Disagree, I assumed it was a 10 year old story because it was written in the personable style of the old internet…

It sounds very slightly AI in some places, but I think this is an example of AI tropes turning up in human writing.

Which is a shame, because it makes those constructs less pleasant to read than they used to be. If you squint, and pretend AI doesn't exist (imagine!), then maybe you might be able to enjoy them again.

It is a little bit too long though.

Really? Didn't use an llm other than to do a quick grammar check because english is not my first language.

It's worth checking that your LLM actually did just do a quick grammar check, because you've got really quit a lot of LLM tells in the prose.

If it didn't make more changes than you're aware of, then you should be aware that some features of your style are common amongst LLMs, and over-use of them will alienate some percentage of your audience (even if unfairly).

Key ones to look out for:

- Staccato prose: repeated runs of short sentences (e.g. "The founder nods. He gets it. He gets all of it.") - Negative pivots: anything with the structure of '!X; Y' (e.g. 'it’s not that nobody saw it: it’s that every week something jumped ahead of it')

These are valid linguistic features, but if you use them a lot, it sounds like AI writing, and people are wary of AI writing (because of the tidal wave of malicious, spamming & extractive actors using it). It will impact your audience.

doesnt sound ai at all to me. great read.

LLMs are often trained and evaled on English speakers in Africa so this checks out.

That's quite a complement to AI

"It’s not that the engineers are getting slower: it’s that every new button has to coexist with all the previous buttons."

I thought it might be intentional though? The first half reads very non-slop, and it just kind of inches its way in as the situation falls apart

nvm author explains in the comment directly below this one, lol