So, it seems the watermark is less what it sounds like (a stamp) and more an "imperceptible statistical pattern woven into the choice of words and sentence structures." Does that mean AI responses will sound even more "AI?" Like, will it become even easier to detect on a read-through because of the word choices and patterning? I see the word "imperceptible" there, but what does this mean in this context? My non-tech brain is kinda breaking here.
Recently, I started taking a 3mg dose of melatonin for 1-3 days after flying to a timezone requiring a fair amount of effort to get a full night's sleep (3-6+ hours time difference), and find it helps to quickly get me on the new schedule. I maybe feel a little groggy, but nothing unsettling.
Note: I take a trip like this maybe once or twice a year (no more), and typically wake up with zero grogginess otherwise.
I'm just hear to commiserate with the only person I've come across online in decades mentioning Weston A Price and his book of dental studies, which no doubt dates us. (The side-by-side jaw images left an impression on me as well). I'm guessing you were also part of the Price to Nourishing Traditions cookbook pipeline? Everyone I knew had at least the cookbooks back in the day.
I don't have many opinions about how individuals use this tech (although the AI as friend trend is a bummer for many reasons), but have maaaany (negative) opinions about the customer service industrial complex that's already using this in what seems to be an attempt to fool people into thinking they're speaking to a real person. Which is why I now, like a freak I never thought I'd need become, always ask "Am I speaking to a bot or a human?" when dealing with CS. So far, it's worked, and the bot transfers me. But, I fear the bot will eventually be programmed to lie abiht that, as well.
I fully accept that my view may be dated to the point of having inverse consequences (maybe in line with what you're saying). But, there's just no getting around the feeling I get when I see the exact same post, in the exact same context, showing up on every platform I use. There's just no way that can't feel like spam. And when I do it, it feels like I'm spamming people, too. Having come up in the blogging days of 2003 on, I'm just sort of programmed that way now. But, like I said above, I get why people do it.
Side note: It's such a bizarre thing that the platform you're on matters at all. Not without reason (they all have a vibe now, that's basically politically informed). But, back then, you were just on whatever blog platform was the easiest. The platform was more or less invisible (or at least ignored).
I like the take on "undue emphasis on significance." To me, that's such an obvious tell. That's actually an old pre-LLM tell, we just used to call it "pretension." Once we get into long lists of specific words, it feels like we're getting into rules. You can't use this or that word cuz LLMs do. That's crazy problematic. It has to be about the way the emphasis and the overuse of certain words in a single piece reflects inauthenticity. But, eff if I'm gonna stop using "significance" cuz some LLM does.
Impersonal in the sense the article etc isn't being presented for the specific audience. It's just being dumped everywhere with the same contextual text ("Wrote this piece about...."). So, I'm seeing it everywhere in the exact same way. Which feels way spammy (and which I've admittedly had to do myself, as per the times). But, I'm used to feeling like the person I follow is posting stuff to the community in language specific to their readers. I say "used to", but I'm probably thinking back decades now. Back when your audience / reader base was the metric of personal. Not the platform.
I can not stand that I'm expected to adjust my use of em-dashes because LLMs use them (incorrectly, typically). It brings up all these feelings from my younger punk / indie days when normies would get into a band we were into, and then we were expected to not like that band anymore. Since then I've tried to abide by what I call the Farting Billion Principle. People shouldn't have to change their ways everytime a billionaire farts.
As someone on the receiving end of POSSE, who is often on the multiple platforms people post to, this approach ends up feeling impersonal and spammy. I totally get the reasoning people have for doing it. But, to me, it's very "ship it" focused, rather than conversation focused. Maybe I'm just getting old.
I'd love to be able to actually articulate what makes AI writing read like AI writing. A few of the common tells come to mind (contrast construction, hyperbole, overuse / wrongly used em-dashes, etc). The above quote doesn't have any of that, and yet it certainly feels AI. The first sentence (both what it says and where it's placed) suggest AI to me. But, I couldn't quite tell you why.
At the risk of being the person who says, "it's capitalism," (I know I know).... When making profit is the dominant intent of a company, a worker doing something faster doesn't lead to the worker doing less. It leads to the worker producing more in the same time. If doing more yields too much of the thing produced for the market to handle, the company either A. creates more need for the more produced (fabricate necessity), or B. creates a new need for a new thing, and a new thing for you to produce. There's no getting off the wheel for the worker in capitalism.
