My wife is a professional writer and uses em dash a lot, usually as --, including in her casual messages, as it's common for her to use.
It's the formatting style of the whole thing that sounds AI to me. "Honestly" phrases really jumps out at me now, as well as the "But..." fragments. Not that they're bad, hell, I type out things that way too. But for it to be all together, it sounds AI after you've seen it a lot.
The em dash is fine here, emphasizing the final point. Although I would have probably used a comma myself for a post and not a formal manuscript.
Funny thing is, you can get AI to reduce a lot of these tells with a decent system prompt and staging of the writing process. So I'm surprised we're still seeing it a lot and it hasn't been weaned out of the latest versions.
It's really hard to get rid of things caused by systematic bias in the training data.
After inhaling the entire internet, LLMs started being trained on publically available books.
And due to copyright, those were older ones from a time when em-dashes were used more.
The training results were tested by humans, which needed to be cheap, but also English language natives.
So they used workers in English-speaking African countries. Where the English taught in school is also more traditional with a focus on older literature, so the answers coming from the old literature were rated higher by the testers.
The use of "--" is interesting, I use dashes to convey pacing constantly because I type as I speak, and so punctuation to me is largely about trying to write the delivery I want the reader to percieve, and I always just use "-" knowing it's incorrect, but I don't exactly wanna make myself seem even more like ai by switching lol
I actually used to do the same thing with the -, and by em dash becoming a thing I dived into the usage and history of it all, including ; and en dash. And now I'm using - less. But I don't use em dash more, just tend to throw a comma in.
Another weird one I learned. em dash spacing. The spacing AI tends to use is not preferred by publishers now, but is more AP style, perhaps picking it up from when it was more popular to have space between the letters. Europe tends to prefer spacing but with a en dash (and I kind of like how that looks too, but it doesn't fly if you publish in the US).
Wait, so what spacing is generally preferred for the em dash? Thats interesting, I never formally learned how to use one so I'm curious (I've not been to college, I have no idea if its part of typical higher education curriculum if you take any english courses)
I abuse the fuck out of commas so I reach for dashes or ; when I want a longer pause that isn't a logical end point for a thought. But a semicolon feels somehow a bit more formal to me, so I use it less for general online chatting
My other half writes a lot of formal documentation as part of her work. She uses bullet lists and em-dashes a lot, and her work comes up as >90% AI. Even the stuff she wrote a decade ago. A while back, she took one of her documents and gave it to ChatGPT and said, "make this pass an AI test" and it went down to about 20% but it was no longer the house style.
Bruh, I'm calling shenanigans on this tool. Yes, post is probably ai, but there is no tool that can accurately tell ai text from human text. "The most accurate ai detector" is like me calling a stick "the most accurate god detector". It's a meaningless distinction when the detection isn't possible to do accurately.
that batman image,, uhh,,, recite it from memory,,, batman says "this is the tool of the enemy, we shall not use it" or something,,, idk,,,
(...why?? does lemmy collapse the commas into one??? eww
and uses the unicode ellipsis??? ugh
tip: be generous with backslashes! if it is not what you typed, then do not sit there and take it! defend yourself with the slashes!! ! !!)
xml is better than markdown, you will not change my mind, but i would like to see you try
when they were writing the code to convert markdown to xml, because no, sane or insane, web browser supports markdown, did, at no point, did they think "gosh, there's got to be a better way"???
xml is better than markdown, you will not change my mind
Markdown is for humans who are writing their prose on the fly and don't want to be bothered with the cognitive load associated with the extra verbiage and rulesets of XML.
XML is for computers which are great with verbiage and rulesets.
It's perfectly fine to have a converter between the two to bridge the gap.
forcing a markup language for humans is so therianphobic!!!
and, it is so easy to write xml. markdown is way harder. escaping markdown, you have to remember to put a backslash before every character that markdown deems special, with xml, you just use <, >, and &.
it is both silly and saddening how many harmful stereotypes you've used in such a short span
also, xml is an interchange format, markdown is not!!! using markdown in federated software means that it's going to break!!! you could have the editor use markdown and the federation use xml...
When sentences begin with an inflecting "Honestly?", I am immediately on guard to completely ignore what comes next, because it is usually a steaming pile of AI crap.
There is something to it, but ya can't just mash two half truths together to make a full truth.
A clear vision of what I can expect and what I am going to be doing where I work, makes a big difference. It can outweigh some other concerns if I see that I can avoid, compensate for, or be allowed to fix them.
But if the salary is too low, I am not fucking joking: I am bringing skills and they have value. If anything, a talk about how I fit the role should make that clearer to you, the employer.
I guess if the "role talk" convinced me that it is a bullshit job that I am actually supposed to half-ass and coast, leaving me room to take on side jobs and do job hunting during paid hours: Sure. Let's sign.
