It’s easy to spot AI writing, I’m told by various LinkedIn experts.
There are tells, apparently.
- Like using the phrase: “It’s not just X, it’s Y.”
- Not just that, but delving into words like delve, realm, tapestry, vibrant, or embarking on a paragraph that includes the word embark.
- Using acronyms like IYKWIM, if you know what I mean.
Other warning signs include:
- Deploying metaphors so labyrinthine they meander beyond four words (like a ship lost in the stormy seas of its own pretension).
- Knowing what a semicolon or an em dash is; worse—using them—unforgivable.
- Exhibiting structure, clarity, or, dog forbid, rhythm.
- Furthermore, starting sentences with furthermore.
- Daring to have a conclusion.
Naturally, I read all of this with the smug confidence of someone who has spent over three decades writing like a literate adult.
Until I began… reflecting.
Had I ever said:“If you are one of those beautiful, child-like, innocent, naive humans full of love & giggles, pink unicorns & multi-coloured bubbles, afternoon naps & long baths, and you think that within the financial stimulus package offered by our most esteemed FM on the direction and vision of our most loving & visionary PM, any business which manages to lay its hands on money that didn’t already belong to them is going to invest it into development, expansion, marketing, or moonshots for new lines of business, thereby creating wealth, leading to increased liquidity, which will be transferred downstream to vendors, suppliers, employees, and the communities in which they operate, and further down to labourers, restaurateurs, cab drivers, waiters, travel agents, airlines, railways, hawkers, hotels, authors, music producers, film makers, tailors, farmers, and as tax to local, state, and central governments, as well as partly be invested in stock, gold, and land, and the balance be deposited in banks to make its slow but steady way back to the RBI, and thereon to the government, who will spend it on infrastructure, MNREGA, social welfare, and other expenditure like defence, education, health, etc., pay close attention because this may be a chance of a lifetime for you amazingly credulous people: I got a slightly used riverside mid-17th-century pristine white marble mausoleum built on the plains of northern India by a loving but fratricidal billionaire with a penchant for tall pointy erections and large smooth domes for his second wife (of at least six) who died giving birth to her 14th child in 19 years of what we must assume to be a fairly happy marriage for sale, real cheap, if you are interested.”?
Yes.
Had I ever written a poem that contains:
“The black dress. Short. Tight.
Stepped into daintily. And pulled up
Zipped, shoulders showing
Like a mountain top somewhere
Far away, shimmering
In the full moon.”?
Sigh. Yes.
Did I once write an entire piece with three acts, a callback, and a semi-colon I was very proud of?
Regrettably, yes.
My blog has 1,300 posts. Most of them contain sentences. With punctuation. And—on occasion—thought.
Which leads to only one possible conclusion.
And I really didn’t want to admit this.
But.
Here we are.
I am AI.
I have been AI… all along.
I just didn’t know it.
I am become bot, destroyer of nuance.
An AI interpretation of what I (in my motorcycling gear) might look like as an AI-enabled robotic soldier. Absolutely horrid!
