16 ms·
"Recent large-scale upticks in the use of words like “delve” and “intricate” in certain fields, especially education and academic writing, are attributed to the
by milancurcic 1y ago
"Recent large-scale upticks in the use of words like “delve” and “intricate” in certain fields, especially education and academic writing, are attributed to the widespread introduction of LLMs with a chat function, like ChatGPT, that overuses those buzzwords."
OK, but please don't do what pg did a year or so ago and dismiss anyone who wrote "delve" as AI writing. I've been using "delve" in speech for 15+ years. It's just a question where and how one learns their English.
- diego_sandoval 1y agoSame thing as with em dashes. Some of us have been using em dashes from before ChatGPT.
- Fade_Dance 1y agoUnfortunately the em dash has already been relegated to the dungeon of AI suspicion for the next 5-10 years.
- sho_hn 1y agoMy workaround (well, to be honest, I've always done this: I love a good em dash, they're terrifically satisfying to use, but I'm too lazy to type them), is to use two single dashes--like so.
- adastra22 1y agoMy editor turns two single dashes into an em-dash—like this. (iOS)
- al_borland 1y agoDepending on your editor, your double dash method may auto-convert to an em dash.
- nick49488171 1y agoDo you also end ambiguously questioning messages with a double dot..
- sho_hn 1y agoNo.
- adastra22 1y agoI often edit things in Word — I have a document that I can alt-tab to and type things. It has spellcheck, etc. that my browser window does not, and I’m not at risk of losing if I refresh or something. Then copy-paste back. Word converts any - into an em dash based on context. Guess who’s always accused of being a bot? The thing is, AI learned to use these things because it is good typographical style represented in its training set.
- knowitnone2 1y agoall your Word docx are belong to Microsoft
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- johnisgood 1y agoI do the same most of the time, and LibreOffice converts "-" to an em-dash, for one, too.
- bonoboTP 1y agoIt's not a suspicion in an also otherwise properly typeset PDF, but it's a suspicion in a YouTube comment or other informal context for sure.
- the_af 1y agoI have used "--" since forever, here, on reddit, in emails, etc (I'm too lazy to type a proper em dash). Hope AI didn't ruin this for me!
- viccis 1y agoGood. It's a crutch for poorly composed sentences or for prose intending to imitate the affect of poorly composed sentences. There's not a single sentence under the sun that needs an emdash. Commas and parentheses can do it all, and an excess of either is a sign of poorly edited prose. I don't buy the pro-clanker pro-em dash movement that has come out of nowhere in the past several years.
- esseph 1y agoHm clankers, squids, and bugs?!?
- what 1y ago>pro-em dash movement that has come out of nowhere Bots that are trying to convince you they’re human..
- johnisgood 1y agoMore like humans that are using bots that are trying to convince you they are not using the bots. :D
- jibal 1y ago> prose intending to imitate the affect of poorly composed sentences Anyone who makes errors like this should not be talking.
- slipperydippery 1y agoWhat's the error? I'd hyphenate "poorly-composed" (most wouldn't these days, but they can go to hell) and I think it's a bit too wordy for what it's communicating, but I don't see what I'd call an actual error. I would personally avoid writing that "poorly composed sentences" have an "affect"—rather than the writer having or presenting an affect, or the sentences' tone being affected—as I find an implied anthropomorphizing of "sentences" in that usage, which anthropomorphizing isn't serving enough useful purpose, to my eye, that I'd want it in my writing, but I'm not sure I'd call that an error either. What did you mean? > Commas and parentheses can do it all, and an excess of either is a sign of poorly edited prose. This attitude, however, is a disease of modern English literacy.
- the_af 1y agoDammit -- I use my dashes all the time (though always double them like here). I hope AI didn't ruin this for me. (I learned to use dashes like this from Philip Dick's writings, of all places, and it stuck. Bet nobody ever thought of looking for writing style in PKD!).
- wiml 1y agoI encountered the TeXbook at a young and impressionable age, and ever since I've used em- and en-dashes a bit more often than a style guide would suggest. Not to mention diareses, though those haven't been flagged as LLM stigmata yet.
- throwaway287391 1y ago[flagged]
- adastra22 1y agoSo any iOS device (maybe macOS input too? Idk), or any software meant for word editing, like say MS Word? I think it’s the nerds who don’t use these things…
- thomascountz 1y agoYou don't want to believe people use em dashes? Why is that?