Honestly, don't really see a problem with a negotiation ending up like that, it might clear up the workload or getting specific vacation other accommodations through, making the compensation worth it.
I went through a negotiation where they were very stingy on vacation time, and after several rounds of back and forth, they offered slightly higher pay, and tried to throw other minor benefits. I went somewhere else. 2 weeks starting is dumb. I typically take 4-5 a year and that feels small some days.
I mean, if we negotiate WFH that's some benefit worth money. Workload shouldnt matter if its full time i drop the pen after 40h. I think a person accepting a lowball offer will go on looking and you onboard for nothing.
They always do that song and dance anyways, it's not like they wait til the last minute. Got that from my former job, and I just patiently waited til it clicked and they skipped : "they have a very thorough test system, and the work ambience is really good, and ... Oh yes you have already worked there." Yes I worked on their shitty tests and left because the ambiance was bad (one reason in many, this offering is fir another team, where the ambience is only morose).
But it's AI slop, probably with a prompt "the salary is not negotiable" in it so ...
In real life the guy took the job because he needs money, and will bail as soon as he finds a better offer.
And good for him. Pay your employees what they're worth.
And of course:
It's that em-dash at the end that really solidified it for me. Was kinda on the fence most of the way through.
My wife is a professional writer and uses em dash a lot, usually as --, including in her casual messages, as it's common for her to use.
It's the formatting style of the whole thing that sounds AI to me. "Honestly" phrases really jumps out at me now, as well as the "But..." fragments. Not that they're bad, hell, I type out things that way too. But for it to be all together, it sounds AI after you've seen it a lot.
The em dash is fine here, emphasizing the final point. Although I would have probably used a comma myself for a post and not a formal manuscript.
Funny thing is, you can get AI to reduce a lot of these tells with a decent system prompt and staging of the writing process. So I'm surprised we're still seeing it a lot and it hasn't been weaned out of the latest versions.
It's really hard to get rid of things caused by systematic bias in the training data.
After inhaling the entire internet, LLMs started being trained on publically available books.
And due to copyright, those were older ones from a time when em-dashes were used more.
The training results were tested by humans, which needed to be cheap, but also English language natives.
So they used workers in English-speaking African countries. Where the English taught in school is also more traditional with a focus on older literature, so the answers coming from the old literature were rated higher by the testers.
"Due to copyright" did they not all illegally download every book they could, copyrighted or not, to train their LLMs?
The use of "--" is interesting, I use dashes to convey pacing constantly because I type as I speak, and so punctuation to me is largely about trying to write the delivery I want the reader to percieve, and I always just use "-" knowing it's incorrect, but I don't exactly wanna make myself seem even more like ai by switching lol
I may try using "--", thanks for sharing that!
I actually used to do the same thing with the -, and by em dash becoming a thing I dived into the usage and history of it all, including ; and en dash. And now I'm using - less. But I don't use em dash more, just tend to throw a comma in.
Another weird one I learned. em dash spacing. The spacing AI tends to use is not preferred by publishers now, but is more AP style, perhaps picking it up from when it was more popular to have space between the letters. Europe tends to prefer spacing but with a en dash (and I kind of like how that looks too, but it doesn't fly if you publish in the US).
Wait, so what spacing is generally preferred for the em dash? Thats interesting, I never formally learned how to use one so I'm curious (I've not been to college, I have no idea if its part of typical higher education curriculum if you take any english courses)
I abuse the fuck out of commas so I reach for dashes or ; when I want a longer pause that isn't a logical end point for a thought. But a semicolon feels somehow a bit more formal to me, so I use it less for general online chatting
No spacing I think—just back-to-back like so
This seems well sourced and current.
https://www.pbjstories.com/blog/spaces-around-em-dash
Fair enough on the em-dash, hadn't actually considered that LLMs use it extensively because it's actually used in the wild.
Yeah a human wouldn't have used an em dash there. It would have been a colon or an ellipse.
My other half writes a lot of formal documentation as part of her work. She uses bullet lists and em-dashes a lot, and her work comes up as >90% AI. Even the stuff she wrote a decade ago. A while back, she took one of her documents and gave it to ChatGPT and said, "make this pass an AI test" and it went down to about 20% but it was no longer the house style.
where you really on the fence? i just cant imagine that. every single line is classic AI.
They had me at:
honestly?
Bruh, I'm calling shenanigans on this tool. Yes, post is probably ai, but there is no tool that can accurately tell ai text from human text. "The most accurate ai detector" is like me calling a stick "the most accurate god detector". It's a meaningless distinction when the detection isn't possible to do accurately.
But it's useful when you need to start a witch hunt on a post you dislike!
