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lopatintoday at 9:38 AM6 repliesview on HN

After spending way too much time with Fable a few days ago, I noticed a new hallmark of AI generated text is using the word "honest" everywhere, in a somewhat self congratulating way.

Some things that give it away to me:

- "Honest numbers (WSL2, 12 cores, 25 GB RAM, NVMe via VHDX)"

- "an honest peak projection (working set, KV, MTP row, reconstruction buffers) so the kernel OOM-killer never fires."

- "Honest caveat from the same measurement: ..."

It's the new "It's not X, it's Y". I have no issue with this, I just found it amusing.

Cool project btw!


Replies

abe94today at 1:30 PM

I've been seeing a lot of usage of the word `real`

from recent fable sessions:

- That gap is the real story: 3,873 flows

- the real conversion filter types are:

- I'll update the breakdown query to include a column for each real type

show 2 replies
FeepingCreaturetoday at 9:56 AM

I suspect it's a signature of anti-fabrication training.

lukaslalinskytoday at 10:12 AM

That was their headline for Opus 4.8, I guess the invested into some post-training to get them to write this, and I like it, it's a great way to identify AI posts from Claude.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8

show 1 reply
rhdunntoday at 4:37 PM

It's not goblins, it's honest!

culitoday at 2:37 PM

Claude is listed as a contributor right there

LoganDarktoday at 9:55 AM

It's as if it's sucking up to me or apologizing at every turn, even when it's done exactly what I've asked. Seems related to sycophancy, but different? (i.e. rather than unconditionally affirming the user it's unconditionally expecting to disappoint)