This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've actually started to recognize the pattern of if something is written in AI
It's hard to describe but it's like an uncanny valley of quality, like if someone uses flowery SAT words to juje up their paper's word count but somehow even more
It's like the writing will occasionally pause to comment on itself and the dramatic effect its trying to achieve
Yeah it's called bullshitting. It's the way lots of people are encouraged to write in high school when the goal is to see if the student can write a large amount of prose with minimal grammatical errors.
But once you get to post-secondary you are expected for your writing to actually have content and be fairly concise in expressing that content. And AI falls on its face trying to do that.
Yeah, this is true! It likes to summarize things at the end in a stereotypical format
It's not a bad format either, AI seem to enjoy the five paragraph assay format above all other even for casual conversations.
The LLM isn't really thinking, it is auto complete trained so the average person would be fooled thinking that text was produced by another human.
I'm not surprised it has flaws like that.
BTW here on Lenny there are communities with AI pictures. Someone created a similar community but with art created by humans.
While the AI results are very good, when you start looking and comparing it with non AI art, you start seeing that the AI while it is unique it still produces a cookie cutter results.
I have issue with using AI to write my resume. I just want it to clean up my grammar and maybe rephrase a few things just in a different way I wouldn't because I don't do the words real good. But I always end up with something that reads like I paid some influencer manager to write it. I write 90% of it myself so its all accurate and doesn't have AI errors. But it's just so obviously too good.
You are putting yourself down unnecessarily. You want your resume to talk you up. Whoever reads it is going to imagine that you embellished anyway. So if you just write it basically, they'll think you're unqualified or just don't understand how to write a resume.
I've started getting AI-written emails at my job. I can spot them within the first sentence, they don't move the discussion forward at all, and I just have to write another email giving them the courtesy they didn't give me and explain why what they "wrote" doesn't help.
Can someone tell me, am I a boomer for being offended any time someone sends me AI-written garbage? Is this how the generations will split?
Lesson I've learned - email is for tracking/confirmation/updates/distributing info, not for decision making/discussions. Do that on the phone/meetings, etc, followup with confirmation emails.
So when someone sends a nonsense email, call them to clarify. They'll eventually get tired of you calling every time they send their crappy emails.
I disagree about the purpose of email. I end most meetings thinking to myself, "That last hour could have been accomplished in a brief email."
I think you're both right. A lot of meetings are one person talking and the others listening, that could have been an email. Actual back-and-forth discussion needs to be verbal though, otherwise what could be resolved in 10 minutes takes a week.
Unexpected pencil and paper test comeback
Already happening. My kid in high school has more tests and papers required to be hand-written this year.
And yes, TurnItIn legitimately caught him writing a paper with AI. Even the best kids make the stupid/lazy choice
When I was in college (2000-2004), we wrote our long papers on computers but we had what were called “blue books” for tests that were like mini notebooks. And many of the tests were basically, “Here is the topic. Write for up to an hour.”
And now my hand cramps if I write anything longer than a check. I can also type quickly enough that it basically matches the speed of my train of thoughts but actually writing cursive with a pen now, I get distracted and think, “Wait, how does a cursive capital ‘G’ go? Oh yeah. Hold on. What was I going to write?”
I pity the kids that have always typed for what their hands will go through on written tests
Machine learning tool used by people too lazy to do their actual job accuses everyone else of using machine learning tools.
Yeah that's pretty funny given the circumstances. "Our AI found your AI." Cool, so maybe none of this is working as intended. I'd be willing to bet nothing changes but the punishments for students.
I have it write all my emails. I’m so productive and everyone loves them. That or they’re also using ChatGPT, and it’s just two computers flattering each other.
I had it write an operation manual for a client I particularly hate. Told it to make it sound condescending by dumbing it down just to the point where I could deny it. The first few times it just sounded like a 5th grade teacher talking to a kid while in a bad mood, but eventually it figured out if it just repeated itself enough it got the effect I wanted.
Things like: user is to disconnect power before attempting to repair. It is vital that the step of disconnecting power before attempting to repair is carried out.
Someone posted to the class discussion form with the bit about being an ai bot still included.
I wish it was a joke.
I didn't do great in that class, but it was me getting 70% for not wanting to try and explain a mathematically concept in 500 words! They won't take that away from me.
I still have issues with such restrictions. I mean, why 500 words if you can explain it in 100?
To force elaboration while staying on point. Details are just as important to writing as conciseness.
Then give marks for elaboration instead.
I had a student write me a chatgpt canned answer, prompt included.
That's a good one. I once gave an assignment for students to write an original poem. One student submitted The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson and claimed it was his own. These were middle school kids so he didn't realize how famous the poem is. This shit has been happening forever. LLMs are another phase in the never-ending arms race between teachers and students who want to cheat.
And nothing of value was produced.
To be fair- that value didn't change much from pre ai.
I knew plenty of kids in high school that paid other kids to do their homework.
I know because I was one of the kids getting paid.
AI is just replacing good, ~~honest~~ work with machines.
Utterly unsurprising, given that very few students are actually interested in learning.
no way!
And those papers get used as training data for next iteration of AI. Reinforcement learning!
Students? Even teachers are doing it...
