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I had a similar experience. We were talking about a colleague for using ChatGPT in our WhatsApp group chat to sound smart and coming up with interesting points.

by rukshn 10mo ago

I had a similar experience. We were talking about a colleague for using ChatGPT in our WhatsApp group chat to sound smart and coming up with interesting points. The talk sounds so mechanical and sounds exactly as ChatGPT. His responses in Zoom Calls were the same mechanical and sounds like AI generated. I even checked one of his responses in WhatsApp if it's AI by asking the Meta AI whether it's AI written, and Meta AI also agreed that it's AI written and gave points to why it believes this message was AI written. When I showed the response to the colleague he swore that he was not using ant AI to write his responses. I believe after he said to me it was not AI written. And now reading this I can imagine that it's not an isolated experience.

mort96 10mo ago
> I even checked one of his responses in WhatsApp if it's AI by asking the Meta AI whether it's AI written, and Meta AI also agreed that it's AI written I will never understand why some people apparently think asking a chat bot whether text was written by a chat bot is a reasonable approach to determining whether text was written by a chat bot.
- Tepix 10mo ago
  Well, case in point: If you ask an AI to grade an essay, it will grade the essay highest that it wrote itself.
  - the_af 10mo ago
    Is this true though? I haven't done the experiment, but I can envision the LLM critiquing its own output (if it was created in a different session) and iteratively correcting it and always finding flaws in it. Are LLMs even primed to say "this is perfect and it needs no further improvements"? What I have seen is ChatGPT and Claude battling it out, always correcting and finding fault with each other's output (trying to solve the same problem). It's hilarious.
    - Tepix 10mo ago
      There is a study in German that came to this conclusion, there's an english news article discussing it at https://heise.de/-10222370 https://heise.de/-10222370
  - noitpmeder 10mo ago
    Citations on this?
    - Tepix 10mo ago
      https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06651 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06651 (in German, hopefully machine translation works well) English article: https://www.heise.de/en/news/38C3-AI-tools-must-be-evaluated-before-being-used-in-schools-10222370.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/38C3-AI-tools-must-be-evaluated... If you speak German, here is their talk from 38c3: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-chatbots-im-schulunterricht https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-chatbots-im-schulunterricht
  - KeplerBoy 10mo ago
    Pangram seems to disagree. Not sure how they do it, but their system reliably detected AI in my tests. https://www.pangram.com/blog/pangram-predicts-21-of-iclr-reviews-are-ai-generated https://www.pangram.com/blog/pangram-predicts-21-of-iclr-rev...
- lm28469 10mo ago
  I know someone who was camping in a tent next to a river during a storm, took a pic of the stream and asked chatgpt if it was risky to sleep there given that it "rained a lot" ... People are unplugging their brains and are not even aware that their questions cannot be answered by llms, I witnessed that with smart and educated people, I can't imagine how bad it's going to be during formative years
  - oneeyedpigeon 10mo ago
    Sam Altman literally said he didn't know how anyone could raise a baby without using a chatbot. We're living in some very weird times right now.
    - Forgeties79 10mo ago
      Sounds like a great way for someone to accidentally harm their infant. What an irresponsible thing to say. There are all sorts of little food risks, especially until they turn 1 or so (and of course other matters too, but food immediately comes to mind). The stakes are too high and the amount you’re allowed to get wrong is so low. Having been through the infant-wringer myself yeah some people fret over things that aren’t that big of a deal, but some things can literally be life or death. I can’t imagine trying to vet ChatGPT’s “advice” while delirious from lack of sleep and still in the trenches of learning to be a parent. But of course he just had to get that great marketing sound bite didn’t he?
      - the_af 10mo ago
        Sam Altman decided to irresponsibly talk bullshit about parenting because yes, he needed that marketing sound bite. I cannot believe someone will wonder how people managed to decode "my baby dropped pizza and then giggled" before LLMs. I mean, if someone is honestly terrified about the answer to this life-or-death question and cannot figure out life without an LLM, they probably shouldn't be a parent. Then again, Altman is faking it. Not sure if what he's faking is this affectation of being a clueless parent, or of being a human being.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
