Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicbou | Hacker News Reader

> The violation of AI policy is regretted.

That's a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.

This is a convention for journalistic corrections, e.g., "The Times regrets the error", used to note corrections for at least a century:

<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/insider/the-times-regrets...>

Your example is not passive voice.

Yes, they are pointing out how it should have been written.

Apparently not.

On the other hand, this way you know they probably didn't use the chatbot to write the apology.

> This door is alarmed

That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent. Much of formal speech like a bureaucrat wrote it because, well, the civil service ran India and that's who everyone emulated.

It’s still passive voice, the kind used when trying to avoid blame or responsibility. So pretty much fits in bureaucratic places.

That’s just…mistakes were made.

This pattern of writing goes back to the Spanish conquistadors at the very least. They frequently described their actions in a passive voice when doing something they knew was horrible, only to switch to aggrandizing active voice when writing about their successes. It’s a standard way to blur responsibility and present violence as an almost natural “fact” rather than a deliberate action by identifiable agents.

It didn’t escape everyone’s attention though. Bartolomé de las Casas definitely noticed it.

> That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent.

Which is still a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.

Clarifying where “optimising language to evade a responsibility” evolved does nothing to justify it, which you imply with “that’s just”.

OTOH kudos to them for regretting AI slop (even if they don't want to point out who precisely is regretting). I know some who'd vehemently deny in spite of evidence.

They don't regret serving you AI slop, they regret that the "writer" didn't even read their own article and that they got caught because of it.

"We regrets that mistakes were noticed."

It's a good example of when you should use AI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com