[D-Machine]

It is harsh to say, but we need to increasingly recognize that if your writing is largely indistinguishable from the (current) output of e.g. ChatGPT on default settings, it doesn't matter if you used ChatGPT or not, your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume, and something you most certainly need to improve. I.e. your colleague needs to change his style regardless.

This sucks, but it needs to be done in education, and/or at least in areas where good writing and effective communication is considered important. Good grades need to be awarded only to writing that exceeds the quality and/or personality of a chat-bot, because, otherwise, the degree is being awarded to a person who is no more useful than a clumsy tool.

And I don't mean avoiding superficialities like the em-dash: I mean the bland over-verbosity and other systemic tells—or rather, smells—of AI slop.

[handoflixue]

> your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume

Was this written by AI? Because right there we've got "three adjectives where one will do", and failing your own advice on "avoid being overly verbose"

[D-Machine]

It is up to the reader to judge whether my style is verbose, or if I could have used less adjectives here. The adjectives all in fact have different meanings, only "bad" is lazy, IMO (EDIT: and "bad" is meant to be obvious moralizing - something AI in fact almost never does).

Don't think that I don't hold myself to the same standards I am pushing here, verbosity has always been a problem for me, and AI verbosity is a good and necessary reminder for me to curb it.

[xwolfi]

Frankly, using "bad" was a mistake, because it encompasses the two other adjectives. "Your chatgpt-like style is vomit-inducing, bad and boring" <-- you see, why add bad in the middle, you already got that point from the two other insults, right ?

I think if you want to sound less like an AI, you should cut cut cut, and maybe write a bit more like speech, with sort of slangish structures etc, people won't doubt you anymore.

Good luck !

[D-Machine]

This is subjective, lots of people think they sound smart / better by avoiding moral phrases like "bad" or "evil", but often this is just pointless class signaling, limp-wristed relativism, or simple cowardice / excessive agreeableness.

To counter that kind of nonsense is why we have phrases like "X is bad and you should feel bad for supporting it", and "X is bad, actually", as they don't beat around the bush and simply make one's moral statements clear. Maybe I should have said "repetitive, unpleasant to read, and just bad" to make this usage clearer, but, hey, one can only spend so much time crafting quick comments on HN.