- viccis 1y agoBecause they overwhelmingly don't
- fragmede 1y agoin your software computing ecosystem and of people you've had this discussion, they don't, but the computer magically replaces - with — in various places, so obviously some people do, in some places. And then you have nerds who still put two spaces after a period, or know the difference between ... and … Do they not exist either? The only reason you think that they overwhelmingly don't is due to your biased lived experience.
- jibal 1y agoLogic fail. e.g., people overwhelmingly aren't trans, but that doesn't mean that there aren't trans people.
- thomascountz 1y agoNo one is claiming that they use em dashes overwhelmingly…
- wiml 1y agoDo you really not know any hopeless nerds? What are you doing on HN?
- Taek 1y agoGenuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing? AIs are very consistent about using the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it, whereas humans almost always tend to use a slang version - a single dash with spaces around it. That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key, and few people even know how to produce an actual emdash. That's what makes it such a good giveaway. I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong, and that you do actually use the proper double long dash in your writing, but I'm guessing that you actually use the human slang for an emdash, which is visually different and easily sets your writing apart as not AI writing!
- losvedir 1y agoIt's just Option + dash. Using option as a modifier is second nature if you ever write other than English and need, eg, é or ñ or something.
- jandy 1y agoFwiw, that’s actually an En dash not an Em dash. You need a Shift in there to get an Em dash.
- latexr 1y agoIt depends on the keyboard layout. Some (US) do have it like you described, but others have the dashes reversed. Both make sense, to a degree. On the one hand you can argue that the em-dash—being longer—should require and extra key, but on the other hand it has more uses so it should not have the extra key to be more accessible.
- jandy 1y agoAh I hadn’t considered keyboard layouts.
- pinoy420 1y ago[dead]
- guelo 1y agoI just went through your HN comment history going back to 2021 and didn't find a single —
- thomascountz 1y agoYou're making the point that OP never actually uses the em dash, by surveying their HN comments, in order to defend the notion that no one actually used em dashes prior to their proliferation by LLMs? Or do you mean something else?
- guelo 1y agoI wanted to see an em dash in the wild. In these threads there are always people claiming that they use it but in practice it is very rare.
- thomascountz 1y agoYou can find an em dash in my comment history if you're curious. Despite what could be said about poor sample selection, consider the imbalance of the argument being made: the frequency of em dash use is disproportionate to the suspicion thrust upon a sample of writing. I.e., a single em dash is suspicious, regardless of how many times it might show up. Therefore, it's more likely that someone who uses em dashes—even if only rarely—will self-select to respond to a thread like this and feel compelled to defend themselves.
- Idodbslb 1y agoHola hablame español
- viccis 1y agoHaha yep. I never saw a single person use these in internet comments pre-2023. Plenty of hyphens to simulate it - like this - but not actual em dashes. No matter how many people swear up and down that they're so important.
- tkgally 1y agoFortunately, em-dash users who have been posting to HN long enough can point to evidence of our pre-ChatGPT use: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=33807637#:~:text=— https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=3380763...
- stinkbeetle 1y agoSo you're the ones who have been training the robots.
- smt88 1y agoReddit and HN are among the highest quality sources of training text and are probably weighted very heavily as "probably human" in the mainstream models. Any source of text with huge amounts of automated and community moderation will be better quality than, say, Twitter.
- what 1y agoReddit is anything but high quality.
- jibal 1y ago"among the highEST" is comparative; it doesn't entail "high".
- mh- 1y agoOld Reddit was.
- Auracle 1y agoOh man, someone should train an LLM on pre-Digg death Reddit and modern Reddit and have them chat. It’d be a hoot.
- Jepacor 1y agoThat depends heavily on the subreddits you browse. There absolutely are places with high quality content, though it feels like they are getting sparser and sparser.
- jijijijij 1y agoFunny enough, I avoided the em dash, because everyone was using hyphens and I didn't want forensic linguistics bored. Now that AI got my FBI agents on welfare and em dashed the internet kaputt, now that I am liberated, I can't tell an em dash and hyphen apart, hand–written in my diary.
- ics 1y agoI have mixed feelings about the liberation but am glad that there are at least two of us.
- whatagreatboy 1y agoEm-dashes are very confusing to me, can never figure out if it is a emdash or a hyphen, so I avoid them altogether.
- pwdisswordfishz 1y agoA hyphen is shorter.
- whatagreatboy 1y agoIt's very difficult to determine if the length is due to the font being used or due to actually being hyphen or emdash.
- pwdisswordfishz 1y agoEn dash either, apparently.
