Science Memes @mander.xyz fossilesque @mander.xyz 2d ago

The past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever

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As a person who is intrigued in linguistics, I wonder how AI LLMs will affect real languages. I wonder if there is any research papers on this.
- I dunno. If people can’t be bothered to write stuff anymore, I doubt they will be bothered to read it either. Also, the model deviates towards the mean by its very design.
  
  If people can't be bothered to write anymore, then I will be very picky about what I read. I will probably do more research and make sure it is someone I trust to have written it themselves not relied on trash machines.
  
  I've been picky about what I read ever since human written slop seemed to peak in the late 2010's, articles written by humans to appeal to search engines are almost just as worthless as AI slop.
  
  This volume of garbage is certainly much more concerning, though.
- Paging @lvxferre@mander.xyz :)
- I'm not aware of any paper about this; specially with how recent LLMs are, it's kind of hard to detect tendencies.
  
  That said, if I had to take a guess, the impact of LLMs in language will be rather subtle:
  
  Some words will become more common because bots use them a lot, and people become more aware of those words. "Delve" comes to my mind. (Urgh. I hate this word.)
  
  Swearing will become more common too. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw an uptick of "fuck" and "shit" after ChatGPT was released. That's because those bot don't swear, so swearing is a good way to show "I'm human".
  
  Idiosyncratic language might also increase, as a mix of the above and to avoid sounding "bland and bot-like". Including letting some small typos to go through on purpose.
  
  Text-to-speech, mentioned by @Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world, is another can of worms; it might reinforce non-common pronunciations until they become common. This should not be a big issue e.g. in Italian (that uses a mostly regular spelling), but it might be noticeable in English.
- Not quite the same, but I'm waiting for the day when people will pronounce street names like the GPS, instead of how they are actually pronounced. The street Schoenherr, in my neck of the woods is pronounced "Shane urr (yes, like the planet Omicron Percii 8, cause Detroit (Day twah) is weird), but the GPS says "Shown her". I'm really curious to see how long it takes for the computer voice to be considered the correct one.
  
  The GPS is definitely closer to the proper German pronunciation.

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