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Comment by 4fterd4rk | Hacker News Reader

It's insulting but I also find it extremely concerning that my younger colleagues can't seem to tell the difference. An article will very clearly be AI slop and I'll express frustration, only to discover that they have no idea what I"m talking about.

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For me it is everyone that has lost the ability to respond to a work email without first having it rewritten by some LLM somewhere. Or my sister who will have ChatGPT give a response to a text message if she doesn't feel like reading the 4-5 sentences from someone.

I think the rates of ADHD are going to go through the roof soon, and I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done about it.

ADHD is a difference in how the brain functions and is constructed.

It is physiological.

I don't think any evidence exists that you can cause anyone to become neurodivergent except by traumatic brain injury

TikTok does not "make" people ADHD. They might struggle to let themselves be bored and may be addicted to quick fixes of dopamine, but that is not what ADHD is. ADHD is not an addiction to dopamine hits. ADHD is not an inability to be bored.

TikTok for example will not give you the kinds of tics and lack of proprioception that is common in neurodivergent people. Being addicted to Tiktok will never give you that absurd experience where your brain "hitches" while doing a task and you rapidly oscillate between progressing towards one task vs another. Being habituated to check your phone at every down moment does not cause you to be unable to ignore sensory input because your actual sensory processing machinery in your brain is not functioning normally. Getting addicted to tiktok does not give you a child's handwriting despite decades of practice. If you do not already have significant stimming and jitter symptoms, Tiktok will not make you develop them.

You cannot learn to be ADHD.

> I think the rates of ADHD are going to go through the roof soon

As a diagnosed medical condition I don't know, as people having seemingly shorter and short attention spans we are seeing it already, TikTok and YT shorts and the like don't help, we've weaponised inattention.

ADHD is going to very soon be a major pandemic. Not one we talk about too much, as there are plenty of players ready to feed unlimited supplies of Concerta, Ritalin and Adderal among others.

In the US, (internet fact, grain of salt, etc) there is a trend where students, and now adults, are growing increasingly functionally illiterate.

This is Rick and Morty S1E4 and we are all becoming Jerry. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Night_Shaym-Aliens!

Or worse - they can tell the difference but don’t think it matters.

I see a lot of that also.

I'd be curious to do a general study to see what percentage of humans can spot AI written content vs human written content on the same subject.

Specifically is there any correlation between people who have always read a lot as I do and people who don't.

My observation (anecdota) is that the people I know who read heavily are much better at and much more against AI slop vs people who don't read at all.

Even when I've played with the current latest LLM's and asked them questions, I simply don't like the way they answer, it feels off somehow.

I both read a fair amount (and long books, 800-1,000 page classic Russian novels, that kind of thing) and use LLMs.

I quite like using LLMs to learn new things. But I agree: I can't stand reading blog posts written by LLMs. Perhaps it is about expectations. A blog post I am expecting to gain a view into an individual's thinking; for an AI, I am looking into an abyss of whirring matrix-shaped gears.

There's nothing wrong with the abyss of matrices, but if I'm at a party and start talking with someone, and get the whirring sound of gears instead of the expected human banter, I'm a little disturbed. And it feels the same for blog content: these are personal communications; machines have their place and their use, but if I get a machine when I'm expecting something personal, it counters expectations.

I agree, and I'm not sure why it feels off but I have a theory.

AI is good at local coherence, but loses the plot over longer thoughts (paragraphs, pages). I don't think I could identify AI sentences but I'm totally confident I could identify an AI book.

This includes both opening a large text in a way of thinking that isn't reflected several paragraphs later, and also maintaining a repetitive "beat" in the rhythm of writing that is fine locally but becomes obnoxious and repetitive over longer periods. Maybe that's just regression to the mean of "voice?"

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