I've always used a lot of semi-colons in my writing, especially in my technical writing. So I did a search on this pdf for semi colons, and there are 260 in a 264 page document. I then repeated this for the last book I read, Candide by Voltaire, and there were 507 semi colons in a 189 page book.

This seems like a witch hunt.

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rwmj a day ago | parent | next [-]

I read parts of it, being first hand involved in all this, and it seems like it was written by AI to me. If you used an AI to write it or help with it, why not just admit to it?

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infinite_spin a day ago | parent [-]

the argument was that use of semi-colons indicates AI usage..

what do you mean by "being first hand involved in all this"? what part did you take if you don't mind sharing, this was an incredibly interesting turn of events.

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rwmj a day ago | parent [-]

You'd know that if you'd done any research at all.

Compare this to Jeff Guo (NPR) or Henry van Dyck (Veritasium) or my contact at the WSJ. They all investigated this story, interviewed key people (more people were interviewed for the Veritasium video than appeared), and fact-checked everything with subject matter experts. The NPR story took about 3 months of work and the Veritasium video took 5 months. I was interviewed in total for over 6 hours across all of them.

These are real journalists who worked on these stories and they produced novel work and new findings. I have huge respect for them, especially after being involved with it and seeing what work it took to add something new to the story. At the same time they managed to tell that story to a lay audience which is another skill in itself.

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infinite_spin a day ago | parent [-]

> You'd know that if you'd done any research at all.

I'm not in the habit of researching the people who respond to me before I ask them about what their role was in something they seem proud of. I thought I was being polite by asking about it.

That's really cool that you were interviewed, which of the interviews do you think most represents your hand in this? I wouldn't mind checking it out. I also really like Veritasium's channel, that's pretty awesome.

	▲	bigDinosaur a day ago \| parent [-]
		In this case all it required was to follow the link to their blog on their HN profile just FYI. Although your question was reasonable either way.

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jstanley a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I pasted the introduction into Pangram and it said 100% AI.

	▲	infinite_spin a day ago \| parent [-]
		well also I read the parent's comment wrong, they just said colons, not semi-colons

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sevg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You know I said colons right? Not semi colons :)

	▲	infinite_spin a day ago \| parent [-]
		ah my mistake, those are a bit uncommon in my writing, I feel like they seem pretentious. i just use the semi-colons because it's closer to the way I pause, and alternate, in my thoughts.