  Why would it lie? Until it becomes Skynet and tries to nuke us all, it is omniscient and benevolent. And if it knows anything, surely it knows what AI sounds like. Duh.
- Fishkins 10mo ago
  This is a couple of years old now, but at one point Janelle Shane found that the only reliable way to avoid being flagged as AI was to use AI with a certain style prompt https://www.aiweirdness.com/dont-use-ai-detectors-for-anything-important/ https://www.aiweirdness.com/dont-use-ai-detectors-for-anythi...
- rafram 10mo ago
  Gemini now uses SynthID to detect AI-generated content on request, and people don't know that it has a special tool that other chatbots don't, so now people just think chatbots can tell whether something is AI-generated.
0xbadcafebee 10mo ago
> We were talking about a colleague for using ChatGPT in our WhatsApp group chat to sound smart and coming up with interesting points. How dare they.
- Y_Y 10mo ago
  You're expected to infer that it wasn't working.
lynndotpy 10mo ago
I'm definitely in the "ChatGPT writes like me" experience. I am a big fan of lists, and of using formatting to make it all legible on a short skim. I'm a big fan of dyslexia-friendly writing too, even though I am not dyslexic myslef. I can't blame others though- I was looking at notes I wrote in 2019 and even that gave me a flavor of looking like a ChatGPT wrote it. I use the word "delve" and "not just X but also Y often, according to my Obsidian. I've taken to inserting the occasional spelling mistake or Unorthodox Patterns of Writing(tm), even when I would not otherwise. It's a lot easier to get LLMs to adhere to good writing guides than it is to get them to create something informative and useful. I like to think my notes and writing are informative and useful.
- sillyfluke 10mo ago
  > I was looking at notes I wrote in 2019 and even that gave me a flavor of looking like a ChatGPT wrote it. This would have been my first question to the parent, that I guess he never had similar correspondence with this friend prior to 2023. Otherwise it would be hard to convince me without an explanation for the switch (transition duuing formative high school / college years etc).
- zahlman 10mo ago
  > dyslexia-friendly writing ... How does that work, exactly?
  - jechton 10mo ago
    Namely, keeping things short and simple, and using formatting like bullet points or holding for important information to make text easier to scan.
  - lynndotpy 10mo ago
    Bullet points and formatting are the main thing. Assume the audience is smart and can fill in between the bold text. I also try to make headlines a summary / takeaway of the content if it makes sense.
D-Machine 10mo ago
It is harsh to say, but we need to increasingly recognize that if your writing is largely indistinguishable from the (current) output of e.g. ChatGPT on default settings, it doesn't matter if you used ChatGPT or not, your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume, and something you most certainly need to improve. I.e. your colleague needs to change his style regardless. This sucks, but it needs to be done in education, and/or at least in areas where good writing and effective communication is considered important. Good grades need to be awarded only to writing that exceeds the quality and/or personality of a chat-bot, because, otherwise, the degree is being awarded to a person who is no more useful than a clumsy tool. And I don't mean avoiding superficialities like the em-dash: I mean the bland over-verbosity and other systemic tells—or rather, smells—of AI slop.
- handoflixue 10mo ago
  > your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume Was this written by AI? Because right there we've got "three adjectives where one will do", and failing your own advice on "avoid being overly verbose"
  - D-Machine 10mo ago
    It is up to the reader to judge whether my style is verbose, or if I could have used less adjectives here. The adjectives all in fact have different meanings, only "bad" is lazy, IMO (EDIT: and "bad" is meant to be obvious moralizing - something AI in fact almost never does). Don't think that I don't hold myself to the same standards I am pushing here, verbosity has always been a problem for me, and AI verbosity is a good and necessary reminder for me to curb it.
    - xwolfi 10mo ago
      Frankly, using "bad" was a mistake, because it encompasses the two other adjectives. "Your chatgpt-like style is vomit-inducing, bad and boring" <-- you see, why add bad in the middle, you already got that point from the two other insults, right ? I think if you want to sound less like an AI, you should cut cut cut, and maybe write a bit more like speech, with sort of slangish structures etc, people won't doubt you anymore. Good luck !

