A secret poker game you can play on the subway

This article has a strong ChatGPT smell. Things like "in the world of", "let's dive into", the bullet points, "conclusion" section, etc. Anyone else have the same feeling?

Feels this way to me too.

Yep. Read the first few paragraphs and immediately noticed the stink. Using it as an assistant is fine, but you really shouldn't leave what it outputs untouched, especially when it's this obvious!

In section "Works in every major city!", the author mentions they are from France.

Given that, it's not surprising that they used an AI to help with translation.

I got that feeling because of adjectives like “innovative”. Thought that it might be impolite to imply that in the comments, and was relieved that someone already did.

The premise of the article is still interesting.

Is there a list of phrases and words to avoid, to not be accused of using AI? It's getting kind of ridiculous what people identify an "AI smell". I understand if the word "delve" shows up five times in as many paragraphs, I guess, but just having a "conclusion" section is a smell now? Using the word "innovative" is a smell?

I feel awfully sorry for kids in school these days. Teachers must think everything they write is AI, considering they're still learning to write effectively and probably like to use bullet points, popular phrases like "dive into", and structured layouts that include introduction and conclusion sections.

Sure, but the structure seems quite ChatGPTish as well, with e.g. the bullet points and section choice. You wouldn't get that by just faithfully translating a french source text from English.

You might also note that in their first blog post they use the French language convention of puting a space before their exclamation marks and in this latest post they use the English language convention of no space.

>Now I can update this blog and push to github, instant deploy !

vs

>I would be delighted to hear from you!

The sad thing is ChatGPT didn't invent that style. That was just the way clear, concise writing by skilled writers was at the time they trained the model. So now if you are actually a skilled writer who tries to convey ideas in a clear, concise way, you will appear robotic :(

FFS. I read it and learned something. Stop jousting windmills just because they seem like propellers on warplanes that are coming for you. Sometimes they are just windmills.

Why do people care about this?

I don't think it's any particular word or phrase that makes it seem like AI but instead the overall feel of the writing. I can't quite describe it, but it feels like it's been sandpapered of any emotion or author's voice and just feels banal. Compare the wording and voice in this post versus one of the author's earlier ones (https://experience.prfalken.dev/english/exercism/) and I think you'll see what I mean. Some of this, especially the 2nd sentence, just reads with the standard "wall of text without substance voice" that I've personally come to associate with AI.

As another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105143) notes, some of the author's earlier blog posts use a different style of punctuation so I'm willing to bet that they might be using AI to help them write or reformat some of their ideas. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but without some re-edits to the AI text it will take on that distinctly AI tone.

Kids who are still learning how to write still have a tone/voice/style that comes across in their writing and I think that's the particular distinction being made here.

Your writing needs to have flavor and personality, rather than reading like a business email.

"Learned" what, exactly? Anyone could make up a game like this. And it really does read to me (as it apparently did to GP) like something even an LLM could make up nowadays.

Certainly I've seen elements of this style in pre-ChatGPT writing. (Of course, it didn't just invent the style.) But I disagree strongly that it's clear, concise or skillful. The way that bullet-point lists are used here is highly distracting and frankly counterproductive, and a "conclusion" hardly seems necessary for a piece that presents the rules for a simple game. Entire sentences like "Let’s dive into the rules and strategies of this captivating game." are pure fluff here, too.

Agree -- especially if this was a post about something a real person thought of, but edited with AI (the author is in France, so it seems reasonable to use AI for editing; also it's a small blog that has been around for a while and not a content farm).

For some reason I think I would find it less valuable if the idea itself came from an AI, too.

The premise is straight out of Simon Levene's short film from 2005, "Tube Poker". The point-allocations are described as in the article at around 03:45.

- https://www.simonlevene.com/portfolio/tube-poker

- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818537/