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Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

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21–30 of 69 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to look for the source of analysis right now, but I recall reading a study demonstrating that a large part, if not most of the word frequency shift was caused by RLHF training done on data predominantly generated by people hired from lower income English-speaking countries which simply have a different dialect of English with a noticeably different frequency of certain phrases and expressions, so e.g. at…

There wasn't a study or analysis. It was just lazy speculation that felt good because it could be bound up in a "evil white countries exploiting the developing world" narrative. Where exploiting was "paying to do a job". It was submitted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40623629 Again, there is effectively zero real data showing this. Further, RLHF isn't likely to reinforce such word selection regardless. A mo…

then again, most history consists of whitewashing back when northern countries were exploiting everywhere else in various ways: imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism, financialization,...

typical people prefer to pretend this is simply "order" and "progress"; seemingly blind to their own ideological baggage like fish in water

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#22
Eager loading is a technical term with a specific meaning, contrasting with lazy loading.

Be the text came out of an llm the real question for the user is, does this technical term actually to this situation.

If it does, then it's an appropriate word choice carrying additional information.

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#25
post #2

Can it just be a frequency illusion, where you tend to notice a new-to-you phenomenon again and again at first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1 ? Eager isn't an especially uncommon word (eg "eager beavers" is a somewhat common saying), even though it's not used in most convos. I feel like "delve" is a YouTube phenomenon (as in "let's delve into this topic") as a weird proxy for "deep dive"…

My new frequency illusion is the phrase "ride or die". I'm 32 and I had never heard that in my life until I watched that show Cruel Summer and now it seems like I hear it everywhere, mostly on tv/ads/podcasts and almost never when talking to people I know. I refuse to say it because I don't fully understand what it means and when I do hear it, it always sounds a little cringey.

A Will Smith movie called ride or die came out in May and grossed $400M. Probably explains the jump in that phrase. I had heard it before but you only hear that phrase every couple years or so.

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#27
i compiled a list of overused words you can stick in a "please do not use these words unless you absolutely have to" antiprompt https://gist.github.com/swyxio/8ac555e88ad153764051012d2db27...

(we use these in ainews summaries so that we dont delve too much https://buttondown.email/ainews)

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#28
post #3
post #2

Can it just be a frequency illusion, where you tend to notice a new-to-you phenomenon again and again at first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1 ? Eager isn't an especially uncommon word (eg "eager beavers" is a somewhat common saying), even though it's not used in most convos. I feel like "delve" is a YouTube phenomenon (as in "let's delve into this topic") as a weird proxy for "deep dive"…

> Eager isn't an especially uncommon word I'd say it's very common, at least in my part of the US. It's one of the words I hear on a daily basis, anyway. "Delve" used to be a very commonly used term before "deep dive" largely replaced it. I'm sure there are a whole lot of writings online that use "delve" because of the time period they were produced in. As a graybeard, I'm personally still much more likely to say "de…

As a former academic in tech I'm tickled that you think 'a deep dive' is normative while 'to delve' strikes your ear as strange.

No judgment! I'm delighted, however, that language is so supple ("leverages domain-local synergies")

Re: Ask HN: Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to look for the source of analysis right now, but I recall reading a study demonstrating that a large part, if not most of the word frequency shift was caused by RLHF training done on data predominantly generated by people hired from lower income English-speaking countries which simply have a different dialect of English with a noticeably different frequency of certain phrases and expressions, so e.g. at…

There wasn't a study or analysis. It was just lazy speculation that felt good because it could be bound up in a "evil white countries exploiting the developing world" narrative. Where exploiting was "paying to do a job". It was submitted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40623629 Again, there is effectively zero real data showing this. Further, RLHF isn't likely to reinforce such word selection regardless. A mo…

Yeah I would like to see some evidence of this too. It's just asserted as truth in the article. Delve doesn't seem like a particularly unusual word to me, especially in the context of scientific abstracts, and LLMs could totally learn random weird things. How common is "it's important to remember" in Nigeria?
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