Marvelous examination of how to spot 2026-era AI writing, via the Economist - AI likes long sentences with less punctuation; “and” is its most overused word - relatedly, lists of three things, which drives up use of "and" as well - polysyllabic adjectives: “significant”, “increasingly” - scientific jargon ("rate-limiting," “parameter”) - nominalizations (making nouns from verbs: eg, “expansion” from “expand”) - ofc, everyone's favorite: "it's not X, it's Y"
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Replying to @DKThomp
>use of three > its not X, it's Y so something I've thought that was unspoken here, is that AI is clearly trained on management consulting writing?

Aug 3, 2026 · 3:22 PM UTC

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Replying to @monkey_reg @DKThomp
I think management as a discipline is extremely prolific in academic journals, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s just a bias in the data. I think, too, they have many high impact journals, so if that figures in to what it recognizes as good writing that would also make sense.
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