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

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

#1

Post by piotrke »

I have used English as a second language for many years, but I have never heard of this word.

Suddenly, while talking with ChatGPT, it appears almost in every other conversation...

Is it because I talk (sometimes) about PHP/Laravel/Eloquent, and it somehow fixed the "Eager loading of relationships," or is the language changed, and I did not notice?

Did you notice other words like this?

I found this article about the word "delve":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/16/techscape...

Little off-topic: Lastly, I learned that children in Portugal have started to speak the Brazilian variant of Portuguese, as videos from there are flooding the Internet. It is interesting how technology affects our lives in more surprising areas.

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

#2

Post by solardev »

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". Maybe a side effect of D&D's resurgence over the last decade, where it's often used to describe small adventures/dungeons...?

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

#3

Post by JohnFen »

solardev wrote: 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 "delve" than "deep dive".

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

#4

Post by SoftTalker »

solardev wrote: 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"…

This, and ChatGPT was trained on a lot of web content produced by businesses, so in my view this may lead it to overuse "buzzword" words such as "delve," "deep dive," "leverage," "optimize," "synergy," "impact," and others.

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

#6

Post by inanutshellus »

JohnFen wrote: post #3
solardev wrote: 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…

I think niche words like "delve" get replaced by phrases like "deep dive" to accommodate ESLs, especially in big business and software development. "Delve" is the word to use, of course, but if you're going to lose (or annoy/insult) your ESL audience by using fancy words, maybe just being accommodating has value.

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

#7

Post by wietze »

Although "eager" isn't called out, a recent study of academic publications shows that the use of LLMs can be measured through word frequency analysis [1], finding certain words are disproportionally represented:

> 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.

1: https://arxiv.org/html/2406.07016v1

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

#8

Post by sdwr »

ChatGPT itself is eager, or plays the role of an eager companion. Why?

- it's conversationally-aligned with dumping large amounts of information

- it's an easy emotional state to hold unilaterally (without factoring in the other participant)

- it's unlikely to offend or cause a PR nightmare

- it's flattering!

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