Ask HN: Are we all starting to sound like AI?
With AI-assisted writing becoming more popular, everything—including blog posts, emails, and descriptions—now looks polished and structured.
Think of it this way: when was the last time you received an email with grammatical mistakes or improper punctuation? Every email sounds the same today!
P.S: This was edited with ChatGPT. Look at the use of '—'. So chatgptyish!
You can actually tell now days when it’s ai generated.
1. On LinkedIn suddenly everyone is an author and has so much expertise
2. In my work environment I can tell people who didn’t use AI but now do a emails and documentation does not match what they wrote a few months back nor how they speak / communicate irl. Thanks to it being ok to use AI (only some).
I've been purposely not correcting my mistakes in emails so people realize its me. I'm also tryin to write more informally. Or bad structure. Like too choppy. Or something
With a bit more than a low effort prompt you won’t get these ChatGPT artifacts. It’s more that you are putting no effort into your writing nor in the tool you use to improve said writing.
I've been using m-dashes for 20 years. I think ChatGPT writes like me.
This. I guess I have to stop now, though, to avoid being mistakenly identified with the robots. Time to revive the semicolon, I guess.
I think ChatGPT was trained on your writing! :)
How do you type em-dash on a keyboard?
On MacOS `--` converts to `—` automatically in most applications/text inputs.
Option-dash works too.
That is actually another character.
- is \u002d
Option+Dash is \u2013
-- converts to \u2014
Ah, thanks for the clarification! TIL.
Option-dash is an en-dash (\u2013)
Shift-option-dash will render the em-dash (\u2014), (as will --, if it gets autocorrected).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-... for those wondering what the differences are.
I enjoy writing. I have yet to use one of these tools to "polish" my writing, and I doubt I ever will.
As to the thesis, yes. I fully expect the world to sound even more bloodless and corporate than it already had. Invectives to "write for understanding" and to "keep it simple" and the tendency to turn complex relations into nouns had already put linguistic creativity on life support. The wide adoption of these tools is just the final nail required to seal the coffin.
Before you reach for an LLM, consider that our imperfections often contribute significantly to our humanity and that innocent mistakes and misinterpretations, while they can be the source of pain, are also the source of much that is novel (Harold Bloom wrote an entire book about this idea).
Interesting thought! I'm not familiar with Harold Bloom's works, but can you share the book title? I see a bunch of books by him!
I tend to manually remove GPT signatures like — so the luddites can only cry to themselves instead of moaning out loud about my AI usage.
Starting?
Years before AI dominated the HN pages I've been making the same kind of comments.
Responding to prompts :)