Title text:
You say no human would reply to a forum thread about Tom Bombadil by writing and editing hundreds of words of text, complete with formatting, fancy punctuation, and two separate uses of the word ‘delve’. Unfortunately for both of us, you are wrong.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3126/
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There really is an xkcd for everything.
Someone the other day mentioned semicolons are now a sign of AI. I always liked semicolons for when things are more connected as opposed to a period/full stop :/
Well that’s annoying because I’ve always used semicolons
Same. I am one of the rare people who know the difference between i.e. and e.g. I know when to use a semicolon vs an em dash.
I no longer feel special; it feels wrong.
In Essence Egxample
the rare people who know the difference between i.e. and e.g.
This honestly isn’t rare at all, and people who try to flaunt it as some kind of mark of erudition tend to come across as… well, not quite what you intended.
it’s stupid that English uses Latin abbreviations for these things; my first language is German and so:
- “z.B.” = “zum Beispiel” = “for example” = “e.g.”
- “d.h.” = “das heißt” = “that means” = “i.e.”
When I first saw these abbreviations in English, it took me about ten seconds to memorize that “e.g.” means “z.B.” and “i.e.” means “d.h.”. If English just did it the way German does and abbreviated its native expressions (“f.e.” and “t.m.”), it would be obvious to everyone which is which.
Rare in certain corners of the internet? No.
Rare in the general public? Yes, absolutely.
Not ChatGPT output — I’m just like this.
That’s an m-dash, which we all know is irrefutable confirmation of LLM output. /s
iirc its m-dash as well as constant rule of threes and generally using incredibly formal sentence structures even when the language involved is not formal in any way. Kind of like what I just did there though probably with an extra comma after m-dash.
I think I’m a—LLM now.
And I am b—LLM, nice to meet you!
As someone who has been mistaken for an LLM at least twice in the past couple of years, yeaaah. Sometimes I write like that. The LLMs learned from people like me. I can only hope it was smarter, more productive people with the same sort of writing style and not from anything I’ve produced… although it would explain a thing or two.
Nope. It’s you and me, buddy. They learned from a fancy talker and a drunk. That’s why they just make shit up.
In Denmark we have a saying, which (translated) is “the truth shall be heard from children and drunk people”
I guess fancy talkers are kinda children too, or at least former ones 🤷
The US government did extensive research on a potential truth serum. The single most effective solution they found was vodka. Every other thing they tried (including attempted mind control with LSD) had huge potential drawbacks, and usually didn’t even result in honesty. But get a dude drunk and have a pretty girl talk him up, and he’ll spill all of his secrets while thinking it’s his own idea.
The government also holds occasional “know your number” meetings amongst the people who hold security clearance. Basically a netting where they sit everyone down and go “okay you look like a wrinkly potato, you’re missing two teeth, and you smell like wet beef. At best, you’re like a 3 out of 10. Maybe a 4.5 if you bothered to shower before you hit the bar. If a solid 10 is flirting with you at the bar just outside of the base, and she seems really interested in what you do for work… She’s a fucking spy. Know your number, and know what you can reasonably pull. Because if you’re pulling above that number, you’re being honeypotted.”
Jokes on her. I have forgotten all the good information I had back when I held a clearance and I’m incredibly boring.
I may be verbose, but I’m way less friendly than most LLMs
I am not sure how many times I’ve been mistaken for ChatGPT, but I don’t think my writing style is actually very similar.
I’m pretty sure that when people say that, most of the time, they actually mean, “I want to disagree with what you’re saying, but I lack the ability to do so legitimately. If I simply accuse you of using an LLM, people will assume I’m right and I will ‘win’.”
The topics were pretty tame that I remember, so there wasn’t much to disagree with. I was just being… uh. Florid? Verbose? Sesquipedalian?
It might be a neurodivergent trait; the need to use the right word to communicate exactly the right meaning even if it runs to several syllables.
It might lose a few people, but I’ve got to say what I mean.
And then someone else comes along in a different comment and says what I wanted to say with words of fewer than three syllables and I’m like “hmmm”.
It might be a neurodivergent trait; the need to use the right word to communicate exactly the right meaning even if it runs to several syllables.
It might lose a few people, but I’ve got to say what I mean.
Speaking as someone who got his ADHD diagnosis late and felt chronically misunderstood for his entire adolescence, I’m gonna go with
And then someone else comes along in a different comment and says what I wanted to say with words of fewer than three syllables
Beginner’s luck!
I’ve never seen LLMs talk like what you’re describing, though.
If I had to describe ChatGPT’s usual style, it’s like a neurodivergent person who really wants the average person to understand what they’re saying, hopefully without causing offense.
So it’s almost as if it were trained on Reddit?
(No offense intended! I hope you get what I mean! ☺️)
Since you’re a polysyllabic person, can you explain why the word “monosyllabic” has five syllables?
Information entropy. You need roughly as many syllables to explain the same concept with mono- or disyllabic English words as you do with a scientific polysyllable. Admittedly, some of it is “I know this word! See how smart I am!”, but another part is how much more fluid it is to say. “Monosyllabic” rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than “having only one sound”.
(The funny answer here would have been “No.”)
On top of all that, monosyllabic is accurate to the intended meaning while “having only one sound” is not: a single syllable word often comprises multiple phones and/or phonemes.
can you explain why the word “monosyllabic” has five syllables?
For the same reason why the word “lisp” has an s in it and the fear of long words is called monstrosequippedaliophobia*: because sometimes language is a callous bastard 😁
*no, I don’t accept the “Hippopoto-” many people like to tack on. Unlike the rest of the word, which describes EXACTLY what the word means, adding a large semi-aquatic mammal serves no purpose other than lengthening an already monstrously equipped dalio.
