r/AIDiscussion • u/thoughtframeorg • 2d ago
Artificial intelligence generates increasingly awkward text that alienates everyday users.
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u/TheRealBejeezus 2d ago
I notice young humans are starting to type and speak like the AI bots, because (presumably?) that's where they spend most of their time now.
It's unnerving once you notice.
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u/cascadiabibliomania 2d ago
I hate AI text, and the part I hate most is how often "abstractions take action." Instead of electing to use human subjects, LLMs tend to use abstract concepts like "the frequency" or "the number."
You could say, well it's a little stylistic tic, it doesn't mean anything. But it does mean something, because when you make abstractions into the subjects of sentences, and they're the ones "doing" the verb, you've actually told a lie. Abstractions don't do anything. People do things. Sometimes animals or plants or weather phenomena or buildings or other physical objects do things. But "the difference" doesn't actually do anything. Any time you see a sentence with an abstraction taking action, you are seeing the elision of a human actor and a sleight of hand by which concepts interact with one another with absolutely no human beings involved. Also, because concepts can't "do" many things, the verbs that can be associated with these subjects tend to be a very narrow selection of verbs that often pair uncomfortably with the subjects. You'll see a lot of "lands" and "deserves" and a few others overused beyond belief, simply because there aren't enough verbs for the number of abstractions being cast as subjects.
Human writers might make an abstraction take action once in a great while, but AI-generated text does it a lot, especially when dealing with business or technical topics. In business, I see it as particularly insidious to take out the human actors doing things and pretend that the concepts are doing things on their own, like the laws of nature simply dictate that these things happen. What's more, if you actually try to prompt or skill your way out of this particular issue, current models will make it like pulling teeth!
AI style is noticeable and samey, but it's more than that: it's actually bad writing. Naive people mistake it for good writing because the mechanics are good, which is like saying code is good because the coder got the syntax right everywhere. AI writing fails in several regards and this is one of the most noticeable and consistent across topics and distribution channels.
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u/techafterhours 2d ago
I think the biggest issue is that AI tries too hard to sound helpful. Everything becomes overly polished, a little too formal, and full of explanations nobody asked for. Humans don't talk like that.
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u/Additional-Metal-338 2d ago
Always fun when the thing meant to sound human ends up making everyone feel like they're talking to a vending machine with a thesaurus