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Comment by lopatin | Hacker News Reader

After spending way too much time with Fable a few days ago, I noticed a new hallmark of AI generated text is using the word "honest" everywhere, in a somewhat self congratulating way.

Some things that give it away to me:

- "Honest numbers (WSL2, 12 cores, 25 GB RAM, NVMe via VHDX)"

- "an honest peak projection (working set, KV, MTP row, reconstruction buffers) so the kernel OOM-killer never fires."

- "Honest caveat from the same measurement: ..."

It's the new "It's not X, it's Y". I have no issue with this, I just found it amusing.

Cool project btw!

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I've been seeing a lot of usage of the word `real`

from recent fable sessions:

- That gap is the real story: 3,873 flows

- the real conversion filter types are:

- I'll update the breakdown query to include a column for each real type

I have almost completely stopped writing real in my own output as a direct consequence of this. Maybe next year they'll catch up with my alternative wordings and I'll end up switching back

This is what I've noticed lately. I write articles and over the past year or two I had to stop using specific words or change my writing style a bit many times, because people kept asking if it was AI. It just makes me sad when I show someone my work and the first thing they say is "Is this AI"?

I’ve started learning into the various AI-isms in my prompts. Most recently, em dashes to chain related information in a single sentence.

“Something something main point — but also pay attention to this related thing — finish main point.”

Anecdotally, it seems to produce more consistent results when I “speak its language”.

On the output side, I’ve become much more aggressive about trimming and editing any prose it produces that I intend on sharing. Both for my own benefit to improve comprehension, but also because dumping the raw, verbose output on my colleagues feels lazy and disrespectful of their time.

So you’re code switching to incorporate AI-specific ‘vocal fry’ in order to better communicate with it?

That’s not just mimicry. It’s insightful. And it just might work. ;)

What’s interesting is that it maps well to how my brain actually works. My chain of thought is very non-linear. Maybe even a little chaotic, going off on tangents before returning to the main thread as it were. This has always made written and verbal communication a bit of a challenge, but the AI seems to parse my unedited stream-of-consciousness without issue.

Unfortunately we're much too late for realnetworks and realplayer to be relevant anymore.

It's been "mathematical" from Gemini for me. Mathematically verified yaml files for Home Assistant, mathematical confirmation of (incorrect) CLI args for a tool, mathematically indistinguishable nutrient profiles of two ingredients.

It aligns pretty well with corporate and pr-speak, but the LLMs really weaponize it and tire out the phrases quickly. I bet this is interesting for linguists.

also substantivizing everything and using "gate", "latch", at every turn. a normal person would say "add the pasta once the water boils" or "the water should be boiling when you add the pasta". Claude would say: water boiling state gates the pasta addition. it sounds obnoxious and engineery but it's so mentally tiring to read and decypher.

That was their headline for Opus 4.8, I guess the invested into some post-training to get them to write this, and I like it, it's a great way to identify AI posts from Claude.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8

Yup, and I had seen it in the Opus 4.5 soul document as well: https://gist.github.com/Richard-Weiss/efe157692991535403bd7e...

In the future, I expect different models from different firms behaving differently will become as obviously normal as different humans behaving differently. Those of us that have used agents a lot have already noticed this, but the general public still seems to consider AI to be plug-and-play.

The Opus 4.8 infatuation with being honest genuinely drove me nuts (honest take). The constant need for me to decipher and decide on something after its final message was tiring too.

GPT-5.6-Sol is refreshing that its replies start with "understood." instead of flattering me for my steering prompt. Now ... after a few weeks, will I get suck of "understood"? I dunno :)

I suspect it's a signature of anti-fabrication training.

It's as if it's sucking up to me or apologizing at every turn, even when it's done exactly what I've asked. Seems related to sycophancy, but different? (i.e. rather than unconditionally affirming the user it's unconditionally expecting to disappoint)

Claude is listed as a contributor right there

It's not goblins, it's honest!

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