AI Cheat Codes

Have you ever wondered if people will know you have used AI in your content? This is becoming a consideration depending upon how you use it. If you are not using it as a learning tool, and instead as a crutch which you "copy & paste" from you're doing it all wrong.

Does anyone remember 'Data'?

In my formative years, I couldn't enjoy my evening meal in peace on a Wednesday evening, because my Dad would insist on watching the latest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Bore fest for 14 year old me!

Now, 'Data' was "a self-aware, sapient, sentient, anatomically functional male android". He was often regarded as more intelligent than his human counterparts. But the one thing 'Data' couldn't do was use emotion because he didn't have any. He couldn't read a room, was often blunt and unfeeling.

Most popular words from ChatGPT

In my opinion, this is the problem with a lot of AI generated content, it doesn't sound human, because it isn't. It is very formal language a lot of the time, which almost sounds robotic. Below are a list of words found to be amongst the most common phrases within ChatGPT.

Ask yourself one question, how often would you use such words in real life? We know customers and people in general, prefer clear straight forward language which is easy to understand. There are no prizes for big words here.

The questions you ask

ChatGPT and others work only by the information they are blessed with and a lot of this comes from the questions we ask. By design they are 'robotic' in the way they are written and that is because we are trying to get information from said AI/computer device. It is only by changing the information that we input will the answers we receive become more human. This will no doubt take time as this level of AI functionality comes into its own.

These very questions create responses such as:

• “Deliver actionable insights through in-depth data analysis”
• “Drive insightful data-driven decisions”
• “Leveraging data-driven insights”
• “Leveraging complex datasets to extract meaningful insights”

Other telltale signs

• Overly complex sentence structures
• Formal text which should be conversational
• Wordy and cumbersome
• Vague statements

AI and Proposals

This article has not been written with AI in Proposal Management Software in mind, but it is the easiest comparison I have, for the industry I work within. When we write bids and proposals, there are many steps which are taken to enhance the copy to match the customer's requirements.

Much of this is in the way we write. There is often this analogy of writing as if it is a conversation between two people. How would it sound if I was presenting a written proposal to someone in a meeting for example. It would be conversational, casual, with humour and anecdotes no doubt. This is how we form a connection with our customer after all.

How do we 'humanise' and utilise the benefits of AI

I think the best approach is simply to take any information we gain from AI tools and consider whether it adds value or not. If it does, we simply re-word it into our existing information.

It is similar to when LinkedIn wants us to use AI to write our posts on the platform. I don't ever want to do this because it doesn't sound like me as per my comments about it sounds robotic and far too formal. I occasionally run my copy through it (rarely because I know the outcome) but if there were additions which I found useful, I would simply incorporate them into my own words.

The power in bespoke

We all know that the power of persuasion is often in being unique. It is the way we win contracts, but it's also the way we turn heads when we wear a sharp suit or a prettier dress. That action makes us stand out from the crowd.

AI has much in common with social media - it's all a copy, bland and quite frankly boring. Everyone likes something which speaks to them, which attends to their requirements. It is the very nature of everything which results in success - no-one ever got anywhere by doing anything other than this.

I have regularly made the comparison with interviews and exams, the same rules apply. If you want the success for these two examples, you need to research, prepare and execute: as you do with all things in life. So whether we want to win a new contract or just to win in life, the power is in tailoring experience and information to the result required.

The great AI in Proposals debate

I'm not here to debate the issue of AI and Proposals or whether we should or shouldn't be using AI tools. This is more about how we present our copy in the best way so it seems less obvious. There are both advantages/disadvantages which we are all aware of.

The Future of AI

There will naturally be many improvements over time to the results from ChatGPT and others. But why does ChatGPT sound as though it is an average response of many results? Well because that is exactly what it is, AI generated information with help from RLHF (Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback) but again restricted context hence the results generated.

If you are using AI technology and you want it to flow more seamlessly alongside your own ideas and content, avoiding some of the words and phrases given here, might be a good place to start. There is always the option to generate draft text through ChatGPT and further interact with ChatGPT to edit the text in order to enhance its authenticity.

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