Learn how to tell when you’re reading AI text: 110 puzzles

~ Catherine ~ 110 Comments

Now that we live in the world Open AI has made, how can you be sure that I, Catherine-with-a-C, wrote this sentence? 1

The answer is simple: artificial intelligence doesn’t produce language as idiosyncratic as “Catherine-with-a-C.” Large language models — LLMs — work by choosing the most likely next word or next piece of a word, so what they write is predictable, by definition. It can’t not be. 

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The 5-paragraph essay & the job hunt

~ Catherine ~ Leave a comment

My husband came home with a great story the other night.

One of his Master’s students applied for a plum job at a foreign embassy and was told she would need to write a sample business proposal based in a scenario they provided.

She had no idea what a business proposal was, so she called a friend who’d gone to business school. Listening to him describe the elements of the form, she realized that a business proposal is a 5-paragraph essay.

Lucky for her, my husband teaches the 5-paragraph essay to all of his graduate students — not 5 paragraphs literally, but a 3-part thesis statement that can be developed into 5 paragraphs or 50, depending.

Fifty paragraphs is fine, of course, but when you think about the demands on everyone’s attention in an era of cell phones & too much information, being able to boil something down to 5 paragraphs is a highly useful skill.

She wrote her 5-paragraph business proposal using the principles my husband teaches and she got the job.