Dr Wong Lung Hsiang: “AI Writing Style”: Who Did AI Learn It From?

In a commentary published in Lianhe Zaobao, Dr Wong Lung Hsiang, Senior Education Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, reflects on the growing tendency to label certain formal writing styles as “AI-generated”.

Responding to a recent The Economist article on how to identify AI writing, Dr Wong argues that many characteristics associated with an “AI style”, such as formal vocabulary, longer sentences and carefully structured arguments, are not new. They have long been common in academic papers, research reports, legal documents and policy writing.

He questions whether comparisons between AI-generated text and human writing drawn mainly from news articles and fiction may overlook these established forms of professional writing. Rather than inventing a new style, large language models may simply default to a mode of expression that prioritises clarity, precision and reduced ambiguity when users do not specify a particular tone, audience or genre.

Dr Wong notes that large language models are capable of adapting to different styles when prompted appropriately. What is often perceived as an “AI flavour”, therefore, may reflect an underspecified writing task rather than an inherent limitation of AI itself.

He concludes that the writing patterns now associated with AI are better understood as communication strategies long used by professionally trained writers, strategies that large language models have adopted as a default when generating careful and broadly acceptable responses.

Read the original article here.