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Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

arxiv.org

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Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#41

Post by bastawhiz »

Animats wrote: post #14

Their list: delves crucial potential these significant important They're not the first to make this observation. Others have picked up that LLM's like the word "delves". LLMs are trained on texts which contain much marketing material. So they tend to use some marketing words when generating pseudo-academic content. No surprise there. I'm surprised it's not worse. What happens if you use a prompt containing "Write in…

I've noticed "on this journey" and it's becoming painful to read. It's infuriatingly common and such a tell

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#42

Post by knodi123 »

cortesoft wrote: post #35
noizejoy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is an old partner “Old” might be intended to mean “former” or “ex”, which could be as recent as merely weeks ago. (i.e. ESL / lost in translation issue).

I took it to mean ex, but even if it was only a week ago, for a tool to become essential within a year of existing is pretty crazy.

No kidding... but it did. I have an aunt who's an editor, and she was basically put out of business by chatgpt. She still gets paid by the same people for the same work, but her rate has been slashed, and since she has no interest in using chatgpt, she'll never make it up in volume.

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#45

Post by userbinator »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #13

It won't take long before it's possible to mask LLM use by making the text sound more human like, without the excess vocab. The leap from how the LLMs write now to how a professional sounding scientist might write their paper is probably not that big. Its possible now to train them on your own writing style.

Given how many people can't seem to distinguish between LLM output and an actual human, and how many actual humans I've interacted with who I only later realised were actually human, I think it won't be long before humans who can distinguish and write distinctively are a minority.

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#46

Post by [deleted] »

lioeters wrote: post #3

> We study vocabulary changes in 14 million PubMed abstracts from 2010-2024, and show how the appearance of LLMs led to an abrupt increase in the frequency of certain style words. "Delving".. Sounds like the authors might have used an LLM while writing this paper as well.

[deleted]

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#47

Post by kccqzy »

mcmcmc wrote: post #33

This just makes me think how now, more than ever, it really pays to develop your own distinctive writing voice. It’s not just a way to make yourself stand out, but given how much the way you write can influence your thought process, I worry that all the students ChatGPTing their way through language arts classes will be ultimately more susceptible to groupthink and online influence campaigns.

Developing such a voice really requires you to read other writing voices minimally lest you be influenced by other voices. I think outside of news, I would be perfectly happy reading only pre-2022 publications. I just don't know how sustainable this is.

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#48

Post by viccis »

josephg wrote: post #21
AlienRobot wrote: post #15

This is so disappointing.

Eh. Its a tool, just like a calculator, a computer or a drug. Just like everything else that has potency, you can use it well or poorly. I got some help from ChatGPT while writing a recent paper. At one point while writing, I couldn't find a straightforward way to express myself. I was stuck - and then every attempt at writing the same paragraph came out worse than the last. Eventually I gave my draft to chatgpt and…

So you plagiarized for your paper? I mean, people seem to be in agreement that studios using visual AI generated art that draws from existing works is plagiarism, so how did you not commit academic fraud? Did you consider that encountering challenges with expressing yourself and overcoming them is the pedagogical purpose for papers like that?

I am assuming your paper was for a class, given your comparison to calculators in a classroom. If not, then my point does not apply.

>Our teachers at the time justified "no calculator" policies by saying "You won't have a calculator in your pocket when you're going through life!". And, well, that turned out to be very wrong.

The only time we weren't allowed to use calculators was for things like arithmetic and fraction manipulation. It would indeed be absurd to have to consult a calculator for every numerical step you have to take in math work for subsequent years, so I think your teachers were right.

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#49

Post by leumassuehtam »

Retr0id wrote: post #25

It's also possible that humans are starting to sound more like LLMs too, due to reading (wittingly or otherwise) more LLM output.

It's easy to notice, even on this website, when a comment starts with "It's worth noting that...". It sounds very LLM-esque.

Re: Delving into ChatGPT usage in academic writing through excess vocabulary

#50

Post by SoftTalker »

daemonologist wrote: post #23
usef- wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised people make such a big deal out of "delving", it doesn't seem rare. Maybe it was less common in the US than elsewhere? (and do I have to deliberately avoid it now, to avoid sounding like AI?)

I think it's not an extraordinarily rare word in the US, but it does feel to me more at home in a blog post or business strategy-ish document than a PubMed abstract. People are making a big deal of it just because the signal is so strong (25x more common now than in 2022).

Yes, it's a bullshit business buzzword. It shows up because the LLMs are trained on a lot of corporate word salad.
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