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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

#71

Post by JohnKemeny »

progval wrote: post #62
silver_silver wrote: post #17

It’s possible this is caused by the editors rather than the authors. An old partner edited papers for a large publisher - largely written by non-native speakers and already heavily machine translated - and would almost always use ChatGPT for the first pass when extensive changes were needed. She was paid by the word and also had a pretty intense daily minimum quota so it was practically required to get enough done to…

Do editors even change the text in academic publishing?

I have never had an editor change a single word in my papers.

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

#72

Post by MrSkelter »

This apparent language shift is mainly due to Lon’s being trained on all language and not just modern American writing tied to post Hemingway ideals of brevity. Much of the language considered odd is standard British English, like the singular they. Also the use of wider vocabulary isn’t considered bad writing outside the Us where specificity is valued over simplicity.

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

#73

Post by Loic »

markerz wrote: post #51
kccqzy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It requires writing a lot, more than reading a lot.

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

#74

Post by silver_silver »

cortesoft wrote: post #27
silver_silver wrote: post #17

It’s possible this is caused by the editors rather than the authors. An old partner edited papers for a large publisher - largely written by non-native speakers and already heavily machine translated - and would almost always use ChatGPT for the first pass when extensive changes were needed. She was paid by the word and also had a pretty intense daily minimum quota so it was practically required to get enough done to…

This seems strange… this is an old partner, who had a job long enough to know that the only way to hit a quota to was to use ChatGPT, which came out less than two years ago? It seems strange that something that experimental became essential that quickly.

The company is a bit predatory in that they typically employ editors from poorer countries, so her difficulty was more making enough from it than meeting the quota - but the quota was strict enough that you would very quickly lose the position if you kept missing it. I think the situation before ChatGPT was that they employed people who worked very long hours to not earn very much. Apparently turnover was quite high.

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

#75

Post by silver_silver »

progval wrote: post #62
silver_silver wrote: post #17

It’s possible this is caused by the editors rather than the authors. An old partner edited papers for a large publisher - largely written by non-native speakers and already heavily machine translated - and would almost always use ChatGPT for the first pass when extensive changes were needed. She was paid by the word and also had a pretty intense daily minimum quota so it was practically required to get enough done to…

Do editors even change the text in academic publishing?

Most of the papers she worked on were either translations or not written by a native speaker.

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

#77

Post by lm28469 »

doe_eyes wrote: post #55

> 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.…

I have friends in academia (all around Europe and in different fields, from Spain to Danemark, Slovakia, Sweden, Germany, in economics, solid state physics, &c.), I can 100% guarantee you're wrong and chatgpt is now the default tool for the vast majority of people writing these papers.

It's not people picking up new words, you have to understand academia is mostly about shitting out as many papers as you can and make them as verbose as possible, it's the perfect use case for LLMs, this field was rotten before, chatgpt just makes it more obvious to the non academia crowd

For them not using chatgpt would be like sticking to sailboats while the world moved to steam engines

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

#78

Post by lolc »

leumassuehtam wrote: post #49
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.

I still don't know whether there was an actual increase in comments that start with "You're correct". Maybe it's just me noticing it more after Chatgpt came to prominence with its subservient ways.

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

#79

Post by josephg »

firesteelrain wrote: post #63
josephg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What else is the reason to write a “paper” if not for a class or journal or conference? Do you write papers just because? I don’t care if anyone uses LLMs to help write papers as long as it doesn’t falsify findings.

I’m certainly not falsifying any findings. I just needed some help finding English words to help make the math easier to understand.

I’m sorry for this, but if some members of this community are ready and willing to make claims of academic misconduct over the idea of using an llm as a writing assistant, I don’t think I trust this community enough to go into more details in this thread.

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

#80

Post by xanderlewis »

ben_w wrote: post #65
stavros wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few language shifts that happened in the past few years. The use of the singular "they", "there's a few" instead of "there are a few", the "like" filler word, etc. It's not that unusual.

And some of the post-LLM cliches are almost certainly purely human in their memetic spread — "moat" and "stochastic parrot" in particular come to mind.

‘Moat’ is everywhere now, isn’t it? I thought it was just me.
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