How to recognize AI texts

Look at the picture. No doubt you’ll have noticed that the text there has been written by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The picture as such is human-made, however; made by me (with the help of Photoshop).
We can characterize 2024 in many ways, but we can say that 2024 was the year that AI made its definitive breakthrough. Of course, AI was already known among insiders and experts, and reports of its use had already reached the general public. Launched in 2022, in 2023 ChatGPT (to mention only one application of AI) had already gained over 100 million users, but since 2024 ChatGPT's website is among the 10 most-visited websites globally, and in 2025 it’s impact will only be stronger. AI has become inescapable.
AI can be very useful, but it can also be dangerous. As for the latter, often it generates inaccurate information, especially about recent “facts”. I noticed this myself when I asked ChatGPT to write a text about me, namely who I am as a philosopher. It was full of nonsense. It made me a professor in philosophy at a certain university (fake!); it told that I had written about certain subjects, which was also nonsense; etc. In fact, the whole text was nonsense. Moreover, it has also happened to me that people sent me mails written by AI, suggesting that they were written by real persons. AI can mislead also in other ways, and if you base your decisions on false or misleading AI generated texts, you can make enormous blunders. It can even be a matter of life and death, if you work in the healthcare sector. On the other hand, AI can be very useful, and it can help you save time and make you more productive. So, you certainly should not avoid using it. However, it is always important to know that a text you use has been written by AI, as just illustrated. Despite all its positive effects, “the rise of AI’s use has been matched by the rise in AI’s misuse to deceive, manipulate, and extort, creating the potential for significant economic and political implications”, as one website says.
If you have recognized the text in the blog photo as AI written, probably it was because of its woolly language. Nevertheless, AI texts are becoming more and more perfect, and maybe, in future, you cannot distinguish any longer AI generated texts from human written texts, or at least it will be very difficult. Even now, tests show that in many cases people see AI-generated texts as human written (and also the other way around). And some people simply have no sense of seeing that a text is AI generated. Of course, you can use an AI detector, but before you decide to use one you must have reason to do so. For in the end you cannot use an AI detector for every text you read. Therefore, here are some tips how to recognize AI texts without the use of such a detector.
As I read somewhere: “The magic – and danger – of [an AI text generator] lies in the illusion of correctness. The sentences they produce look right – they use the right kinds of words in the correct order.” And just this is also the weak point of AI generated texts, for such texts are often too beautiful, too correct. Such texts are often so beautifully and correctly written, that they become “woolly”, and that’s often a reason to become suspicious. But let me briefly list ten points that can help you recognize AI texts. (compiled from this website)
1) Repetitive writing: AI writing is characterized by repetitive phrases and ideas, while humans try to vary their words (I have even learned to do so at school, when writing texts).
2) AI texts are often formal or formulaic. It looks as if they come from a phrase book, and AI texts too often use common phrases and idioms.
3) Related to the former point is that AI texts frequently use certain words. Typical AI words are crucial, delve, dive, tapestry, furthermore, consequently, “not only but”, “in today’s adjective world of”. But there are more.
4) Presenting questionable facts and claims without giving sources. Don’t believe if you doubt and cannot check. (Should you actually always do)
5) Lack of personality. AI texts are monotonous, don’t use informal language, don’t use colloquialisms or slang, and don’t have a unique tone of voice.
6) AI texts are general and avoid details. They are not specific. Moreover, complex subjects are covered superficially, because AI lacks the depth and detail that come from first hand expertise.
7) The facts presented in an AI text are often outdated.
8) Absence of personal experiences, or they are formulated in a vague way.
9) Unconvincing storytelling or an incoherent narrative. No progression in a story and the story has no natural flow.
10) AI doesn’t understand sarcasm and the symbolic, non-literal meaning of words.
For this list, I used a blog by Satyo D., where you can find these points in more detail. Other websites list more or less the same characteristics of AI generated texts. Once you think that a text is AI generated, you can check it with an AI detector (there are many free detectors on the internet). However, also AI detectors can mislead, for also they sometimes make mistakes and don’t recognize AI written texts as written by AI or they think that human texts are AI generated. For aren’t there many people who use woolly language? Machines use woolly language because they don’t understand what they write, but isn’t it so that also humans often don’t understand what they are saying or writing? That they don’t understand themselves?
Happy New Year! (Note that this expression fits most of the ten points listed above. Nevertheless, it is not AI generated.)