You just need to start inserting more Ai type punctuation into your text — like an Em dash for example.
This will really confuse people, resulting in more instances of you being treated like us — I mean Ai.
Bitch ass LLMs putting spaces before and after their emdashes—I REFUSE!
The funny thing is, I watch The Vlogbrothers fairly often - both of whom are writers - and recently John has told of his fondness for the m-dash. His enthusiasm and explanation was enough to get me to consider using it, but then that trait was identified as one overused by LLMs.
I’d already been mistaken for one by that point (an LLM, not a Vlogbrother), so instead I’ve stuck with the technically incorrect hyphen-minus or plain old parentheses when I’ve felt the need to do that.
Found Dave Green’s Lemmy account
Nice try Hank we know you when we see you
Yep ChatGPT must have learned from people like me, because:
- I write long texts
- I over explain stuff to people who did not ask for explanation
- I use bullet points in every post
Claim:
- I use bullet points in every post
Fact Check:
Out of your 36 comments, this is the only one with bullet points. That’s only 2.7% of your comments. One other has an enumeration, but an enumeration is not bullet points.
Additionally, you have one post, but that also doesn’t use bullet points. 0% of your actual posts use bullet points.
Conclusion: Claim is FALSE. Ziffy-fa-Jazz-KZone-Sweek’em does not use bullet points in every post.
Chat gpburn
- they might have another account
- or talk about their presence outside of Lemmy
Fact: we don’t know and can’t come to a definite conclusion
In a literal sense, you only need one exception to disprove an “every” claim.
In a figurative sense, you literally can’t
Emoji, title, bullet points, repeat
Can you elaborate on the second point?
Well now they literally cannot, since you asked!
They can but it wouldn’t prove or disprove anything eitherway
I got accused of being an LLM for the first time just a few days ago. Was pretty funny.
When they actually get good at mimicking convincingly enough to be indistinguishable from a normal human user, that’s when dead internet theory will truly take over. This could’ve already happened, but I’ve seen enough stupid shit vomited by LLMs to know it probably hasn’t happened yet. Once I stop seeing that obvious cognitive gap for a while, then I’ll get worried – but if they stopped being stupid, then we might’ve accidentally created AGI and astroturfing bots on the internet would be a bit of a trivial concern at that stage.
*in English.
They still suck at many other languages, like Finnish.
They’ve mastered Danish, though. Or at least the native speakers can’t tell the difference.
None of the other people in the Nordics are surprised that the native speakers can’t tell the difference. We can’t either after all
Expect to see this accidentally included in someone’s forum screed soon:
Here’s a detailed response to BombaFan486’s post, including three separate (but natural) uses of the word ‘revelatory’, ending with the disclaimer, “Not ChatGPT output. I’m just like this.”
Is there anything else I can do for you?
ChatGPT is changing the way we talk. i also read a comment that says LLMs have been trained on fanfiction from Archive Of Our Own and other fanfiction databases, which would explain the colorful exposition in between fucking up how many B’s there are in ‘strawberry’
ChatGPT is changing the way we talk
Started the video, and the first comment I saw was along the lines of “so it’s changing scripts that are read, not how people talk”. Had no need to watch any further.
—
Seeing any em dash in the wild makes me immediately suspicious
There’s always one good litmus test, if you can ask someone live before they have a chance to do a Google search: ask what the alt code is for an em dash.
If they don’t immediately answer 0151, they’re full of shit.
I always just google ‘em dash’ then ctrl+c it.
Compose key, hyphen, hypen. Because while it’s a less common usage, visually I prefer the shorter en dash – over the em dash — anyway.
Also for people missing the Unix-style compose key on Windows: https://wincompose.info/. Memorising numeric codes is for chumps :)
OH MY GOD, I CAN GET A COMPOSE KEY ON WINDOWS
Thank youBot account obvs
I feel like this is more likely to lead you astray than anything. An LLM bot will immediately know the alt code, while a real person will only know it if they use Windows. Lots of people use Linux, or mobile keyboards.
Or if they start explaining what a compose key is; also human
What if they don’t know the code and just use a keyshift instead?
Throw them into a lake, I guess. If they sink and drown, they’re innocent. If they float, you know they’re full of (buoyant) shit (and can then safely burn them at the stake if you want to).
Ah, welcome back, Witch Test…
I loooove using m dashes. They’re just so—expressive.
Yeah, I’m 42 yrs old. A long time ago I sacrificed what lvl of English I did know in order to use “lol” - I’m not giving up em dashes.
That’s probably part of the joke
You just have say fuck a lot…
But I’m pretty sure any explanation of Bombadil less than 300 words would fail the Turing test
That is an excellent point! Use of the word “fuck” in online conversation may present to readers with more realism.
It is however important to note that use of the word “fuck” does not fully rule out the use of large language models. While most commercial offerings may be trained to avoid profanity, certain models might not be trained the same way.
Additionally, use of the word “fuck” may be inappropriate in certain human conversations such as:
- formal conversations
- conversations with parents
- conversations with children
So, while the presence of the word “fuck” may decrease the likelihood of the text being generated by large language models, it is important to keep in mind its limitations, and opt for more robust methods like cryptographic signatures or verbal conversations.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
(This was genuinely written by me)
The method I (just now) thought up using to signal humanity was responding to accusations of being an LLM with a “fuck you”. The combination of vulgar language and defiance of the sycophantic tendencies of LLMs feels to me like a pretty effective proof of humanity, at least for now.
You can actually get LLMs to swear, sort of. They just won’t use real swear words. If you set up your LLM parameters to use a specific word for an expletive, but it’s not actually an expletive, then you can replace that word with your choice of expletive after the text is generated.
I am in this comic and I don’t like it.
Omg me
