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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

#51

Post by markerz »

kccqzy wrote: post #47
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.

I disagree, I think a successful writing voice involves reading a lot of different styles and picking the elements that really speak to you.

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

#52

Post by josephg »

viccis wrote: post #48
josephg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 calculat…

> So you plagiarized for your paper?

I don't think I did. And no, it wasn't for a class. Please be more considered before throwing out accusations of academic misconduct. That is a very heavy term.

Anyway, I don't think what I did is any more "academic misconduct" than using Grammerly is academic misconduct. They're both uses of LLMs, sure. But the uses are different and we need to start differentiating them. If you think AI generated art is plagerism, would you therefore conclude that photoshop's content aware fill is plagerism, since it uses the same AI models? Or Apple's smart selection tool?

> The only time we weren't allowed to use calculators was for things like arithmetic and fraction manipulation. [...] so I think your teachers were right.

(Emphasis mine)

Seems pretty strange to assume my teachers were right given you have no idea what country I went to school in or what their policy was on calculators.

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

#54

Post by jdoe2020 »

viccis wrote: post #48
josephg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 calculat…

Well for the studios the art is the product. For researchers the ideas and data are the product and the writing is packaging. It's not a perfect analogy but it gets across why I personally don't get up in arms about this. Provided the findings aren't being changed does it really matter? Sometimes chatgpt is a useful editor for flow in the same way you'd ask a colleague or spouse.

And If it levels the playing field between native English speakers and foreigners that is good in my book.

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

#55

Post by doe_eyes »

> We show that the appearance of LLM-based writing assistants has had an unprecedented impact in the scientific literature, surpassing the effect of major world events such as the Covid pandemic.

I'm not quite sure this follows. At the very least, I think they should also consider the possibility of social contagion: if some of your colleagues start using a new word in work-related writing, you usually pick that up. The spread of "delve" was certainly bootstrapped by ChatGPT, but I'm not sure that the use of LLMs is the only possible explanation for its growing popularity.

Even in the pre-ChatGPT days, it was common for a new term to come out of nowhere and then spread like a wildfire in formal writing. "Utilize" for "use", etc.

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

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

nicce wrote: post #29
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…

Traditional grammar correction applications usually drop the "important" words as well and suggests something else.

If you're interested in writing more clearly, avoiding jargon and verbosity, have a look at Essays on CIA Writing

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3894798/CIA-RDP78-009...

Despite being published in 1962, I find has a lot of advice that still works today.

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

#58

Post by touisteur »

SoftTalker wrote: post #50
daemonologist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might rather be because of who is (was) doing the HF of RLFH, or where most big moat builders went https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/16/techscape...

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

#59

Post by neilwilson »

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.

It's already possible. Upload your text and one you want it to look like, then instruct chatGPT4o to rewrite the first text so it follows the word structure, form and layout of the second one.

Then run the whole lot through Grammarly in academic mode to get rid of flowery words and tortuous structures.

Too many academic papers try to impress with complex language rather than explaining what needs to be explained in a pithy and succinct manner.

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

#60

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Hizonner wrote: post #32
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 use at least four of those pretty heavily, and I suspect that I'm in the top quartile in terms of using at least three of them. I guess I'm going to be queued for deactivation now.

If you only note your significant thoughts, marking them as as much is okay. That filter is what AIs lack.

On the upside, the advent of AI has made both vendor selection and project winning simpler. For the former, I can filter within seconds. For the latter, showing examples of competitors’ AI-derived speech is enough to get them eliminated.

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