Writing like ChatGPT

I don't write like ChatGPT. ChatGPT, in its strange, disembodied, globally-sourced way, writes like me. Or, more accurately, it writes like the millions of us who were pushed through a very particular educational and societal pipeline, a pipeline deliberately designed to sandpaper away ambiguity and forge our thoughts into a very specific, very formal, and very impressive shape.

This post by Marcus Olang, a person from Kenya, hit pretty close to home. When ChatGPT first came along, the writing seemed a little loquacious, just like this word, filled with 10-dollar-words with commas in the right place and em-dashes galore. Turns out, this writing style probably was learned by training the AI models, especially the ones by OpenAI, on writing from the erstwhile British colonies, including Kenya, India, etc. where formal and structured English writing (not speaking) was still in vogue.

In my early blogging days, I was teased for using hifalutin words, and a humor blogger even parodied my writing by posting a totally incomprehensible post full of complex words (think eschew obfuscation). But where I went to school, that was the mark of good writing. Essay writing in school was one area where I shined and stuffed my essays with any new words I learned. In turn, teachers were impressed by this style of writing and gave me high marks. We were never taught that complex thoughts could be written with simple words.

I recall a chapter in a middle school English textbook where we had to study a conversation over letters between Jawaharlal Nehru and George Bernard Shaw. The difference between the writing styles was never more evident. At that time, I wondered why Shaw was considered such a great writer when he wrote so simply. Little did I realize that was the mark of a good writer. It got worse before it got better. Imagine the state of my writing after I studied for the GRE Verbal. The depths of my writing fell to unfathomable levels.

It took years of reading and writing in graduate school in the U.S. to begin unlearning that thinking. My PhD advisor once warned that I was not allowed to use 'erstwhile' more than once in my dissertation. I still fall into old habits (as the early parts of this post indicate). But when ChatGPT arrived, I was surprised that writing with certain words ("delve"?) and formatting were considered AI. Heck, initially I was using AI to simplify my writing and to make it more accessible. But perhaps now, I'm forcing myself to write more plainly and not be tempted by big-ass words disguised as poetic prose.

PS. No AI was used to write or even proofread this post.