If you’ve never seen Jim Carrey’s 2007 psychological thriller The Number 23, then congratulations. It is a film about a man who sees the number 23 so many times that he ends up going bonkers. I used to think this film was stupid. However, now I appear to be living it.
My own personal number 23 is a rhetorical device: “It’s not X, it’s Y.” Everywhere I look, there it is. Whenever I hate myself enough to scroll through Facebook’s wilderness of algorithmically suggested posts, I find myself being smacked in the face with sentences such as: “Self-improvement isn’t a trend, it’s a lifestyle shift,” and “The small wins aren’t just moments, they’re the majority of your life.” Once you notice it, it becomes impossible to ignore. This weekend during a Peloton class (I know, shut up), I heard an instructor bark a variation of “this isn’t X, it’s Y”. Yesterday, a character did the same during a TV show I was reviewing, and I dropped a star from its score in retaliation.
You know where this is coming from, don’t you? “It’s not X, it’s Y” is an AI mainstay. It’s one of ChatGPT’s most insidious tells. No matter how innocuous a prompt you enter, AI will always find a way to sneak it into its response. Ask it if you should put more ham in your pasta, and it will tell you: “Ham doesn’t just taste good – it makes everything else taste better.” Ask it if you should chase a bee around your garden and it will say: “Bees aren’t stupid – they’re hyper-specialised”.
It’s beyond irritating to me that because LLMs were trained on writing that uses such constructions, being competent at writing now makes me get accusations of using one to create a post or comment.
This isn’t really the case on Beehaw, but head over to Reddit, post a cogent, well-reasoned comment, and the knives are out.
I think the most infuriating part is that instead of engaging with the content (I’m there mostly for debate, anyway), they attack the structure and lob accusations. That’s not a conversation.
being competent at writing now makes me get accusations of using [“AI”]
Long time em dash user over here, feeling your pain 😞
Had a paper rejected because em dashes obviously mean AI. I love em dashes for long breaks that rest between a ; and ( ) for the reader. I just tossed my hands up and do not give a shit. I write how I write.
Well, there goes my academic career.
I left it. This paper was under review for 197 days (yep). Got the word two weeks ago and frankly, fuck it.
Happy to have a larger academic career chat too. It wrecked me over the long term. Now my aspirations are to work in a board game store.
I was just posting elsewhere that I could probably settle for street sweeping.
Thirty years creative work experience, eight years academic — fuck it. If people want “AI” generated bullshit, I’m not bothered putting anymore original work out there.
Agree. Also, amazing DS9 avatar. Just noticed.
Rom is such an undervalued player in that one. May Day will always be Rom Day for me:
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Did you tho? It’s not on your keyboard. You can still use a -
My phone’s keyboard lets me compose multiple dashes into an emdash. I believe I can also bind a compose key on my desktop, though I haven’t needed it there yet.
It may not be on YOUR keyboard. Ours has it on alt -, or shift-alt - for an em dash instead of an en dash!
– Frost
It’s on my mobile keyboard as an alt option for the hyphen. And yes, I use keyboard shortcuts on my computer. Worked as a layouter for print in years. You learn to appreciate a good em dash.
Layouter? This is the first time I’m hearing the term, and I’ve designed tens of thousands of newspaper pages.
Probably a regional phrase. I’m in Scandinavia, English terms get absorbed and reappropriated into the language(s). Never considered that wasn’t the original usage.
But yeah, I designed, laid out, and did prepress on a few periodical art magazines here. I was the whole graphics department 😉
I, over the years, learned how to do everything through prepress. I don’t know how to get the plates on the press, but pretty much everything up to that, I can do.
I never got near the actual printshop (usually done abroad to cut costs), but yeah. You pick up stuff all along the production chain.
Especially when the printer offers to do some small change in the print files for “a modest added fee”… No thanks, tell me what you need and I’ll fix it myself!
“All em dashes in this 200 page book have somehow been replaced with hyphens? 😨 Give me ten minutes!” 😂
Ctrl+H
just doubleslap the – for the same effect.