by rukshn 10mo ago

mort96 10mo ago

> I even checked one of his responses in WhatsApp if it's AI by asking the Meta AI whether it's AI written, and Meta AI also agreed that it's AI written I will never understand why some people apparently think asking a chat bot whether text was written by a chat bot is a reasonable approach to determining whether text was written by a chat bot.

Tepix 10mo ago
Well, case in point: If you ask an AI to grade an essay, it will grade the essay highest that it wrote itself.
- the_af 10mo ago
  Is this true though? I haven't done the experiment, but I can envision the LLM critiquing its own output (if it was created in a different session) and iteratively correcting it and always finding flaws in it. Are LLMs even primed to say "this is perfect and it needs no further improvements"? What I have seen is ChatGPT and Claude battling it out, always correcting and finding fault with each other's output (trying to solve the same problem). It's hilarious.
  - Tepix 10mo ago
    There is a study in German that came to this conclusion, there's an english news article discussing it at https://heise.de/-10222370 https://heise.de/-10222370
- noitpmeder 10mo ago
  Citations on this?
  - Tepix 10mo ago
    https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06651 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06651 (in German, hopefully machine translation works well) English article: https://www.heise.de/en/news/38C3-AI-tools-must-be-evaluated-before-being-used-in-schools-10222370.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/38C3-AI-tools-must-be-evaluated... If you speak German, here is their talk from 38c3: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-chatbots-im-schulunterricht https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-chatbots-im-schulunterricht
- KeplerBoy 10mo ago
  Pangram seems to disagree. Not sure how they do it, but their system reliably detected AI in my tests. https://www.pangram.com/blog/pangram-predicts-21-of-iclr-reviews-are-ai-generated https://www.pangram.com/blog/pangram-predicts-21-of-iclr-rev...
lm28469 10mo ago
I know someone who was camping in a tent next to a river during a storm, took a pic of the stream and asked chatgpt if it was risky to sleep there given that it "rained a lot" ... People are unplugging their brains and are not even aware that their questions cannot be answered by llms, I witnessed that with smart and educated people, I can't imagine how bad it's going to be during formative years
- oneeyedpigeon 10mo ago
  Sam Altman literally said he didn't know how anyone could raise a baby without using a chatbot. We're living in some very weird times right now.
  - Forgeties79 10mo ago
    Sounds like a great way for someone to accidentally harm their infant. What an irresponsible thing to say. There are all sorts of little food risks, especially until they turn 1 or so (and of course other matters too, but food immediately comes to mind). The stakes are too high and the amount you’re allowed to get wrong is so low. Having been through the infant-wringer myself yeah some people fret over things that aren’t that big of a deal, but some things can literally be life or death. I can’t imagine trying to vet ChatGPT’s “advice” while delirious from lack of sleep and still in the trenches of learning to be a parent. But of course he just had to get that great marketing sound bite didn’t he?
    - the_af 10mo ago
      Sam Altman decided to irresponsibly talk bullshit about parenting because yes, he needed that marketing sound bite. I cannot believe someone will wonder how people managed to decode "my baby dropped pizza and then giggled" before LLMs. I mean, if someone is honestly terrified about the answer to this life-or-death question and cannot figure out life without an LLM, they probably shouldn't be a parent. Then again, Altman is faking it. Not sure if what he's faking is this affectation of being a clueless parent, or of being a human being.
NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
Why would it lie? Until it becomes Skynet and tries to nuke us all, it is omniscient and benevolent. And if it knows anything, surely it knows what AI sounds like. Duh.
Fishkins 10mo ago
This is a couple of years old now, but at one point Janelle Shane found that the only reliable way to avoid being flagged as AI was to use AI with a certain style prompt https://www.aiweirdness.com/dont-use-ai-detectors-for-anything-important/ https://www.aiweirdness.com/dont-use-ai-detectors-for-anythi...
rafram 10mo ago
Gemini now uses SynthID to detect AI-generated content on request, and people don't know that it has a special tool that other chatbots don't, so now people just think chatbots can tell whether something is AI-generated.

