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Comment by oliwarner | Hacker News Reader

> at least you know for a fact you’re getting the thoughts of a real human being

No, we don't. For all we know this whole blog is an agent larping as a neverLLMer. Your stance says nothing about who wrote what.

Just as using images freely generated by ChatGPT for a PERSONAL blog post because the author liked it but couldn't express it themselves doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the post. It tells you they're not an artist. It tells you that they prefer some imagery over blank space.

The rest is you and your projections. And that's okay too. Jog on.

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I've developed an internal heuristic that tells me people who think an AI image to fill some blank space in any way improves anything aren't saying anything of value. There's a strong likelihood they're just trying to promote some product or scam. I came to this conclusion after seeing 100% of sites with AI images plastered on them being scams and BS with no actual value.

Meanwhile, a blog that's basic HTML and text and looks like it's fresh from 1998 is generally high quality info. People who are willing to write like that and publicly share it have confidence in what they're writing. And if that blog spreads, it's because the content is good. Not because it was eye catching at a glance.

How does your heuristic handle your qualitative and quantitative words here? If you land on a blog post with a single, pertinent illustration (from a LLM), do you assume the post, site and author are all robot trash and run away? Investigate the other posts before reading further?

The point of my caps, above was that I'm writing for me. If I think my post is improved by me prompting a LLM for an illustration, that's up to me. I'm not writing for your heuristic, I'm trying to express myself every way I can. The time where you find individuals untainted or unaided by these tools is over.

I'd try to just content by it's content rather than it's illustrations.

I don't assume it's trash. I know with absolute certainty. It's the same as seeing someone posting with one of those old NFT monkey avatars. You know they have nothing of value to say, and they're most often going to try selling you something of no value.

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