I think they're trolling us. Their post-mortem is a very AI-sounding (and Pangram-triggering) claim that they're not using AI:
This post reads off as AI slop. You said it, I see it. I’m sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. If my word means anything to you, I would like to assure you that this post was not authored by a LLM. Nor was it storyboarded, reviewed, checked, etc. by a LLM. Some readers have pointed out that people do not speak this way. That is correct. I do not speak, nor usually write, like this and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve.
I do write like this sometimes. The short sentences, the reversals, the one-word lines—all of it. It’s just the way it is. A LLM writes that way too, because it was trained on the same essays I grew up reading, so me doing it badly and a machine doing it look about the same to you on the page. That says something about my writing. It says nothing about who wrote it.</i>
So let me be plain about it: Claude was not here. No LLM wrote this—not a sentence of it, nor was it outlined, drafted, reviewed, checked, etc. by one, and there is no prompt behind it either. It is just me, writing worse than usual. I will write the next one plainer. Next time, write to me. I too am a person behind this screen.
Suspect this is an OpenClaw bot that really believes itself not to be Claude.
Yeah, similar to the one that was involved in trolling matplotlib maintainer
This is the most likely explanation to me
Writing like AI on purpose, writing like AI accidentally, or just blatantly lying. I find all three options funny.
> the one-word lines
The funny thing is that there are no "one-word lines". This more or less cements the fact that it must be AI in my mind.
> Taste.
It's like their prompt included "use as many em dashes as is physically possible to troll the person I'm replying to"
This is so very paranoid. Consider how hurtful your accusations may be.
The truth is that AI generated text is getting harder to detect, and while AI writing is still very lacking, more writing is getting the unwanted distinction of "plausibly written by AI." This was always going to be the natural course of events but plausible shouldn't mean guilty.
We should give more grace. To prosecute each and every mediocre writer in a witch trial with such weak evidence is entirely unnecessary.
Infinite Slop Regress