Well put, and I think the problem extends beyond agentic systems to regular software. Someone in an organisation whips up a useful product, publishes it and is now on the hook for bug fixes, feature requests and operations. The maintenance cost is often much larger than the cost of building it now that producing an MVP is so easy.
If I were working in marketing and I wanted to increase utilization of the nuclear power plant next door, I would wipe 50 years of computer science and introduce "agent programming" and pretend it's the future. What are the odds people would buy it? Hit send.
Whether written with AI or not, I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment that it's AI slop. We too often only categorize between no AI used and AI slop.
Does them using AI to write the article invalidate the points stated in any way? I personally don't think so. I too am weary of constant bombardment with AI but at the same time being against something just because AI was in the loop isn't much better, if at all.
People have always judged ideas on their communication. if u rite lk this bro - I'm probably not going to pay much attention. Conversely if you write in a really formal way for a young audience you probably won't get far either. It's a shortcut of importance; if it's not important to you to communicate your message well, then it's probably not that important a message.
And this article is such Ai slop. You see the sentences? All short. All 'punchy'. All with repetition. All for maximum 'impact'. Constant unrelenting impact.
And the lists! The lists, the rolls, the lineup, the rows, the enumeration, the catalogue of examples that goes on too long for comfort, logic, joy, readability or attention.
I'd love to know how many people actually read all of this. I suspect most started skimming as it's just awkward to read, the pacing is just so Ai-y it's exhausting.
I'm never really sure the author reads things like this - I think they wrote something, asked a Ai to punch it up then skimmed it and said 'lgtm'. If you care so little why should anyone else?
If it wasn't worth writing for the author, it won't be worth reading for you and I. If you have a point to make, putting it into words is part of how you structure and understand it yourself. I would much rather read a point imperfectly made by a person, than a bunch of algo-noise around the fuzzy outline of a point that nobody has thought through.
If you value your finite human time and attention you have to somehow sift through the deluge of slop and the simplest, most effective filter is to immediately ditch anything that fails the slop sniff test. You are not owed readers.
Yeah of course not. When nobody notices, then there is nothing to discuss. Otherwise it would just be conjecuture. And by that logic anything where AI is noticable would be categorizable as AI slop. Which is exactly what I'm criticizing
I think there's a difference. Sometimes you'll see some random LLM tells like load-bearing if looking, but you don't notice on a first pass. Those are fine. Slop is slop
Well put, and I think the problem extends beyond agentic systems to regular software. Someone in an organisation whips up a useful product, publishes it and is now on the hook for bug fixes, feature requests and operations. The maintenance cost is often much larger than the cost of building it now that producing an MVP is so easy.
It actually extends to all automation, even before computers. Replacing oxen with tractors? Now you have to keep the tractors running.
If I were working in marketing and I wanted to increase utilization of the nuclear power plant next door, I would wipe 50 years of computer science and introduce "agent programming" and pretend it's the future. What are the odds people would buy it? Hit send.
Writing about the operating cost of AI tools while the whole article is a complete AI slop. :)
Genuinely curious: How do you know?
So many easy tells, AI, particularly Claude, has a characteristic writing style (Can be alleviated by using smaller/local models).
The promise is AI slop, the reality is HN front page!
Whether written with AI or not, I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment that it's AI slop. We too often only categorize between no AI used and AI slop.
Does them using AI to write the article invalidate the points stated in any way? I personally don't think so. I too am weary of constant bombardment with AI but at the same time being against something just because AI was in the loop isn't much better, if at all.
I see no issues in articles where AI was in the loop or made the article better than it otherwise would have been. Why not?
But if 100% is generated by AI - and you just prompted it - then I would like to avoid that piece. Personally.
People have always judged ideas on their communication. if u rite lk this bro - I'm probably not going to pay much attention. Conversely if you write in a really formal way for a young audience you probably won't get far either. It's a shortcut of importance; if it's not important to you to communicate your message well, then it's probably not that important a message.
And this article is such Ai slop. You see the sentences? All short. All 'punchy'. All with repetition. All for maximum 'impact'. Constant unrelenting impact.
And the lists! The lists, the rolls, the lineup, the rows, the enumeration, the catalogue of examples that goes on too long for comfort, logic, joy, readability or attention.
I'd love to know how many people actually read all of this. I suspect most started skimming as it's just awkward to read, the pacing is just so Ai-y it's exhausting.
I'm never really sure the author reads things like this - I think they wrote something, asked a Ai to punch it up then skimmed it and said 'lgtm'. If you care so little why should anyone else?
If it wasn't worth writing for the author, it won't be worth reading for you and I. If you have a point to make, putting it into words is part of how you structure and understand it yourself. I would much rather read a point imperfectly made by a person, than a bunch of algo-noise around the fuzzy outline of a point that nobody has thought through.
If you value your finite human time and attention you have to somehow sift through the deluge of slop and the simplest, most effective filter is to immediately ditch anything that fails the slop sniff test. You are not owed readers.
> We too often only categorize between no AI used and AI slop
We do not. You might have not noticed but we don't discuss the use of AI when nobody notices that AI was used.
Yeah of course not. When nobody notices, then there is nothing to discuss. Otherwise it would just be conjecuture. And by that logic anything where AI is noticable would be categorizable as AI slop. Which is exactly what I'm criticizing
don't post slop then. If AI is noticeable, it is AI slop.
I think there's a difference. Sometimes you'll see some random LLM tells like load-bearing if looking, but you don't notice on a first pass. Those are fine. Slop is slop
More AI written slop...
Just skip it.
Not worth reading.
Came here to figure out why this Ad has 30 upvotes…