Obviously we cannot verifiably prove this, which is why it's called the em-dash conspiracy, however it is an interesting change at the very least.
eterm · 9h ago
Every time em-dash is discussed, there are floods of people who swear blindly they always previously used em-dash all the time.
But the numbers don't lie. Before LLMs, em-dash usage in online text was minimal.
Whether it's now actual GPT output or people emulating GPT, is a different difficult question.
guywithahat · 7h ago
Sorry if I'm the 40th person to post this repo, that didn't occur to me until I saw your phrasing.
I do agree though, ChatGPT and AI all have common ways of speaking, and they use a lot more punctuation than most people.
Trasmatta · 9h ago
I'm convinced that the majority of people who claim that they used the em dash actually just used a hyphen - with spaces and everything.
It's also not just the presence of the em dash for me. You combine it with perfect grammar and the predictable "tone", and ChatGPT answers are extremely predictable.
Obviously we cannot verifiably prove this, which is why it's called the em-dash conspiracy, however it is an interesting change at the very least.
But the numbers don't lie. Before LLMs, em-dash usage in online text was minimal.
Whether it's now actual GPT output or people emulating GPT, is a different difficult question.
I do agree though, ChatGPT and AI all have common ways of speaking, and they use a lot more punctuation than most people.
It's also not just the presence of the em dash for me. You combine it with perfect grammar and the predictable "tone", and ChatGPT answers are extremely predictable.