the tool at hand. They copy-paste.

The result? Devastating.

(this comment guaranteed written by a human)

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