Why does ChatGPT love the word "eager" so much?

One of the funniest things I've ever heard/read about chatGPT "writing" is that it writes like a highschool student trying to inflate their word count on an essay. It typically uses a lot of words to say very little, and the style is hard to un-see once you recognize it.

Although "eager" isn't called out, a recent study of academic publications shows that the use of LLMs can be measured through word frequency analysis [1], finding certain words are disproportionally represented:

> We study vocabulary changes in 14 million PubMed abstracts from 2010–2024, and show how the appearance of LLMs led to an abrupt increase in the frequency of certain style words.

1: https://arxiv.org/html/2406.07016v1

Can it just be a frequency illusion, where you tend to notice a new-to-you phenomenon again and again at first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1 ?

Eager isn't an especially uncommon word (eg "eager beavers" is a somewhat common saying), even though it's not used in most convos.

I feel like "delve" is a YouTube phenomenon (as in "let's delve into this topic") as a weird proxy for "deep dive". Maybe a side effect of D&D's resurgence over the last decade, where it's often used to describe small adventures/dungeons...?

ChatGPT itself is eager, or plays the role of an eager companion. Why?

- it's conversationally-aligned with dumping large amounts of information

- it's an easy emotional state to hold unilaterally (without factoring in the other participant)

- it's unlikely to offend or cause a PR nightmare

- it's flattering!

i compiled a list of overused words you can stick in a "please do not use these words unless you absolutely have to" antiprompt https://gist.github.com/swyxio/8ac555e88ad153764051012d2db27...

(we use these in ainews summaries so that we dont delve too much https://buttondown.email/ainews)

I feel like ChatGPT is specifically 'eager' to help me, that may be an instruction to the LLM that overflows somewhat in to it's answers.

But generally, 'eager' isn't particularly rare in English.

It’s word use fashion, which LLM has influenced.

Not uncommon pre-gpt either.

Hence we suddenly started using two words “reaching out” rather than one “contact”.

Eager loading is a technical term with a specific meaning, contrasting with lazy loading.

Be the text came out of an llm the real question for the user is, does this technical term actually to this situation.

If it does, then it's an appropriate word choice carrying additional information.

> Lastly, I learned that children in Portugal have started to speak the Brazilian variant of Portuguese, as videos from there are flooding the Internet. It is interesting how technology affects our lives in more surprising areas.

As a non-native speaker of English, I speak and write some weird mix of British and US English, and I always keep forgetting how strong the words "bugger" and "cunt" are in each context. Here's globalization for you.

Another giveaway of GPT content for me are overusing importance adjectives like "crucial" or "essential", and of course an extreme overuse of enumerations.

I don't see that words often. Maybe it depends on the why question is asked.

What about "certainly" and "seasoned developer"?

The word ChatGPT uses the most is "apologize". Whenever I ask it to clean up a code and it either screws up the syntax or removes some necessary parts then starts apologizing until it is fixed or I give up. I specifically ask ChatGPT to stop apologizing because it becomes insufferable after a while.

For texts, it uses "furthermore" more than any other word followed by "lastly" imho.

The one that keeps popping up for me is "fosters"...

Also see: tapestry, testament, delve

And So

and thrilled

"Tapestry" is another frequently used word I've noticed.