Hacker News Reader

Comment by polishdude20 | Hacker News Reader

I think what gives it away is when answering questions, chat GPT first repeats the question. For example the question is: "If you were to be found in a small blue room with your favorite food, what would you do?".

The answer would start with: "if I were found in a small blue room with my favorite food I would..."

Normal people don't usually talk like that.

View on HN

Television presenters and interview subjects are coached to answer questions like that, repeating the question before answering it- I wonder if that's where ChatGPT picked up that particular habit.

Comedians too, though for a different reason -- gives them time to think of a funny response.

It seems sensible to me, as a defense against someone taking your answer out of context and splicing it with a different question to make you look bad.

It also helps editors later be more flexible with the format... if someone wants to reuse the insight you taped in a new medium (say, they want to put it in a documentary) they might want to have you saying the whole thing rather than to provide the context of "there is also an interviewer".

The Song Exploder podcast does this very well; each episode is recorded as an interview between the host and the artist, but because the artist is answering the questions with a restatement of the question, they can edit it so that it just sounds like the artist talking through their project (you almost never hear the host ask a question).

Pageant and spelling bee contestants aside..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com