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.
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.
Lol i have this with the number 88 xD
This is so silly. The way to explain a concept is to explain it in both the positive and the negative. Its the first steps to understanding, knowing not just what a thing is, but what it isnt.
I am not defending AI, but this writer is a loon. It isnt a stylistic choice, it is the most basic form of critical thinking. AI is not doing critical thinking, it is copping the style of an effective pedagogy.
But do you not see how redundant the construction is in the given examples? You’re right that it has a place, but that place is not literally every paragraph you write.
An LLM doesn’t understand the rules of when certain linguistic constructions enhance the communication of the writing, it just repeats a pattern that existed in the training data in places where it’s not necessary. That’s why it is so jarring and inhuman to read.
Yeah I see it but thats not what the problem is. The author isnt saying “ai’s points of contrast arent relevant or helpful” its calling out the construction itself. The author complains about the ineffective writing of ai, and then names the wrong problem. Its like saying "the problem with ai writing is ai keeps usimg the word “the”. No that isnt the problem! There are problems and that isnt the one. It isnt a stylistic quirk, its the way the quirk is used that stands out, just like you said.
But actually I’m just having a laugh trying to fit in as many “its not x, its y” comments as I can. I’m all about criticizing ai but theres so much to actually criticize and this misses the mark
Nailed it.
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.
Did you tho? It’s not on your keyboard. You can still use a -
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
just doubleslap the – for the same effect.
Hero. I never knew that and always did the shift alt.
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.
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 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.
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!!!
This sentence structure has been incredibly common for decades, if not longer. It is not a sign of AI.
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.
Same as with an em dash. But also as with the em dash, it’s now becoming much more frequent because of LLM usage. People see stripes and call it a tiger.
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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.
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.
“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…
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?
I’m actually using more those resources (em dashes, three points lists, “it’s worth noting that”, “it’s not X, it’s Y”, etc.) after AI popped up. They’re a damn good way to detect assumptive people, eager to conclude based on little to no info or reasoning; the same ones OP is complaining about. They don’t want a conversation at all, they want to whine, so if you give them a low-hanging fruit you can detect them early and block them as noise and dead weight.
That’s in my “casual” writing style, though. Professionally (as a translator) I mostly play by the tune, trying to preserve the style of the original. (Plus I barely translate things into English, it’s usually into Portuguese, very rarely Italian.)
That might not necessarily be the case – there is a possibility every example is completely organic – but it’s a sign of the times that we can’t just relax and assume the things we see and hear were made by people.
Guys, I found em dashes! The author is a bot! Bring me my pitchfork! /jk (those are en dashes, by the way.)
Understanding the length of dashes aside, I think a big part of this backlash is a lot of people are terrible writers, and as such, the idea that another user can actually write is offensive to them. They have no way to fight back with words, so LLMs provide a tidy way to dismiss the whole piece as a hallucination.
I, too, have a couple of different writing styles, which stems from having been an opinion editor in college. What Beeple generally see on here is my columnist voice, but I am capable of the editorial Voice of God when it’s called for (it is rarely called for).
That makes sense; it would be a mix of “if you can do it and I can’t, you must be cheating” and “your a bot than you’re arguement is invalid” ad hominem.
I think unnecessary combativeness might be also a factor. I’ve noticed on the internet people who want to fight against “something”, it doesn’t matter what; so they pick any low-hanging fruit they can find to fight you.
a lot of people are terrible writers, and as such, the idea that another user can actually write is offensive to them.
I worry you’re right, here; but only in brief episodes. I mostly want to assume otherwise.
I LOVE great writing: proper punctuation, good delineation, awareness of mass nouns, etc. I love when I see great writing and wish I could be as good.
I feel for people who don’t.
It’s the old joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.
I wasn’t a great writer to start, but with editors guiding me, I came to be a nationally recognized writer. It’s a skill one develops. Maybe a few people spring forth from the womb ready to write, but must don’t. Additionally, I was told in high school to avoid writing; my voice wasn’t suited to regurgitating a teacher’s interpretation of literature. It took getting really pissed off at a national policy to find my voice.
And finding your voice is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean you’ve yet learned anything about the craft of writing. That first year was a crucible.
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…
