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Comment by phs318u | Hacker News Reader

Though I haven’t been a professional writer, I’ve been a good writer with an expansive vocabulary since high school where English was my best subject despite being a STEM maven. I hate the fact that what was previously considered an advantageous skill is now a millstone in public use. I hate having to dumb down and self—censor in order to avoid being accused of using (or being) an LLM. Even though my writing has a few repeated personal tells - certain linguistic errors that I nevertheless employ as part of my idiom (and an LLM never would) - people don’t always notice them. So, I’m forced to change my voice to deal with what’s essentially an IRL Captcha.

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Serious question: is the em dash misuse a joke?

It's a ironic humanizer.

Strange. I’d guess that it’s an iOS autocorrect thing as that’s what I was using when I posted that. But I’m trying to reproduce it and can’t.

Well very apropos :)

Seeing as they are, very clearly, just trying to toot their own horn to the beat of the “AI Sucks” drum, I wouldn’t think so.

LLMs are tiring to read, but a self-entitled “[amateur] writer with very good English skills and expansive vocabulary”? Now that’s just exhausting.

When I write these days, I am more aggressive in using "I", so it's clear it's my own voice. Generally, an LLM is less prone to self-reference like that unless it's prompted to, I guess.

Good advice though too much “I” can sound a little self-centred to my ears.

If/when AGI arrives I assume this tactic will stop working.

I've found they are increasingly doing this in ways that are somewhat creepy. For instance, you might share something, and the AI will say, "One of the things I most frequently notice..." or "What I often feel..."

It used to be that the "you are not an I and you must not pretend to have experiences" training that produced the "As a Large Language model, I don't have experiences like humans do, but..." in replies I remember from the early days of LLM chatbots kept these to the minimum.

But one of the things I most frequently notice is that LLMs increasingly make those claims, about things that are very obviously out of their wheelhouse as far as even theoretical experiences, like pretending to have played a video game.

I was recently a bit annoyed by ChatGPT responding with something like "I can't tell you how many times I've lost small tools in an engine bay" in an apparent attempt to commiserate.

Reprimand it for lying.

What's the fun in the reprimand when you know the target can't really feel it?

That sounds sadistic, to be honest. I think it's more fun when I know I'm not being unethical.

Literally a true statement, I guess.

I worked on a fine-tuning projects where the ultimate customer was a major provider, and their style guide at the time required us to fail any response that used "I". I've noticed the same as you, so I guess that is out the window.

I love that in the Spanish cyberspace the tendency is to use more sophisticated and rich vocabulary, and it is common to point out obvious errors. If you understand Spanish, check out pedrititox B-)

There is also a running meme about it, it's funny

Who uses an em dash in "self-censor"?

Not LLMs, probably. Unless prompted for, of course.

I didn’t even notice it util someone above you called it out. I’ve tried to reproduce it and can’t. Don’t even know how to get an em-dash on an iOS keyboard.

EDIT: a long press on the dash key gives you the option of a long dash but I definitely didn’t do that. Or at least, have no conscious memory of doing that.

I noticed I'd been doing the "Not X, but Y" thing. Kinda annoying to keep having to stop myself from doing it.

It annoys me, too, that people think only chatbots wrote intelligent prose.

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