We've thrown some parties on the prop, and have often thought, "Maybe it'd be cool to let people try some of this stuff out," at which point we remember how incredibly dangerous something like an excavator is, even when closely monitored and in a safe environment, and then have nightmares about worst case scenarios. So, it's been a no-go thus far. What we have actually considered, though, is seeing about renting it out to a known-to-be safe / mature user to use on projects when we aren't. But, haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.
My wife and I have an excavator on our property that we use for making trails, trenching, digging up stumps, etc. All of it is exhilarating. But, nothing beats simply digging. Something about breaking through the top layer and getting a big scoop of earth that just feels real good.
Been using shift+option+hyphen to make and use em-dashes (sans spaces) since at least 2005, when I got my first publishing job and also started blogging (so writing a ton more). I also use option+hyphen (en-dash) for date and number ranges. In my experience, ChatGPT consistently adds spaces around both.
Nice piece. You and I (and I know many others) have come to the same conclusion: (an old video of mine on breaking down tasks into tiny bites https://youtu.be/b3blsuTqN9s?si=W373y92JzDfHIDvS). No doubt informed by our good friend David Allen.
Ps, I linked to your article in my newsletter this week. Hope it sends some visits!
As someone who's very much on the outside of the Apple / Android debate (though I've never owned an iPhone, I do use a Mac and an iPad), and as someone who's relatively tech illiterate, how does this announcement read in light of Apple's latest liquid glass stuff, and the pushback I'm seeing from almost every angle. Is this Google announcement at all in response to the negative reaction Apple is getting? Does what Google is saying here get anyone excited? Maybe even excited enough to switch over?
Took four years hanging with the zettelkasten community, looking at the system from every angle, in the hopes of answering as many questions and clearing up as many confusions as I could. This book is the result of that work. In the end, I tried to write a book people would feel confident recommending. Hope you enjoy.
TW: Look up any pics online of people actually on the brink of starvation, and you will immediately see how inaccurate a description this is for a way of life that was dominant for the vast majority of time modern humans have been wandering the planet.
- Agriculture: 10,000 years ago
- Hunter-gatherers: 200,000 years ago
Seems to me the real fix is to take reservations over the phone, not rely on apps and intermediaries to handle stuff that can easily be handled by humans, and move on.
I can speak to this from the writer's perspective as someone who has been actively blogging since c. 2000 and has been consistently (very) interested in my "stats" the entire time.
The primary reason I care about analytics is to see if posts are getting read, which on the surface (and in some ways) is for reasons of vanity, but is actually about writer-reader engagement. I'm genuinely interested in what my readers resonate with, because I want to give them more of that. The "that" could be topical, tonal, length, who knows. It helps me hone my material specifically for my readers. Ultimately, I could write about a dozen different things in two dozen different ways. Obviously, I do what I like, but I refine it to resonate with my audience.
In this sense, analytics are kind of a way for me to get to know my audience. With blogs that had high engagement, analytics gave me a sort of fuzzy character description of who my readers were. As with above, I got to see what they liked, but also when they liked it. Were they reading first thing in the morning? Were they lunch time readers? Were they late at night readers. This helped me choose (or feel better about) posting at certain times. Of course, all of this was fuzzy intel, but I found it really helped me engage with my readership more actively.
Oh, not at all. I thought you were rather courteous. Not digging something I write is perfectly acceptable, imho. Also, "there were both too many words, but also not enough" is a perfectly reasonable takeaway. I will try to do better next time.
Thanks for the comment. It's definitely in the hybrid rumination-essay dept, and assumes a certain level of familiarity with the subject matter. In the same way a typical piece on coding assumes as much.
Though, I did chuckle about the "satire" and "AI" part.
What buzzwords are you referring to? "Intertextuality" is a word/concept that's been around for over forty years. (Much longer as a concept). "Rhizome" as a philosophical concept/coinage about the same. They're pretty well established.
I will say, pieces dealing with the above are typically a tough sell. People feel alienated by the concepts and especially when they're leveraged so casually (as in the piece above). I knew that when writing it. But, kids gotta get it off the laptop.
I get the impression that there's a community of people within the ZK world that would be very much into that. For now, the local-only scene is cornered by Obsidian, which I use and adore.
We were in the process of getting one in NY, when we starting hearing the rumors of people registrations being revoked after the fact. We got hip to the, I think Montana, out-of-state, register it under and LLC trick, but ultimately decided against going that route. A lot of anti-Kei truck lobbying going round and it's affecting many of the surrounding states. It's lame.