[torben-friis]

My company currently has a guideline that includes “therefore” and similar words as an example of literary language we should avoid using, as it makes the reader think it’s AI.

It really made me uneasy, to think that formal communication might start getting side looks.

[cosmic_cheese]

What’s worse is that this window might shift as writing becomes less formal and new material is included in the training corpus. By 2035 any language above a first grade reading level will be grounds for AI suspicion.

[csa]

> By 2035 any language above a first grade reading level will be grounds for AI suspicion.

Probably 5th grade, but your comment is directionally correct.

[Loughla]

I sat in a meeting with professionals where one person asked for the presentation to be reworded at a fifth grade reading level. He said it with a straight face.

I work at a college for fuck's sake.

[bluefirebrand]

This seems double plus ungood

[p1anecrazy]

Isn’t that “ELI5”?

[loloquwowndueo]

5-year-olds are not in fifth grade.

[sixtyj]

By 2035 we will live in the world full of TikTok videos where ability to write will be absurd to people as Not Sure in Idiocracy… this is hyperbole, ofc… but you know what I want to say.

[bonoboTP]

Whenever there are commonly agreed upon and known tell-tale signs of AI writing, the model creators can just retrain to eliminate those cues. On an individual level, you can also try to put it in your personalization prompt what turns of phrase to avoid (but central retraining is better).

This will be a cat and mouse game. Content factories will want models that don't create suspicious output, and the reading public will develop new heuristics to detect it. But it will be a shifting landscape. Currently, informal writing is rare in AI generation because most people ask models to improve their formulations, with more sophisticated vocabulary etc. Often non-native speakers, who then don't exactly notice the over-pompousness, just that it looks to them like good writing.

Usually there are also deeper cues, closer to the content's tone. AI writing often lacks the sharp edge, when you unapologetically put a thought there on the table. The models are more weasely, conflict-avoidant and hold a kind of averaged, blurred millennial Reddit-brained value system.

[jjani]

> Whenever there are commonly agreed upon and known tell-tale signs of AI writing

It's been two years now since such commonly agreed upon signs appeared yet by and large they're still just as present to this day.

[mh-]

Survivor bias. You don't know what you're not spotting in the wild.

[viccis]

Words like that were banned in my English classes for being empty verbiage. It's a good policy even if it seems like a silly purpose. "Therefore" is clumsy and heavy handed in most settings.

[torben-friis]

I’m curious about this (I’m not a native speaker). What alternative would you use when you want to emphasize a cause-effect relationship, in an engineering context for example?

“Most times A happens before B, but this order it’s not guaranteed. Therefore, there is a possibility of {whatever}.”

Alternatives that come to mind are “as a consequence”, “as a result”, “this means that”, but those are all more verbose, not less.

A simple “so” could work, but it would make the sentence longer, and the cause-effect relationship is less explicit I think.

[hmcq6]

I disagree with v_____.

"He didn't send the letter. The lawsuit was dropped."

"He didn't send the letter therefore the lawsuit was dropped."

Two very different examples. "therefore" in the second example communicates a causal effect from the independent clause that isn't present in the first example.

I'm sure one could argue that context clues could imply that same connection and therefore "therefore" is redundant but I just don't agree with the premise.

[viccis]

Therefore is reasonable in that case, though it still reads a bit clumsy. "The lawsuit was dropped" seems like the most important part of that blurb, so leading with it flows better. "The lawsuit was dropped after he didn't send the letter" is so much nicer. You get to the point and explain it immediately after instead of giving the reader information you have to contextualize after. "Therefore" just reads as pedantic and overbearing in most situations in my opinion (and I guess my teacher's opinion too).

[viccis]

Just take it out. It makes no difference. You set it up so clearly in your first example.

"Most times A happens before B, but in this order it’s not guaranteed, so there is a possibility of {whatever}."

[torben-friis]

That forces me to keep the phrase going though, which is my usual problem when both the A,B, and whatever are already long winded.

[viccis]

As I mentioned in a reply to the other comment, this often means you have your ordering mixed up.

As an example, here's what you original statement said (with some grammar corrected):

"Most times A happens before B, but the order is not guaranteed. Therefore, there is a possibility of {whatever}."

Here it is if you lead with the important outcome and provide the justification after, using a non-restrictive relative clause to add the fact that A often happens before B:

"There is a possibility of {whatever}, as, while A happens before B, the order is not guaranteed."

In my opinion, this is clearer in intent. It provides the important information immediately and then justifies it immediately after. The original sentence provides information without context and then contextualizes it using "therefore", which comes across a bit pedantic to me. I am a native American English speaker though, and the tone of prose does vary depending on the culture of the person reading it.

[hmcq6]

Therefore isn't empty verbiage. It's just communication, it's a conjunctive adverb. Therefore implies causation or at least some connection between clauses.

I could see arguing that starting a sentence or paragraph with "Therefore, " repeatedly in one essay is empty but tbh your teacher just sounds jaded.

[potato3732842]

English class is about as relevant to the average office worker's professional communication as art class is to a professional paint crew.

[viccis]

Correct. Pearls before swine.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It has been banned in pre-AI style manuals.

[tbossanova]

I write “therefore” therefore I am an AI.