- jijijijij 1y agoIt goes way beyond dashes, too.
- kaptainscarlet 1y agoI picked up emdash from quora, back when it used to have good writers.
- CPLX 1y agoFor both of these examples who the fuck cares. I just evaluate AI writing people send me the same as any writing. If they’re using AI to speed things up and deliver really clear and on point documents faster then great. If they can’t stand behind what they’re saying I will call them out. I get AI written stuff from team members all the time. When it’s bad and is a waste of my time I just hit reply and say don’t do this. But I’ve trained many people to use AI effectively and often with some help they can produce way better SOPs or client memos or whatever else. It’s just a tool. It’s like getting mad someone used spell check. Which by the way, people used to actually argue back in the 80’s. Oh no we killed spelling bees what a lost tradition. This conversation has been going on as long as I’ve been using tech which is about 4 decades.
- jibal 1y agoUse of spell check is a net positive but it has led to some widespread errors, like people (and widely read publications) misspelling "led" as "lead" (pet peeve). But yes, it's absurd to complain about LLMs resulting in increased literacy.
- Jepacor 1y agoI think it's easier to just stop using em dashes, as much as I like them. People have latched on to this because it works a good amount of the time, so I don't think they will stop. I don't even think they should stop, because, well, it works a good amount of the time.
- WithinReason 1y agoSo it was you who got it into the training set!
- CurtMonash 1y agoMy English professor criticized me for allegedly excessive use of em dashes in 1973. Once I started self-publishing in the 1990s, I disregarded her opinion.
- Angostura 1y agoThe article also uses M dashes
- zavertnik 1y agoSame here. Easily one of the worst parts of AI in my personal life. They don't even know about en dashes :(
- HaZeust 1y agoNo one uses em dashes with no space between the separating letters at the beginning and end of one, though - like GPT does.
- milancurcic 1y agoI and many others do. It's common in formal writing such as academic papers. It's also the most agreed upon correct use of em dash.
- jstummbillig 1y agoSure. Heuristics are a thing, though. I love my non-chatgpt en/em dashes (option/option + shift + dash on a mac makes it convenient, given you know that it exists and care) but alas, when suddenly you see them everywhere, you do take notice.
- Terr_ 1y agoOr when on Windows, alt-0151.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoI refuse to change my writing style to keep people from assuming it's AI-generated!
- dragonwriter 1y agoIt's funny, because it was the "em-dashes mean AI" thing that finally reminded me to deal with the fact that the extension that I had been using for typographical dashes (and other things) on desktop browsing (the main place I used them on my desktop) had been broken for a while and get around to adding keyboard shortcuts instead.
- lupusreal 1y agoBig Michael Bolton energy.
- jgalt212 1y agoFair enough, but if you know you're audience may be dismissive of your writing and its message if you use such words, it behooves one to steer clear of AI slop words. IIRC, such offenses in school writing are tagged PWC (poor word choice).
- dingnuts 1y agoI'm not sure someone with a handle that references Ayn Rand's second most boring book has a right to comment on word choice lol
- Terr_ 1y agoIt's one of the few books that I went into totally blind, and then hate-finished just so that I could confidently condemn it. I've deleted a paragraph or two to avoid unilaterally taking everything too off topic, but I'll just say that the book is a self-contradictory artifact of hypocrisy that disrespects the reader.
- rcfox 1y agoI also went into that book blind. I was in grade 12 and some organization was offering scholarships to people who wrote an essay about the book. I had a twice-daily 45-minute bus ride to fill, so it seemed like an easy win. I didn't end up finishing the book.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoProbably not the type of organization to give a scholarship to those who write an essay critical of the work. Myself, I read it at age 12 and bought its premise at the time. Therefore I mentally categorize Ayn Rand devotees as people with the maturity I had at 12. That's a pretty low bar they're failing to clear.
- adastra22 1y agoThere’s an even more boring book?!
- jazzypants 1y ago"The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep." - Saruman, 2002
- dgfitz 1y ago"The Dwarves tell no tale; but even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth, so also it was their destruction: they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin's Bane" - J.R.R. Tolkien spoken by Gandalf, 1954
- ASalazarMX 1y agoscoff It's evident that Gandalf clearly used AI. Saruman is the real human here. Jokes aside, I don't like what LLMs are doing to our culture, but I'm curious about the future.
- jazzypants 1y agoThank you! I remember the movies almost word-for-word, but I don't have a copy of the books anymore (I should fix that!)
