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My kid sounds like ChatGPT, and soon yours might, too
- mitjam 3y agoAnd when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche
- cmrx64 3y agoCurious how this came to pass. Does author think kid is using ChatGPT to help walk through situations?
- defrost 3y agoIndirectly. Kids learn language from peers in real life and virtual peers on social media | game forums | twitch | etc. There's more and more ChatGPT type text upvoted on social media, which is hardly surprising as it was partly trained on 'peak' zeitgeist responses, this influences real world children who influence each other.
- erikaww 3y agoSort of like model collapse but with humans consuming the AI generated text
- ksaj 3y agoKids pick up new language patterns and use them all the time. I have a young friend whom I can always tell has been hanging around with someone new, or has become a fan of someone new, because of all the new lingo and colloquialisms that suddenly spews forth.
- LeafItAlone 3y agoI don’t think this is unique to children. I know many adults that do this (and I admit to be guilty of it too). It’s even fun to see how long it takes for you to introduce a new phrase or similar before it gets picked up by people and you.
- deafpolygon 3y agoOh, my wife of 18 years - I can tell when she's got a new co-worker or some new person to talk to when I'm not around. She starts using words that isn't part of her usual vocabulary.
- jameslk 3y agoChatGPT is the next TikTok, in that it will widely influence what the next generation thinks and does. Just wait until advertisers, ideologues, and governments sink their teeth into it to manipulate it, and your kids, for their benefit.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoCan you imagine TikTok building their own LLM engine into the product? Delightfully dystopian. And training it on all that user generated content!
- tiahura 3y agoBuilding their own, LOL. TikTok just got caught stealing ChatGPT.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brutal_chaos_ 3y agoRelavent 37c3 talk: YOU’VE JUST BEEN FUCKED BY PSYOPS https://media.ccc.de/v/f7375255-379f-4423-a47f-2920246a0916 https://media.ccc.de/v/f7375255-379f-4423-a47f-2920246a0916 Edit: also HN discussion for said talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38791575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38791575
- nicbou 3y agoThe first few minutes are relevant and very interesting. Then it's truly about the history of psyops: interesting but not quite related.
- brutal_chaos_ 3y agoTrue, I should have added that note. Thanks for the correction.
- jtwilson 3y agoI think there is a more obvious influence on “formal” communication: Google’s smart compose and smart reply. Students writing papers now increasingly use Google Docs as Google pushes into the education space, and Google workspace has 9 million paying orgs. It seems possible that being consistently exposed to the same models/suggestions in school and then work (the main “formal” contexts for most) could have a drastic impact on professional communication. I’d be interested to see someone study an organization’s language before and after adopting Google’s products to see what, if any, influence it has.
- ravetcofx 3y agoI was thinking about this the other day what the long term etymological implications of LLMs will be. The wording, grammar, slang etc. Will be forever melded from now on with the meat and digital. In linguistic history this may be seen as profound a change as writing, the printing press and internet.
- tobyjsullivan 3y agoIt feels like I can’t read a comment thread, Reddit post, etc. anymore without someone accusing someone else of posting ChatGPT content. The accusations are almost always baseless in my limited experience. Reading this, I can’t help but wonder if the author is just one of those people interacting with the real world.
- arp242 3y agoThis comment seems generated by ChatGPT.
- marci 3y agoI think all those are just other instances of the Blue Dot Effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDlxQ7YDzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDlxQ7YDzc https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-dots-purple-or-blue-your-answer-might-not-be-reliable-you-think https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-dots-purpl...
- thebruce87m 3y agoThere are obvious places it is being used that I have noticed organically. For instance, check out the answers in this repo: https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/issues/5748#issuecomment-1765680622 https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/issues/5748#issue... If you read the answers there, the style of answering is always to repeat the question in a very specific way. Once you see it you can’t in-see it.