Peace on Earth
In light of the ongoing conflicts and tensions around the world, World War I strongly reminds us of the need for international cooperation, dialogue and conflict resolution. While paying tribute to the fallen soldiers of the First World War, we also honour their memory by working for a more peaceful and fairer world. This presupposes an open and independent handling of history and also facing it in its entirety. Unfortunately, this is not possible in Russia, for example. History is used there as a political means.

So let’s not forget the lessons of the First World War when we take on today’s challenges.

Eugène Rosier, (President of the Foundation “Centre for the Study of the First World War”, Netherlands)

What I got from Santa

Dear Santa,

Thank you very much for your presents. But I am afraid that by studying these books I cannot make the world better but only worse.

Henk

 

What I got

- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

- Carl von Clausewitz, On War

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Christmas Wish List

 

The author of this blog. Photo taken by my father.

Dear Santa,

I am very worried. There is so much misery and war in the world. When I grow up, I want to bring peace on earth. But first I must study hard. Can I therefore get these books from you? Thank you, Santa Claus. 

 - Robert A. Seeley, The handbook of nonviolence. Including Aldous Huxley’s An encyclopedia of pacifism.  

- Gandhi, An autobiography or the story of my experiments with truth 

- Gene Sharp, The politics of non-violent action. 

Henk

P.S.

 To relax I would like to have this novel:

Bertha von Suttner, Lay Down Your Arms

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 

Random quote
We neither strive for, nor will, nor want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary we esteem something to be good because we seek it, will it, want it desire it.

Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)

A monstrous child. Montaigne

Monument for the more than 1100 patients of the psychiatric hospital in my town

 murdered, directly or indirectly, by the nazis during the Second World War 

In his essays, Montaigne often starts describing one or more typical cases in an objective way and then gives his personal view on the matter. Sometimes this structure that leads from the objective to the subjective is repeated several times in an essay, and sometimes it ends yet with a final conclusion. A simple instance is the essay “Of a monstrous child” (Essays, Book II-30). It begins with a detailed description of a deformed child that was carried around by his father, an uncle and an aunt to get money by showing it. The child was a Siamese twin with two bodies and one head. The case is followed by an intermediate comment and then followed by a second case. In the comment Montaigne says that “This double body and several limbs relating to one head might be interpreted a favourable prognostic to the king, of maintaining these various parts of our state under the union of his laws.” Montaigne is referring here to the civil war that is going on in France. However, he doesn’t mean it seriously, and it is rather a criticism of the practice of looking for omens after a calamity or a favourable event, for he goes on: “but lest the event should prove otherwise, ‘tis better to let it alone, for in things already past there needs no divination” and “tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward.” In other words, it’s safest to make your predictions afterwards.
The second case in this essay is about a herdsman without genitals, but who lived and functioned like any normal person would, including making love.
In Montaigne’s time, a deformed child was seen as a monster; as a divine punishment; something the parents wanted to keep secret; as unnatural, although they were sometimes also used for earning money, as in Montaigne’s example, a practice that continued (almost) to today. Although Montaigne called the child a monster, his message is different and typical for Montaigne. Contrary to what many people thought then, Montaigne stresses that also deformed born children are creations of God and are completely natural. “Those that we call monsters are not so to God”, so Montaigne. “From His all wisdom nothing but good, common, and regular proceeds; but we do not discern the disposition and relation. … Whatever falls out contrary to custom we say is contrary to nature, but nothing, whatever it be, is contrary to her.” (italics mine) And then, the final sentence of this essay, which is also the overall conclusion: “Let, therefore, this universal and natural reason expel the error and astonishment that novelty brings along with it.” Or, as my Dutch version of the Essays renders Montaigne’s words (retranslated into English): “Let this universal natural truth free us from the misconceptions and amazement that every new thing brings to us.”
So, in this essay Montaigne calls for tolerance towards what, on the face of it, for many people, is a deviation from nature and therefore objectionable. But deviations from nature do not exist, and so, what seems to be so, cannot be objectionable. How relevant his words still are in a world in which natural behaviour often still is forbidden by law and even can be punished by death, or otherwise still is discriminated in a “milder” sense. See, for example, how much violence and discrimination there still is against LGBTQ people in this world. And see also, how in many countries women still are discriminated because they are women, and in some cases even are killed because they are women.
The essay “Of a monstrous child” is typical for Montaigne because of its structure, as said, but it is also so because of its contents. As for the latter, Montaigne’s Essays are – directly and indirectly – a call for humanity, justice and social fairness, and against torture and cruel punishment. In his essay “Of Cannibals” (Essays, Book I-30), he let natives from Brazil say, when asked for their opinion about France: “… that they had observed that there were amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, whilst, in the meantime, [poor people] were begging at their doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that these [poor] were able to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set fire to their houses.” Of course, this is what Montaigne himself thought. When he was mayor of Bordeaux (1581-1585), in a letter, Montaigne asked the king for financial support of the poor. If it were up to Montaigne, we would live in a better world; a more tolerant world in the first place. Montaigne had a dream.