Hero. I never knew that and always did the shift alt.
This results in an endash.
This sentence structure has been incredibly common for decades, if not longer. It is not a sign of AI.
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I’ve found myself reading much older text and still being annoyed by it. I think I paused a YouTube video from like 2015 after hearing it spoken and having to pace a little before continuing. I’ve completely cut that out of my own writing style.
Text extrusion software will obviously favor some writing elements over others, and it is just a supercharged version of bland-yet-saccharine corporate writing style. So all of it, seen sparingly, wouldn’t make you feel like the society is falling apart. But when you see it 10000x more often you really question if anyone is even trying to communicate a novel idea anymore.
It’s not a sign of AI, but when every second post manages to slip the “not x, not y, just z” phrase into their wording, you get pretty over it, pretty quickly.
Ditto for posts that worm in the phrase “just physics”. No, it’s not “just physics”. Physics is complicated, and I wish AI slop would stop handwaving away a decent explanation with that phrase.
“Power isn’t given, it’s taken.” - Malcolm xAI
This is something I see my partner’s high school students having to deal with now: the suspicion that competence or intelligence must indicate AI use. It feels like when dumb film writers or directors make non-MC character unbelievably dumb to make the MC look smart (cough BBC Sherlock cough), but applied to real life.
I submitted some things I wrote years ago to AI and asked if it was written by AI and it said yes.
If you write intelligently and using proper sentence structure, the default now is to believe AI. It’s sad.
I’ll never give up em dashes.
Agreed—me neither.
It’s not X, it’s Y” is an AI mainstay.
You should have seen my h.school essays…
When I’m tired this is my shortcut. I usually edit them out in drafts but miss a few in my substack posts. I am more machine now than man I guess.
It’s not AI, it’s LLMs.
LLMs are a type of AI
someone didn’t read the article ;p
Show me the intelligence, and I’ll accept your definition.
Whoosh
uh, I’ve been writing like that for years and I am not about to stop just because the slop machines decided to copy me!
It’s not just a writing style – it’s an expression of individuality.
I got so annoyed by this, that I looked into what the most common GPT quirks are. Now I have a long list of things to hate when reading stuff online. Also, many YT video scripts were clearly written by GPT and edited by nobody. Once you start seeing these signs, you can’t unsee them ever again.
I think the main thing that annoys me is trying to pick apart if something is Ai or not.
For me it’s having to pick apart if something is “AI” or not.
This is not just chatgpt and also not caused by a recent changed.
all llms seems to love this pattern and i agree once you know about it you start seeing it everywhere.
“This isn’t chatgpt, it’s an endemic change!”
:D
I don’t know if that was a purposefully funny comment, but it was both clever and funny if so.
I haven’t seen this particular quirk outside GPT users, but Claude’s seems to be, “X is quietly doing work…” or some variation of that.
“You really hit the nail on the head, but the thing you said about X is doing quiet work as well.”
Your reasoning is doing quiet work. The context is doing quiet work. Everything is doing quiet work. We’re all a bunch of librarians out here, apparently.
Shh! Can’t you see this is a library?
This happens in analog communications.
Every seminar intro ends with " without further ado…" and everyone “switches gears” halfway through the deck to “pull the trigger” on a decision.
wait… if it’s not a conversation, what is it? you can’t just negate something like that without asserting a positive! WHAT IS IT?! I HAVE TO KNOW! IM SPIRALLING IN CONFUSION AND FEAR!!!
I got accused of being ai lately due to my tendency at horrendous writing. I think its just a new go to for people who don’t want to engage sincerely if it involves any challenge to what they said.
Funny about the Number 23. After watching it years ago, I still find it everywhere and often. I know it’s probably one of those: “Get a new car then notice that same car everywhere” effects, but still…
This bugs me too and I’m glad I’m not the only one. You DO see it everywhere after getting annoyed at ChatGTP doing it.
Lol i have this with the number 88 xD
What does a nazi number have to do with LLMs?