- Mizza 3y agoThe author is Spanish. I've noticed lots of ESL people using CGPT to polish their English, or to write their thoughts in their native language and translate them, and it all ends up coming out with corporate-robotic accent. Doesn't bother me too much though, just a side effect of the English lingua franca. I bet my ChatGPT-translated Chinese has a rigid formality to it as well.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
- tiahura 3y agoLucky him. The rest of us get a 13 year old that sounds like TikTok and a 6 year old that sounds like Fortnite.
- LeafItAlone 3y agoWhy were there no examples in this post? Just vague references. Pretty unconvincing, especially since the son is 14 years old, an age of massive change. I’m not doubting that ChatGPT, like many technologies before it, will change language, but this post leaves too much to the imagination.
- notjtrig 3y agoNoam Chomsky famously discovered that the building blocks of language are preloaded into the human mind, children use a hypothetical tool called the Language Acquisition Device to quickly learn grammar even with little input. I wonder is this a genetic device or something of a quantum nature?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Noam Chomsky famously discovered that the building blocks of language are preloaded into the human mind, “Discovered” seems to misrepresent the evidentiary basis for Chomsky’s Universal Grammar.
- on3twothr33 3y agoSorry, not buying this. He has ZERO examples in your post. But hey, it’s one good way of getting traffic from YC!
- cald0s 3y ago[flagged]
- MandieD 3y agoReaffirms my determination to avoid all those cute custom, AI-generated stories services for my little kid, and to be very careful about other superficially child-safe media. He’s at a point where he’s latching on to phrases and repeating them, even weeks later.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoI used to send emails like I was writing 5-paragraph essays... because schooling required me to write 5-paragraph essays. Not useful for business emails that have to be concise to stand any hope of being read and understood. It took years to rewire myself.
- jiggawatts 3y agoDear Sir or Madam, I hope this letter finds you well… Is something I saw my coworker type out in full when starting an internal email to a colleague the could have been confined to just the subject.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoRespectfully yours, The person whose full name is in the "From:" field of this email
- konschubert 3y agoI had a CEO once who would only really read the first two sentences of any email … taught me a thing or two about leading with what matters.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoI have a client like this. More than 2 sentences results in a “call me”. Frustrating.
- konschubert 3y agoI didn’t find it frustrating. He’s the CEO of a startup. Everybody in the company wants him to be effective. Least we can do is to make our point in the first sentence.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoWhen it’s a startup you’re all pulling in the same direction. When it’s a client it’s important to establish service standards and boundaries, otherwise they become your boss, not a client.
- Borrible 3y agoFace it, in a sense ChatGPT is us all. At least it is some reduced average of human rambling in cyberspace. Speaking of faces in spaces, is there an equivalent to Eigenfaces in linguistics? I suggest Eigenbabbles. Yes, this post is self-referential.
- cald0s 3y agoNot really, there's a huge layer of prompt and response engineering sitting on top to make sure it gives the "right" response.
- lamroger 3y agoChatGPT formality as another flavor for code switching. I could see it. Good or bad? I think it's good if they're testing how to be persuasive and if it works.
- blueboo 3y agoConspicuous absence of evidence or even specifics of what the author thinks “sounding like ChatGPT”. I personally wouldn’t characterise it as “robotic” or akin to a trope-y robotic character (Jane from the Good Place). But credulously taking claims at face value, structure and clarity is a good thing for a teenager’s expository writing.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoThis article sounds like ChatGPT: inoffensive, handwavy assertions drawn together from no particular sources with a mildly supercilious air.
- olx_designer 3y agoI hope context window is not limited by 32k
- scotty79 3y agoI believe that in a decade many kids will have exchanged more phrases with LLMs than with their parents.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y agoI've noticed this in myself since long before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altmans eye. It was more about reading/writing more frequently than listening/talking.
- andrewgilmartin 3y agoWriting tools do influence expression. I recall Jerry Pournelle saying how using an early mobile computer with its 40 character screen width had made his sentences shorter. Others I have worked with have mentioned how Microsoft Word’s built in thesaurus not only influenced their word choice, but that that choice dated the writing to a specific version of Word.