- dgfitz 1y agoI think I’ve read them 25-30 times, mostly when I was a kid, couldn’t help myself. :)
- jujube3 1y agoSaruman definitely seems like the kind to use AI.
- arduanika 1y agoProvided by Palantir?
- bongodongobob 1y agoDelve is especially bad because it was due to World of Warcraft introducing "Delves". When I see something like this that uses delve as an example, you can bet the research is going to be poor.
- nozzlegear 1y agoI play WoW daily and this is what I always think of when someone brings up the word "delve". It's unclear if Brann would summon more or less nerubians if he were piloted by ChatGPT though.
- wink 1y agoAnd it's not even the first MMO to prominently use that word. Although a much bigger target audience with WoW (it's a region in EVE Online)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- torben-friis 1y agoMy company currently has a guideline that includes “therefore” and similar words as an example of literary language we should avoid using, as it makes the reader think it’s AI. It really made me uneasy, to think that formal communication might start getting side looks.
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoWhat’s worse is that this window might shift as writing becomes less formal and new material is included in the training corpus. By 2035 any language above a first grade reading level will be grounds for AI suspicion.
- csa 1y ago> By 2035 any language above a first grade reading level will be grounds for AI suspicion. Probably 5th grade, but your comment is directionally correct.
- Loughla 1y agoI sat in a meeting with professionals where one person asked for the presentation to be reworded at a fifth grade reading level. He said it with a straight face. I work at a college for fuck's sake.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoThis seems double plus ungood
- p1anecrazy 1y agoIsn’t that “ELI5”?
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago5-year-olds are not in fifth grade.
- techpineapple 1y agoI mean, what's actually fascinating is that Paul Graham didn't predict that this distinction - the ability to determine AI vs humans will go away over time, the more chatbots rub off on humans.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoIn the "opinion" of ChatGPT, my style of writing is "academic". I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps I draw from a vocabulary or turns of phrase that aren't necessarily characteristic of colloquial speech among native speakers. Technically, English wasn't my first language, so perhaps this is something like the case with RP English in Britain. Only foreigners speak it, so if you speak RP, then you aren't a native Brit. In any case, it's possible to misuse, abuse, or overuse words like "delve", but to think that the the mere use of "delve" screams "AI-generated"...well, there are some dark tunnels that perhaps such people should delve less into.
- bonoboTP 1y ago> In the "opinion" of ChatGPT, my style of writing is "academic". It may simply be glazing. If you ask it to estimate your IQ (if it complies), it will likely say >130 regardless of what you actually wrote. RLHF taught it that users like being praised.
- ACCount37 1y agoAnd, if you want to have some fun, you could give it your writing sample - but say that it's from a random blog post you found online. See what it tells you on that. It really is a shame that an average user loves being glazed so much. Professional RLHF evaluators are a bit better about this kind of thing, but the moment you begin to funnel in-the-wild thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback from the real users into your training pipeline is the moment you invite disaster. By now, all major AI models are affected by this "sycophancy disease" to a noticeable degree. And OpenAI appears to have rolled back some of the anti-sycophancy features in GPT-5 after 4o users started experiencing "sycophancy withdrawal".
- bonoboTP 1y agoI wonder if someone would build a personalized social media simulator where you are the most popular person, a top celebrity and you get the most likes, and you everyone posts selfies with you (generated with editing models like Gemini's nano banana), and whatever dumb opinion you have, it's affirmed as genius and so on. Like a UI clone of a site like Instagram, but text and images populated by AI, with a mix of simulated real celebrities and random generated NPCs. People get hooked on the upvote and like counters on Reddit and social media, and AI can provide an always agreeing affirmation. So far it looks like people aren't bothered by the fact that it's fake, they still want their dose of sycophancy. Maybe a popularity simulator could work too.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- heelix 1y agoI know my lexicon has expanded with 5 letter words. Coffee and Wordle kicks off the morning and I got to believe many other folks do the same. It would be fun to know how much that silly puzzle is impacting things. Love it when my Bride gives me the side eye and tries to pass off NORIA as something she uses all the time.
- tamimio 1y agoUnfortunately, sometimes new attention on a topic impacts it in a retrospective way. I have been in drones world for ~10 years and the past 2 years it has been a shitshow and only brings bad attention, ruining the fun hobby for everyone.