By the way, this blog shows a structure I often use: I start explaining the view of another thinker, like Montaigne, and at the end you find my personal view.

Random quote
Most controversies arise from this, that men do not correctly explain their own mind, or else interpret the view of the other man badly. For in reality when men most vehemently contradict one another, they either think the same thing, or are thinking of different things, so that what they consider errors or absurdities in the other are not.

Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)

Montaigne’s tomb.

Montaigne's cenotaph in the Museum of Aquitaine

Montaigne died on 13 September 1592. The cause of his death is not known, but nowadays scientists think that he died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Montaigne was first temporarily buried in the church opposite the entrance to his castle. His heart is still there. His wife had a very beautiful cenotaph made for him. When that was done after a year, Montaigne's body was transferred to what should become his final resting place: The Church of the Convent of the Feuillants in Bordeaux. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out and the monastery was confiscated by the state. The former monastery was now used for housing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the University of Bordeaux. In 1871, the old monastery building was destroyed by a fire and a new building for the faculty was constructed. The remains of Montaigne were temporarily transferred to the Chartreuse cemetery in Bordeaux and later they were transferred to the new building of the faculty and buried in the basement. All the while, Montaigne’s cenotaph remained in the same place, so first in the monastery church and then in the faculty building. In 1987 the building was repurposed and the Museum of Aquitaine was established there. The faculty moved out but Montaigne’s cenotaph was left behind and got a special room in the museum. In 2017, the cenotaph was restored and the hall where it was exhibited also got a new look.

This is a summary of what was known about Montaigne’s grave in 2018. It was known that there was a wall in the basement with apparently closed spaces. The coffin with the remains of Montaigne should still be there. But was it? Nobody really knew and how to find out? Then the director of the museum, Laurent Védrine, got the idea that it might be possible to peep into the spaces with modern means. A team of scientists, led by archaeoanthropologist Hélène Réveillas, was formed. With a micro-camera, they peeped through a hole in the wall into the space where Montaigne probably had been buried. What they saw surpassed all expectations: A wooden coffin with the inscription “Montaigne”. To make a long story short, the space was opened, the coffin was taken out and a few months later, after careful preparation, the coffin was opened, on 18 November 2019. The coffin appeared to contain a lead sarcophagus. The sarcophagus contained “a well-preserved skeleton, a skull with almost all its teeth, as yet undetermined organic matter, tissue remains, pollen and insects. … A paper contained in a flask encased in a metallic capsule, found next to the wooden coffin, turned out to be the municipal record of re-burial of the philosopher’s body in 1886.” (source) All this was a clear indication that the remains found were Montaigne’s. But in order to find out whether they really were, more research had to be done, like carbon 14 dating, DNA research and comparing the found DNA with DNA of Montaigne’s family. And then the investigations had to be put on the back burner because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But at last, a year ago, the results could be presented. As Hélène Réveillas summed up: “There is a bundle of clues, such as the dating of bones, funeral treatment (sarcophagus, embalming) testifying to a certain social rank. And the remains are from a man over 30 years old. The skeleton also revealed excellent dental hygiene, rare for the time, and a single missing tooth, mentioned by the philosopher in his writings.” All this confirmed that the man in the sarcophagus could be Montaigne. However, so Mme Réveillas, “some elements are not convincing enough. … Genealogical research of a possible descent of Montaigne to compare the traces of DNA found on the remains has not succeeded. Nor has research on hair or eye colour, for lack of existing sufficiently ‘reliable’ portraits. The 3D facial reconstruction is not more conclusive: The shape of the ears and skull do not agree with the face of the man lying on the cenotaph.” Therefore, the riddle who the man in the coffin actually is is not completely solved. Nevertheless, Mme Réveillas thinks that it is 80% certain that the man in the coffin in the basement of the Museum of Aquitaine really is Montaigne. (source)

During the years, I have written many blogs and essays about Montaigne and his Essays. I have visited places where he lived, such as his houses in Bordeaux and his castle in the Dordogne in France. I have followed Montaigne’s traces inside and outside France. I have also visited the room with his cenotaph at the Museum of Aquitaine. No wonder, that I wanted to visit his grave, too, if possible. But nobody knew where it was. But now we know, or at least we are nearly certain of it. I have visited the Museum of Aquitaine twice, so unknowingly, I have visited his grave already as well. Or almost.

