Why AI Slop Is So Frustrating to Read: Hidden Subjects and Buried Actions
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-11-13
TeortaxesTex shares Zonder Labs' blog post "Why is AI Slop so Frustrating to Read?" along with @zhizdev's viral tweet on AI writing patterns.
Key argument: LLMs lag in language/writing relative to coding because coding is easier to optimize with clear rewards and more economically appealing short-term. The author distinguishes casual slop (scrollable social posts) from workplace slop you're forced to decipher — Slack messages and PR descriptions written in "Claudish."
The attached tweet identifies the most jarring slop pattern: hidden characters and actions, where a sentence's subject and verb aren't the true main character and action. Using a duck asking for grapes at a lemonade stand, it contrasts "A duck walked up and asked" with the slop version "A request for grapes was made upon the duck's arrival."
The post grounds its argument in Williams' classic Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace: clear writing is a responsibility owed to readers — and AI owes the same clarity. Humans show strong agreement on what makes communication clear, offering a gold standard for measuring AI writing quality.
More from AGI Musings
- Combining multi-agent objectives with single-agent action space breeds disempowerment — j_foerst · 2026-11-13
- Investor: AI has erased technical moats, startups now win on execution and GTM alone — vaibhavbetter · 2026-11-13
- Researcher asks: should papers be written for LLMs, or should LLMs learn to read like humans? — HildeKuehne · 2026-11-13
- Microsoft diagnostic AI solves 83% of NEJM cases vs 36% for physicians — realmeetjames · 2026-11-13
- Today is the 1960-predicted 'Day of the Singularity': infinity by Nov 13, 2026 — LeviTurk · 2026-11-13
- Turn your benchmarks into RL environments and sell them to AI labs — jessi_cata · 2026-11-13