0xbadcafebee 10mo ago

> We were talking about a colleague for using ChatGPT in our WhatsApp group chat to sound smart and coming up with interesting points. How dare they.

Y_Y 10mo ago
You're expected to infer that it wasn't working.

lynndotpy 10mo ago

I'm definitely in the "ChatGPT writes like me" experience. I am a big fan of lists, and of using formatting to make it all legible on a short skim. I'm a big fan of dyslexia-friendly writing too, even though I am not dyslexic myslef. I can't blame others though- I was looking at notes I wrote in 2019 and even that gave me a flavor of looking like a ChatGPT wrote it. I use the word "delve" and "not just X but also Y often, according to my Obsidian. I've taken to inserting the occasional spelling mistake or Unorthodox Patterns of Writing(tm), even when I would not otherwise. It's a lot easier to get LLMs to adhere to good writing guides than it is to get them to create something informative and useful. I like to think my notes and writing are informative and useful.

sillyfluke 10mo ago
> I was looking at notes I wrote in 2019 and even that gave me a flavor of looking like a ChatGPT wrote it. This would have been my first question to the parent, that I guess he never had similar correspondence with this friend prior to 2023. Otherwise it would be hard to convince me without an explanation for the switch (transition duuing formative high school / college years etc).
zahlman 10mo ago
> dyslexia-friendly writing ... How does that work, exactly?
- jechton 10mo ago
  Namely, keeping things short and simple, and using formatting like bullet points or holding for important information to make text easier to scan.
- lynndotpy 10mo ago
  Bullet points and formatting are the main thing. Assume the audience is smart and can fill in between the bold text. I also try to make headlines a summary / takeaway of the content if it makes sense.

D-Machine 10mo ago

It is harsh to say, but we need to increasingly recognize that if your writing is largely indistinguishable from the (current) output of e.g. ChatGPT on default settings, it doesn't matter if you used ChatGPT or not, your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume, and something you most certainly need to improve. I.e. your colleague needs to change his style regardless. This sucks, but it needs to be done in education, and/or at least in areas where good writing and effective communication is considered important. Good grades need to be awarded only to writing that exceeds the quality and/or personality of a chat-bot, because, otherwise, the degree is being awarded to a person who is no more useful than a clumsy tool. And I don't mean avoiding superficialities like the em-dash: I mean the bland over-verbosity and other systemic tells—or rather, smells—of AI slop.

handoflixue 10mo ago
> your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume Was this written by AI? Because right there we've got "three adjectives where one will do", and failing your own advice on "avoid being overly verbose"
- D-Machine 10mo ago
  It is up to the reader to judge whether my style is verbose, or if I could have used less adjectives here. The adjectives all in fact have different meanings, only "bad" is lazy, IMO (EDIT: and "bad" is meant to be obvious moralizing - something AI in fact almost never does). Don't think that I don't hold myself to the same standards I am pushing here, verbosity has always been a problem for me, and AI verbosity is a good and necessary reminder for me to curb it.
  - xwolfi 10mo ago
    Frankly, using "bad" was a mistake, because it encompasses the two other adjectives. "Your chatgpt-like style is vomit-inducing, bad and boring" <-- you see, why add bad in the middle, you already got that point from the two other insults, right ? I think if you want to sound less like an AI, you should cut cut cut, and maybe write a bit more like speech, with sort of slangish structures etc, people won't doubt you anymore. Good luck !