Colin Gurrie mentions how the style of AI, called "AI Slop" is readily recognisable in his new essay Leave the em-dash Alone. I notice AI occasionally because it seems padded, too redundant, but I've never noticed the supposedly tell-tale "It's not X, it's Y," or the use of words like delve. I don't notice style much in real-life authors either. Whatever spell they are weaving must either just affect me without me noticing, or affect me not at all. I think some of both. I never noticed that Tolkien will begin paragraphs with short sentences when he is describing action, and break up longer sentences with colons and semicolons.* (The last few pages of "The Siege of Gondor" in The Return of the King, for example.) But it must work on me, because I hold my breath even now while reading it. I can't say that happens to me with lesser authors, though.
I am not a stylist when I write. I have habits I was taught about not running sentences too long, and using synonyms for variety. I am strictly Point A to Point B, and so notice AI Slop mostly when it is dragging its feet. I try my hand and finer writing at times, but it does not come naturally, because I do not revel in the beauty of writing even when it is good. So AI will fool me more often than thee.
*Earl, this was probably where I got the idea about varying the pace. But it's not a good example of what I told you then. Sigh.
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AVI, I found this article via a substack post by Arnold Kling on why the 'not X but Y' format is used so heavily in AI prose, and why it can be so freakin' annoying.
https://hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com/p/metannoying
CB, I read that and those people are smarter than I am. I will have to go over again tomorrow to see what else Hollis has there.
I struggled through some of it, and that initial antonym example really threw me as I had no idea of the definitions of the words, but the vibe I got was something like the discussion here a bit ago about how the same temperature can be warm or cool. When a room is 70 degrees we may call it either depending on the climate context of our discussion but that relies on an innate understand that warm is the opposite of cool even though the expressed temperature of the room is the same. Kinda of like 'warming up to freezing' seems to be a contradiction but most people would immediately understand what you meant during a discussion of weather.
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