korrents

korrents · piece

The revolt of the reader

Bryan Cantrill · 5 Sept 2026

Read the piece on bcantrill.dtrace.org ↗

2 korrents from this piece ↓

Bryan Cantrill did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Readers can identify when a piece of writing is authored by an LLM.

    Their wordsTo answer the first question, readers can absolutely tell. To those who read broadly, the hand of the LLM is so clear it's as if the writer's intellectual fly is open.

  2. Our reading

    Using an LLM to author a public piece will increasingly become ineffective because it repels readers.

    Their wordsIf readers choose to ignore you (perhaps forever!), you will have undermined yourself: instead of attracting readers you will be actively repelling them. So other judgement about its use aside, using an LLM will increasingly become simply...​ ineffective.

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