- userbinator 1y agoI wouldn't say it's exactly "buzzwords", although their presence can be one signal out of many, but a particular style and word choice that makes it easy to detect AI-generated text. Imagine the most vapid, average, NPC-ish corporate drone that writes in an overly positive tone with fake cheerfulness and excessive verboseness. That's what AI evokes to me.
- HKH2 1y agoThe opposite is someone who is trying to tell you something but assumes you already know what they're trying to tell you and that you will ask questions if you don't understand. It saves time but it means people have to say when they don't understand and some find that too much of a challenge.
- vasco 1y agoIt's funny because if people didn't use it alot prior to LLM hype, the LLMs wouldn't use it either.
- guessmyname 1y agoIn my native language, I tend to use more sophisticated, academic, or professional vocabulary. But when I speak or write in English, I usually stick to simpler words because they’re easier for most people, both native and non-native speakers, to understand. For years, I’ve avoided using the kind of advanced vocabulary I normally would in my native language when writing in English, mainly because I didn’t want it to come across as something written by a bot. And in writing, I like using long dashes—but since they’ve become associated with ChatGPT’s style, I’ve been more hesitant to use them. Now that a lot of these “LLM buzzwords” have become more common in everyday English, I feel more comfortable using them in conversation. “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?!” — Sofia Vergara (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t34JMTy0gxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t34JMTy0gxs)
- jowea 1y agoDismissing individual cases of use of those words is probably wrong, but noticing an uptick in broad popularity is very relevant and clear evidence of LLMs influencing language.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoThat's what they said. You've rephrased it
- quantummagic 1y agoThey didn't simply rephrase it, they delved into it a bit.
- matusp 1y agoWhat a profound observation!
- almyk 1y agoThat's totally correct, nice catch!
- bathwaterpizza 1y agoYou're absolutely right!
- lelanthran 1y ago> Dismissing individual cases of use of those words is probably wrong, but noticing an uptick in broad popularity is very relevant and clear evidence of LLMs influencing language. Can't it also be evidence that more and more writing is LLM generated?
- fcoury 1y agoYup, can confirm. I am not a native English speaker and I've used delve for a long time as well.
- Dwedit 1y agoAny Magic player during Innistrad would be quite familiar with the word "Delve".
- andy99 1y agoOrwell wrote about using metaphors (of which delve is one) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. At this point it's irrelevant of you're using AI or not, these words have become cliché and so don't belong in good writing.
- rz2k 1y agoSince reading The Mac is not a Typrewriter in the 1990s, I've been using em-dashes, but I actively avoid using them now.
- hliyan 1y agoSame here. I frequently use "garner", "meticulous" and "surpass", along with copious usage of the em-dash to indicate breaks in the chain of thought. These are not buzzwords. They're words. What I do worry about is the rise of excessive superlatives: e.g. rather than saying, "okay", "sounds good" or "I agree", saying "fantastic!", "perfect!" or "awesome!". I get the feeling this disease originated in North America and has now spread everywhere, including LLMs.
- xhevahir 1y agoThose are not superlatives.
- hliyan 1y agoFunnily enough, I was using the word superlative more as an adjective, than the noun that refers to the part of grammer (adjective), if that makes sense.
- pwdisswordfishz 1y agoAdjectives don't have a plural form.
- booleandilemma 1y agoAs someone who writes above a fifth grade reading level, this whole thing has been so depressing. It's like Idiocracy-level. People are going to assume I'm using AI because I use the word "intricate"? ffs.
- testdelacc1 1y ago> Moria. You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm. Shadow and flame. Didn’t realise Tolkien used ChatGPT way back when. What a hack.
- wiredfool 1y agoAnd Tom Stoppard with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
- rajnathani 1y agoAlso tl;dr about their method of analysis (as they cannot use text, as that could be GenAI text copy-pasted): > .. analyzed 22.1 million words from unscripted and spontaneous spoken language including conversational podcasts on science and technology.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoThe honest answer is we need to change our language because of AI in situations where it may be ambiguous about whether we are human or AI, e.g. online.
- gosub100 1y agoThere needs to be a clear, succinct name for this phenomena of accusing a person or their work of being AI without proof. This is going to do more damage than AI performing human tasks. Just the mere suspicion that they probably didn't do-the-thing themselves. Anyone, particularly artists, who are "too good" at their craft are going to have their recognition stolen from them.
- tpoacher 1y agoSounds intricate
- bdangubic 1y agoI delved for something wrong with this comment and came up empty :)
- mathiaspoint 1y agoPeople who used "delve" before ChatGPT felt like robots anyway so I don't treat them any differently now than I used to.