Post #1512893

2026-04-21 20:20 UTC

Just read some conversations on reddit about spotting AI writing. We are fully cooked. People say “writers using the rule of 3” is a sign of AI. Like when you provide 3 examples to set a pattern, and no more. This is just what people learn in school, though, because it’s effective writing. And em-dashes? Well several people have said that that’s a surefire sign of AI, because they don’t even know how to type them. Which is amazing because on most devices you just hit hyphen 2x — — —

Replies (7)

@sidereal@kolektiva.social 2026-04-21 20:21

Once again AI is primarily a problem because people aren’t learning critical thinking skills or basic computer use in school.

Open ##2162888
@julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social 2026-04-21 20:23

@sidereal the best ai filter ("does this text have something original to say") may offer a lot of false positives but even still I don't think anything of value will be lost

Open ##2162891
@brandonscript@appdot.net 2026-04-21 20:44

@sidereal hilarious because I used em-dashes in high school much to the dismay of my English teachers, and continued to do so for the next 2 decades before LLMs existed 😂

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@jackyan@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 20:59

@sidereal I like em dashes so much that before they were universal on the web (Macs and Windows displayed different characters depending on what computer you did you web page on), we put in a graphic of an em dash. Itʼs still on our server. Some of my thoughts: https://jackyan.com/blog/2025/12/here-is-a-blog-wound-up-and-ready/ I will never change my style of writing, so “AI” can get stuffed. We humans are in charge, not them.

Open ##2162896
@EricLawton@kolektiva.social 2026-04-21 21:40

@sidereal How do they not know that LLMs' language models are built from example text? If they hadn't found lots of example —s, they wouldn't be using them. @blogdiva

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@cian@post.lurk.org 2026-04-21 22:43

@sidereal Just treat all bad writing as if it was written by AI. That way you'll catch all AI writing, and your false positives probably deserved it.

Open ##2162900
@piglet@jorts.horse 2026-04-22 13:35

@sidereal i threw up my hands at "it's not , it's " being presented as an AI tell. sure, jan.

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