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by JoshTriplett 612 days ago
> also we see what I call 'word of the week' where whichever 'AI' engine seems to get hung up on a particular English word which is often an unusual one and uses it at every opportunity

So do humans. Many people have pet phrases or words that they use unusually often compared to others.

3 comments

In the mid 90s (yes I’m dating myself here. :P) I had a classmate who was such a big NIN fan that she worked the phrase “downward spiral” into every single essay she wrote for the entire year.
People have their favorite phrases or words, but also as readers we fixate on words that we don't personally use, and project that onto the writer.

But as a second language learner, you notice that people get stuck on particular words during writing sessions. If I run into a very unusual (and unnecessary) word, I know they're going to use it again within a page or two, maybe once after that, then never again.

I blame it on the writer remembering a cool word, or finding a cool word in a thesaurus, then that word dropping out of their active vocabulary after they tried it out a couple times. There's probably an analogue in LLMs, if just because that makes unusual words more likely to repeat themselves in a particular passage.

I do this when I write, to the point where I have to go back and edit myself after using a slightly unusual word several times in quick succession.

I think words I've used recently are easier to access, as if there's a cache for items recently retrieved from deeper layers of memory.

No cap.