a subject that is close to my heart as I've been accused recently of being AI by someone who evidently didn't like what I wrote.

Admittedly it did make me chuckle that they thought AI sounds like a depressed character in science fiction, which was what I was writing. Poor AI.

I do use my share of em-dashes but hardly ever use the word delve, unless discussing something that Adam and Eve did, or if I were to write about Dwarves, Kobolds, Lovecraftian horrors and their worshipers because in those cases I would expect delving to occur.

An excellent question! First of all...

I used to use a grammar and punctuation checking browser plugin that worked in any text box. Among all the normal suggestions, it would always insist that instead of using a - dash, that it was proper to use an — emdash. I would accept the suggestion until people on Reddit accused me of being chatgpt because I wrote "too properly" with emdashes. So now you can't do that anymore.

> Could there be anything more insulting for a writer than someone assuming that their writing is an output of generative artificial intelligence?

Not sure if this is a bad thing. AI uses very professional and correct language (unless otherwise instructed) with well-structured paragraphs. If a system can't distinguish my writing from AI, it means that I'm doing a great job as humans sometimes make typos and structural/grammatical errors and AI generally excels against those.

Was this written by AI?

Mostly not. I am a fan of the em-dash, which a lot of people now see as absolute evidence of LLM usage. I occasionally think about swapping it out if I’m desperate not to be mixed up with an LLM, but in principle, I don’t really care if someone thinks I used an LLM to help me write something or not.

I work with a lot of non-native English speakers (with English as a lingua franca) and I’m more than happy for them to use LLMs to help them phrase their thoughts in a way that I can understand more easily.

I also sometimes use LLMs myself for low-stakes stuff, tidying up sloppy notes, etc.

I think it’s a bit Ludditical to want people to always write every word themselves. Should they also hand write it using a quill pen and ink they made themselves from oak galls?

There are some types of writing (creative writing, writing to persuade, etc) where the writing itself benefits from being hand crafted, but most writing is just an imperfect way of sharing thoughts.

I've definitely stopped using hyphens - so, yes!

AI writing will be impossible to distinguish from human writing in a year or two. The weird crappy way it writes now will be adversarially driven out of it in the next LLM releases, and probably gone in one or two more.

No more lists of 3 things, no more emdash, no more vacant live laugh love level vapid niceties.

Sometimes I'll read comment online that does the equivalent of breaking my "willing suspension of diabelief" by sounding just like a standard gpt reply. I even slipped up and commented as much, which is not in itself an interesting comment , just because it was so jarring to read. But idk what it is about reading something lexically equivalent to injection molded plaatic that feels so annoying, plastic is great! But maybe it's similar to the feeling of buying an upcharged "branded" Alibaba product on Amazon. I can't trust the reseller on the basis of their effort because I don't know them and it's just as likely they put 0 effort into quality control (thoughtful selection, validation).

But in the end, like the article implies, any comment could be "manufactured."

AI writing is good, only people who cry about AI are people afraid it will take their jobs, or people who think AI slop is the default output as opposed to the product of a human with shitty taste using AI.

All these tears and tantrums over AI are so tiresome.

I think the fear of being confused for AI is a generational thing. Wait until the first "AI native" generation takes over and AI is the primary means by which people communicate with one another and interact with the world, the very concept will seem alien and absurd.

Of course "writing" itself will likely become passe as literacy drops with attention spans, and most AI interaction is done through dynamically generated video and audio. That process is already underway.

No, most people don't know about this or care about it. People have other things to do.

Long live the semicolon!

One potential future I could see with generative AI and fiction is a sort of infinite interactive fiction where the reader plays a more active role in exploring the space. Maybe they have some control, or maybe they can just ask the AI where to look next. And at least in that case, it would clearly be AI doing the work. Not that this would stop people from producing AI novels, or anything.

In my writing, I just go for it. If someone thinks it sounds like an AI, what can I do? (I don't use AI for any of my writing, for the record. What fun would that be?)

I also love using em dashes properly, so I guess that's points against. Vim: ^K-M gets you one.

But when I write something like a letter of recommendation or, heaven forbid, a cover letter, I do actually try to write it so that it sounds human. If someone suspects that the letter was AI generated, it becomes worthless. And I don't like to write worthless letters of recommendation.