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js73js8

> A isn't X – it's Y

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It's common in AI writing because it's common in human writing. Juxtaposition is a useful rhetorical flourish.

Fashions change; ideas that look AI-generated are out of fashion right now.

I've never really cared about fashion.

For HN users yea, for everyone else, more information required.

If something becomes a strong negative symbol, it's intelligent to recognize that because failing to do so can harm your goal, e.g. communication.

As an extreme example of this, no one calls it a "Charlie Chaplain moustache" and if you wear one people will avoid you, no matter how much you insist it's just because you like Charlie.

If it was used as sparingly, appropriately, and skillfully in AI writing as in human writing then AI writing wouldn't stand out as so mediocre and cringe.

AI definitely over uses it but it's important to not just see one indicator and assume.

That's true. Distrust of human writing is one of the unavoidable downsides of LLMs that we were warned about.

You can see it too a lot in "debunking" of videos and images. 4 years ago anything unbelievable was CGI now it's all just getting called AI instead.

Only sort of true.

Consider the OpenAI case of "goblins". The models overfit to a specific type of output. Goblins was a specific case of this type and needed to be corrected.

https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/

> We unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures. From there, the goblins spread.

The joke's on us, today's highly rewarding LLM language tics are tomorrow's vernacular (ALLMVE?)

I'm not saying all of LLMs writing quirks are naturally derived just this one. It's a bit like it's overuse of em-dashes, they're not common in general writing which is why it stood out, but they do show up a fair bit in other types like scientific writing. My wife, who's a chemistry PhD, has bemoaned the association to me that she liked using them in her writing for papers and now it looks like she's using an LLM.

Isn't it usually "it's not just x, it's y"? As in, it's X but even more than X.

The title has the opposite meaning: it's not X, but it's Y.

Yeah, the subject is AI, so you try to get a crashingly obvious AI trope in there somewhere. Those are the rules.

(Disclaimer: didn't read the article. It's paywalled.)

In general news paper article writers don't pick the title of their own article, it's someone else picking it for engagement (maybe using AI).

Also, FT is too big to not be aware of AI writing, and to not have internal checks (Pangram, ...)

AI speak infects human language now, people start to talk like LLMs.

People already talked like LLMs, how else would they have learned to talk like that?

"It isn't x, its y" was a common device before, AI has just highlighted it's use. Em dashes on the other hand are the devil's work.

The specific problem isn't "it's not X, it's Y", it's using that pattern where X and Y are not correctly related categorical items.

Yes, I know how I structured that sentence.

"It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI. "It's not an octopus, it's some type of crustacean" does not. The thing that makes it an AI tell is specifically FALSE analogy.

> "It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI.

This is either hyperbole or it hasn't been re-checked since around 2022.

> A doesn't belong to category X, it belongs to category Y.

FTFY. If you confuse ∈ for =, that's on you.

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