Write yourself coz you do it best!

It's sad that people perfectly capable of expressing their thoughts in English on platforms such as LinkedIn are still letting AI write for them. It's understandable when it's complex thoughts that need connecting and structuring to deliver a coherent message. But often it is plain content generated based on a broad idea. It's often just reluctance to put in the time and effort.

And AI with its typical articulation styles does well to leave its mark - talking in abstractions, giving fundas in third person instead of stating directly, telling us what something is not before telling us what it is, telling us what something happens to be rather than being something else, and so on. The patterns are so easily visible now that AI generated content has become difficult to read and follow. If LLMs really learnt from the best human-written text, why did these patterns emerge? It's possible they'll be gone in future versions, and perhaps they are already being handled to some extent in paid versions, but these patterns are sticky and persistent.

Yet, it's not just about the language and patterns. The beauty and power of thought sharing lies in its originality and genuine human articulation. After experimenting a fair bit with content from LLMs, I strongly believe they can't express like we do, and we do it the best. And we should do it when we can, instead of letting them do it for us and settling for something that we'd rather done better.

AI writing patterns - negative followed by positive

One of AI’s favorite ways of phrasing arguments is to first state a negative, like what something is not, and then follow it up with what it is.

For example, I asked ChatGPT to write something about the greatness of Indian culture. Its very first sentence in response was: “Indian culture is great not because it is ancient, but because it has remained remarkably open to evolution while retaining a deep continuity with its past.”

Another, a few sentences later: “India has never been a single cultural expression. It is a vast mosaic of languages, cuisines, philosophies, artistic traditions, customs, and beliefs.”

And then another: “But the greatest strength of Indian culture may lie not in what it achieved in the past, but in its capacity to absorb, adapt, and renew itself.”

And another: “The greatness of Indian culture, therefore, is not a claim of superiority over other cultures. It is the recognition of a remarkable civilizational resilience: the ability to preserve continuity without demanding uniformity, to encourage questioning without abandoning tradition, and to absorb diversity without losing a sense of identity.”

In my observation this is not the usual way we write. This style is visible in most LinkedIn posts which can be marked “AI slop” right away.

But as humans are reading more and more AI generated content, we are beginning to write like AI as well, and the style is creeping into human-written content, which feels like a degradation of quality if you are particular about linguistic standards.
What are some common free AI style phrasings that put you off?