I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.

I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. I'm calm. I'm calm. I promise. There’s this conversation that keeps happening, and... ok. Ok. This is the post that finally set me off. The replies pointed out something crucial, something that makes this whole debate even more infuriating: Some of us actually had to learn English. Let me explain. The first incident - and perhaps what I should have taken as a sign of times to come - was earlier this year. I received a reply to a proposal I had laboured over for days. “This is a really solid base, but could you do a rewrite with a more human touch? It sounds a little like it was written by ChatGPT.” Human touch. Human touch. I’ll give you human touch, you- Sorry. The intrusive thoughts were having a moment there. I’m back, I’m back. Here’s the thing: More and more writers seem to be getting these sort of responses, and there is - in my observational opinion - a rather dark and insidious slant to it. Stay with me for a moment, and I’ll get back to that. Part of the irony is of the flavour that would make our ancestors chuckle. Because the accuser, in their own way, wasn't entirely wrong. My writing does share some DNA with the output of a large language model. We both have a tendency towards structured, balanced sentences. We both have a fondness for transitional phrases to ensure the logical flow is never in doubt. We both deploy the occasional (and now apparently incriminating) hyphen or semi-colon or em-dash to connect related thoughts with a touch more elegance than a simple full stop. With a calmer mind, I became a little more gracious. The error in their judgment wasn't in the what, but in the why. They had mistaken the origin story. --- I am a writer. A writer who also happens to be Kenyan. And I have come to this thesis statement: 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. There’s a growing community (cult?) of self-proclaimed AI detectives, who have designed and detailed what they consider tells, and armed their followers with a checklist of robotic tells. Does a piece of text use words like ‘furthermore’, ‘moreover’, ‘consequently’, ‘otherwise’ or ‘thusly’? Does it build its arguments using perfectly parallel structures, such as the classic “It is not only X, but also Y”? Does it arrange its key points into neat, logical triplets for maximum rhetorical impact? To these detectives of digital inauthenticity, I say: Friend, welcome to a typical Tuesday in a Kenyan classroom, boardroom, or intra-office Teams chat. The very things you identify as the fingerprints of...

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