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"Delves", "potential", and "significant" all made a large increase. Those words also strike me as the non-committal weasel words Google's AI overview for Google
by em3rgent0rdr 1y ago
"Delves", "potential", and "significant" all made a large increase. Those words also strike me as the non-committal weasel words Google's AI overview for Google searches tends to produce as the AI isn't really entirely sure it can make a definitive conclusion.
- tiahura 1y agoPotential I’ll grant you, but how are significant and delves weasel words?
- dmead 1y agoIf you're reading a paper you're already delving. It's clearly filler.
- leakycap 1y agoWhat does "significant" mean? It means whatever I say it means, it's fairly useless as anything to convey a fact without a definition. If I needed to program a light sensor to signal when it detects "significant" change in lighting, what does that mean? If I don't define it, it means nothing. -- "Delve" is a style word, another category highlighted in the article as a signature of generated text.
- Leherenn 1y agoI read it as "statistically significant", i.e. above noise/error level. Sounds pretty well defined to me, at least in a scientific paper.
- leakycap 1y agoThe reason it is a weasel word is exactly this -- it is a word with an implied meaning, not an implicit one. We aren't talking about "statistically significant" -- that carries meaning only if the statistic is explained, though.
- redwall_hp 1y agoSignificant has a very specific meaning in statistics, which is going to come up in any biomedical research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
- leakycap 1y agoDo you think an LLM takes this into account when it uses the word?
- tiahura 1y agoIs the context statistical? If so, then yes.
- leakycap 1y agoWe clearly disagree, in that case - have you used LLMs? The person I was replying to linked to a Wiki article on "statistical significance" which is not the word being used or discussed in this convo; did you note that before you replied? You expect an AI to follow context, but the context switched here and none of the humans are seemingly pointing it out. I'd expect LESS of an LLM, not more.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- leakycap 1y agoFascinating to see that the word "important" dropped off in usage Given the way generated text works, it makes sense it would less often highlight a directly important phrase or passage or detail, since it has no understanding of what it is writing.
- userbinator 1y ago"delves" is stereotypical LLM-ese to me. I don't think I've ever heard a real human use that word before LLMs became common.
- sincerely 1y agoMagic the Gathering players are intimately familiar with the term :)
- ummonk 1y agoI’ve only ever seen it used in magic the gathering
- ToValueFunfetti 1y agoThe dwarves of Moria are notable for having delved to excess.
- SoftTalker 1y agoI'd see it occasionally, usually in bullshit corporate writing replete with other buzzwords, which is probably where the LLMs picked up on it.
- jowea 1y agoIt seems it is common in Nigerian English, from where in ended up in AI datasets.
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoI think it’s from YouTube. “With that, we can delve into [topic]” was part of the vocabulary for video essays for years. It always joined an introduction’s closing thesis statement with the rest of the video content.
- bongodongobob 1y agoDelves has a huge increase because it's a new thing in WoW. That's why you see a big spike in Google trends. If you see an article that claims "delves" increase is because of LLMs, you can safely ignore anything else it has to say.