Why the Em Dash Isn't an AI Tell

idiotmystic.com

3 points·zakelfassi··5 comments

It’s a flag. On its own, it doesn’t mean that the content was synthesized by AI, but if there are a number of these flags together, then chances are high.

No singular red flag means much in isolation, but it’s a signal that when combined with others can give a pretty good prediction.

All of my reddit profiles now admit I am a bot because of this myth - also I believe we are all bots.

Honestly, the best response is to embrace our inner botness. It's just humans being humans — before, they might've said "this is too smart for you to say," and now they've found a new excuse. So be it.

Oh no! I’d been noticing an unusual amount of em dash discussion recently, but hadn’t investigated why. In college my professors would accuse me of plagiarizing my essays because I wrote so much more competently than I spoke. Now I’m going to be accused of employing AI for one of the few practices I find too enjoyable ever to source to an LLM. Oh well.

I had a similar experience here on HN. One of my blog posts recently made it to the front page, and I ended up getting brigaded. I had to add a dozen AI-use disclaimers around the blog, not even the piece itself. It was surreal.

I get the anxiety about authenticity, but sometimes the witch-hunt feels more automaton-like than the tools themselves. For what it's worth, I've written publicly about my process ––how I use AI as scaffolding, not ghostwriting–– in my standing note on AI use.

The discomfort around augmented intelligence is fascinating + telling. I sometimes wonder if the same people browse HN on typewriters or pray for the next X-class solar flare so we can all return to rock carving.

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