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I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

marcusolang.substack.com

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Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#421

Post by mmooss »

lupire wrote: post #411
mmooss wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might intend to compare 'that' and 'which'? Common advice is to use 'that' with people and 'which' with objects, though that isn't necessarily followed and omits many nuances. Use 'who' with people especially, often with other living beings ('my dog, who runs away daily, always is home for dinner') or groups of them ('the NY Yankees, who won the championship that year, were my favorite'), but never with o…

Elements of Style is reviled by modern linguists and writers.

Some don't like it and many do, and it's been assigned for decades. Just a few years ago I looked at a website that collects college syllabi and it was one of the most assigned books.

It gives clear, practical advice in a very accessible style and format. If you have any comparable substitutes, I'm all ears.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#422

Post by renewiltord »

throwaway613745 wrote: post #12
elcapitan wrote: post #9

Ironically, mistakes and idiosyncrasies are becoming a sign of authenticity and trustworthiness, while polish and quality signal the opposite. Earlier today I stumbled upon a blog post that started with a sentence that was obviously written by someone with a slavic background (most writers from other language families create certain grammatical patterns when writing in another language, e.g. German is also quite typi…

Maybe for writing, but in digital art circles if anyone notices a mistake in your lines or perspective or any kind of technical error you will get the anti-AI cancel mob after you even if you didn’t use generative AI at all. I would not want to be an artist in the current environment, it’s total chaos.

Social media artists appear to be bucket crabs. If any of them succeed, the remainder express reactor-grade envy and attempt to tear them down. Perhaps it's the relative poverty and the low stakes of the field that drive it to this end.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#423

Post by delifue »

I put some article content to Pangram. Pangram says it's AI

https://www.pangram.com/history/282d7e59-ab4b-417c-9862-10d6...

The author's writing style is really similar to AI. AI already somehow passed Turing test. The AI detectors are not that trustworthy (but still useful).

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#424

Post by jojobas »

erikig wrote: post #220
Timpy wrote: post #25

A lot of training data was curated in Kenya[0]. I would imagine if LLM data was curated in Japan our LLMs would sound a lot like the authors of their most popular English text books. Maybe other common Japanese idioms would leak in to the training data, like "ね" or "でしょう", ChatGPT would say "Don't you agree?" at the end of every message. [0] https://www.theverge.com/features/23764584/ai-artificial-int...

The Indian-born textbook author mentioned (Malkiat Singh [0]) had an inordinate influence on many Kenyan students because his textbooks were the de-facto standard for years. Its interesting how this influence extends as his students get to curate the LLMs on which the world has come to rely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malkiat_Singh

So twists of training data procurement bring us the best of doing the needful through Africa.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#425

Post by renewiltord »

radimm wrote: post #101

I wouldn't usually use the 'non-native speaker argument', but thank you! Just yesterday I was accused of sounding like AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46262777 - my default mode is that I oscillate between sounding too boring/technical, or when trying to do my best, sounding like AI

Your article is obviously written by Slavic writer, haha. Characteristic sound of Slavic tint to the prose. If it is LLM, then prompt engineering is good. I believe it is mostly human-written.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#426

Post by lazylizard »

kazinator wrote: post #402
komali2 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glomped. Oozed.

He vermiculated obliquely toward Helen, and from a yet comfortable distance mumbled a barely audible request for permission to ask how she's doing.

wodehouse loved ejaculated

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#427

Post by figassis »

komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

Focus on short sentences and simplicity is an American trait. It is a bit different with UK English. As a native Portugese speaker, I spent my time before the US doing exactly the same as the author, I could write well structured prose by the time I was in 5th grade. I grew up with a dictionary. My mother would come back from work and ask me for the list of "difficult words". The expectation was that I spent time reading and would have found some new words, looked them up and now needed to sync with her to see if I got the correct meanings in the context where I found them.

Then I moved to the US and noticed that even the books were sort of written in a way that required no extra effort. The English I learned while playing RPGs (with no speech at the time) was enough to read most books from the library and a dictionary was only needed occasionally. And everyone basically just knew the same set of words, youth and adults alike. I also noticed that US English has a distinct tendency of making up new words that are simpler and more intuitive than the original expressions. It turns things into verbs. This is why people Google, Tweet and Vibe.

Then I went to an Engineering College, and it teaches us to distill everything into it's simpler fundamental components. I like it, and I now want people to be as direct as possible.

As a non native english speaker, I've always had to speak and write better than native speakers, and always had to tolerate the "You speak/write really well, where are you from?". Today they no longer ask, AI is their answer and they judge accordingly.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#429

Post by [deleted] »

hsn915 wrote: post #408
GMoromisato wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He walked up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He strode up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He sidled up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He tromped up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" Each of those sentences conveys as slightly different action. You can almost imagine the person's face has a different expression in each version. Yes, I hate it when amateurs just search/rep…

Non-native English speaker here. I would not understand the last two sentences. Sidle? Tromp? I don't think I've seen these words enough times for them to register in my mind. "Strode", I would probably understand after a few seconds of squeezing my brain. I mean, I sort of know "stride", but not as an action someone would take. Rather as the number of bytes a row of pixels takes in a pixel buffer. I would have to ex…

[deleted]

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#430

Post by rippeltippel »

encroach wrote: post #312
komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

If you prefer a simpler style, then why did you write "the deeper I got into the world of literature" instead of "as I studied literature more"? Why did you say you were "pushed towards" simpler language instead of "I liked it more"? Why did you say "I feel the pain in my bones" and "drives me insane" instead of "I dislike it"? Why did you say "the big boy SAT words should pop out of the page unaccompanied" instead o…

> Perhaps flowery language expands your ability to express yourself?

What you call "flowery" is actually "expressive". Different words, although related, convey subtle differences in meaning. That's what literature (especially poetry) is about.

I would add that our words define our world: a richer vocabulary leads to more articulated experiences.

So, writing "flowery" sentences can actually denote someone capable of conveying the rich gradient of experience into words. I consider it as a plus.

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