Addendum
Video about the discovery of Montaigne’s remains (in French): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8z7llg

Word of the Year
Brain rot: Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.

Oxford University Press, word of the year 2024

Jumping to conclusions

In my blog last week, I discussed how rightist politicians and also the Dutch prime minister explained the recent riots in Amsterdam by the insufficient integration of the perpetrators into Dutch society (remember that Dutch hooligans, supposedly with Moroccan roots, attacked Israelian football supporters). I made clear that the situation might be more complicated than supposed in this simple explanation and I explained that, if it were a matter of insufficient integration (which is doubtful), the cause is rather to be found in the lack of acceptance of foreign immigrants than that it is a lack of effort to integrate by the immigrants (and their offspring, so the second and third generation immigrants). But how must we understand the view of the politicians who gave an apparently wrong interpretation of the behaviour of the hooligans? Several options are possible, but from a philosophical-logical point of view the whole affair is a clear case of “jumping to conclusions”, a well-known but too often committed reasoning error.
What actually is jumping to conclusions? An interesting example is given by Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp. 79-80): How would you understand the sentence “Ann approached the bank”? “You probably imagined a woman with money on her mind, walking toward a building with tellers and secure vaults. But this plausible interpretation”, so Kahneman, “is not the only possible one. [For] if an earlier sentence had been ‘They were floating gently down the river’, you [would] just have been thinking of a river [and] the word bank is not associated with money.” In other words, there is a connection between the conclusion you draw from the sentence and your framing. However, if a clear frame is absent, we construct a frame, often without good grounds, like in the example (for how do we know whether the sentence is about a bank building or a river bank, if the context is absent?). If this happens, we jump to our conclusion, for it is quite possible that the constructed frame is not correct and that consequently also the conclusion based on it is false.
It is this what happened in the political debate after the Amsterdam hooligan affair. Because people with a Moroccan Islamic immigration background are still often seen as not Dutch, even though they live already several generations in the Netherlands and are Dutch nationals (= the framing), and because the hooligans – supposedly – had such a background, the conclusion was too quickly drawn that the hooligans were not well integrated in Dutch society and that this explained their behaviour. As I tried to show in my blog last week, it is far from obvious that the hooligans are not well integrated. This conclusion was drawn too quickly, and therefore those who thought so jumped to their conclusion instead of giving proof.
Now it is so that jumping to conclusions is not always bad. As Kahneman explains (p. 79): “[It] is efficient, if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort. [It] is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high, and there is no time to collect more information.” In the Amsterdam hooligan affair the jump was apparently risky. During the years much evidence had been collected that the problem was different and the stakes were high in case the conclusion was false. If jumping to conclusions can be risky, why then people still do? Ignoring political (if not populist) reasons that may play a part (and undoubtedly were important in the Amsterdam hooligan affair), in short, one can say that it is a matter of simplicity, mental organization and mental laziness. (see Effectiviology, also for the quote that follows) Drawing sound conclusions is often complicated and difficult (one must collect evidence, which isn’t always easy to get and maybe doesn’t exist; and once one has it, it can be difficult to draw the right conclusions). Moreover, “our cognitive system relies on mental shortcuts …, which increase the speed of our judgment and decision-making processes, at the cost of reducing their accuracy and optimality.” So, jumping to conclusions seems the quickest way to get what you are looking for. And why do in a complicated way if there seems to be an easy way as well? But the belief that justifies a quick conclusion is often false and the quickly gathered evidence for that belief is often only gathered for confirming that belief, while contrary evidence is ignored (the confirmation bias). The main function of the quick conclusion is then confirming the false belief instead of giving a reasonable ground for a quick decision. Then the quick conclusion gives an unjustified feeling of certainty, but certainty is what people want. Nevertheless, jumping to conclusions is a natural phenomenon and we do so continuously, for it saves time and most of the time it leads to satisfactory results. However, it can be risky, and if there is a lot at stake (and in politics this is often the case), we should – no, must – avoid it, for otherwise it can lead to nasty consequences (and in politics to social unrest and unjustified treatment of individuals and groups).