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LLMs can get "brain rot"

(llm-brain-rot.github.io)
466 points tamnd | 2 comments | 21 Oct 25 14:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.473s | source
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avazhi ◴[21 Oct 25 17:41 UTC] No.45658886[source]▶
“Studying “Brain Rot” for LLMs isn’t just a catchy metaphor—it reframes data curation as cognitive hygiene for AI, guiding how we source, filter, and maintain training corpora so deployed systems stay sharp, reliable, and aligned over time.”

An LLM-written line if I’ve ever seen one. Looks like the authors have their own brainrot to contend with.

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standardly ◴[21 Oct 25 19:30 UTC] No.45660532[source]▶
That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.
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kragen ◴[22 Oct 25 10:54 UTC] No.45667269[source]▶
I've been doing that for decades. See for example https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg000...:

> Many programming languages provide an exception facility that terminates subroutines without warning; although they usually provide a way to run cleanup code during the propagation of the exception (finally in Java and Python, unwind-protect in Common Lisp, dynamic-wind in Scheme, local variable destructors in C++), this facility tends to have problems of its own --- if cleanup code run from it raises an exception, one exception or the other, or both, will be lost, and the rest of the cleanup code at that level will fail to run.

I wasn't using Unicode em dashes at the time but TeX em dashes, but I did switch pretty early on.

You can easily find human writers employing em dashes and comma-separated lists over several centuries.

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1. toddmorey ◴[22 Oct 25 11:07 UTC] No.45667347[source]▶
Yeah that's a bit maddening because this common usage is exactly why LLMs adopted the pattern. Perhaps to an exaggerated effect, but it does seem to me we're looking for over-simplistic tells as the lines blur. And LLM output dictating how we use language seems backwards.
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2. A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 ◴[22 Oct 25 12:32 UTC] No.45668077[source]▶
It is, but it is hardly unexpected. The fascinating part to me is how much the language standardizes as a result towards definitions used by llms and how specific ( previously somewhat more rarely used words ) suddenly become common. The most amusing part, naturally, came from management class thus far. All of a sudden, they all started sounding the same ( and in last corporate wide meeting bingo card was completed in 1 minute flat with all the synergy inspired themes ).