Horseshit detector: this is
I feel like because LinkedIn people all write like bits. The em dash is major red flag but without it, seems like a typical linkedin post
that batman image,, uhh,,, recite it from memory,,, batman says "this is the tool of the enemy, we shall not use it" or something,,, idk,,,
(...why?? does lemmy collapse the commas into one??? eww
and uses the unicode ellipsis??? ugh
tip: be generous with backslashes! if it is not what you typed, then do not sit there and take it! defend yourself with the slashes!! ! !!)
Lemmy uses markdown, you can choose to learn it instead of getting frustrated about it lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, why are you putting question marks in the middle of the sentence? Reads horrible.
xml is better than markdown, you will not change my mind, but i would like to see you try
when they were writing the code to convert markdown to xml, because no, sane or insane, web browser supports markdown, did, at no point, did they think "gosh, there's got to be a better way"???
Markdown is for humans who are writing their prose on the fly and don't want to be bothered with the cognitive load associated with the extra verbiage and rulesets of XML.
XML is for computers which are great with verbiage and rulesets.
It's perfectly fine to have a converter between the two to bridge the gap.
that's gotta be ragebait...
forcing a markup language for humans is so therianphobic!!!
and, it is so easy to write xml. markdown is way harder. escaping markdown, you have to remember to put a backslash before every character that markdown deems special, with xml, you just use <, >, and &.
it is both silly and saddening how many harmful stereotypes you've used in such a short span
also, xml is an interchange format, markdown is not!!! using markdown in federated software means that it's going to break!!! you could have the editor use markdown and the federation use xml...
Are you trolling?
no? :)
now what happened here??? 7 cowards, who are all jeering me, yet are too ashamed to show their face?? show yourselves!!
i love your energy
can you say fuck on the internet??
so was i just hallucinating that lemmy somewhere censored swears??? or can someone back me up on this
You mean "a Lemmy instance"? Maybe
When sentences begin with an inflecting "Honestly?", I am immediately on guard to completely ignore what comes next, because it is usually a steaming pile of AI crap.
Honestly? Fair point.
No no no, it's the other way around, AI was trained on shitty Stinkedin posts.
Honestly? True.
i just see a scumbag recruiter that bullshits until someone signs for the lowball asking price.
I feel the same way when someone says it IRL.
You're right. No human being would stack paragraphs like that.
There is something to it, but ya can't just mash two half truths together to make a full truth.
A clear vision of what I can expect and what I am going to be doing where I work, makes a big difference. It can outweigh some other concerns if I see that I can avoid, compensate for, or be allowed to fix them.
But if the salary is too low, I am not fucking joking: I am bringing skills and they have value. If anything, a talk about how I fit the role should make that clearer to you, the employer.
I guess if the "role talk" convinced me that it is a bullshit job that I am actually supposed to half-ass and coast, leaving me room to take on side jobs and do job hunting during paid hours: Sure. Let's sign.
I WILL DO ANYTHING TO PROTECT MY CORPORATE OVERLORDS FROM LOSING MONEY ON HUMAN PEOPLE
Honestly, don't really see a problem with a negotiation ending up like that, it might clear up the workload or getting specific vacation other accommodations through, making the compensation worth it.
Hopefully the promises are kept.
I went through a negotiation where they were very stingy on vacation time, and after several rounds of back and forth, they offered slightly higher pay, and tried to throw other minor benefits. I went somewhere else. 2 weeks starting is dumb. I typically take 4-5 a year and that feels small some days.
Here in Sweden you have a legal right to take four weeks in a row during the summer months.
Now there are some conditions.
You don't have to exercise this right, but your employer can't outright deny it.
Typically people earn enough vacation time to take four weeks during summer, one week during christmas and a random week in the autum.
I mean, if we negotiate WFH that's some benefit worth money. Workload shouldnt matter if its full time i drop the pen after 40h. I think a person accepting a lowball offer will go on looking and you onboard for nothing.
"Write me an inspirational Linkedin story about how job candidates should accept lower wages"
This was written by an LLM. Probably chatgpt.
They always do that song and dance anyways, it's not like they wait til the last minute. Got that from my former job, and I just patiently waited til it clicked and they skipped : "they have a very thorough test system, and the work ambience is really good, and ... Oh yes you have already worked there." Yes I worked on their shitty tests and left because the ambiance was bad (one reason in many, this offering is fir another team, where the ambience is only morose).
But it's AI slop, probably with a prompt "the salary is not negotiable" in it so ...
“You will work for what we tell you to work for. Fuck you.”
In principle this is kind of how negotiations work.
Although, obviously it didn't needed to be phrased like this and posted to linked in.
In real life the guy took the job because he needs money, and will bail as soon as he finds a better offer. And good for him. Pay your employees what they're worth.
And then OOP came hard. Best orgasm of his life.