[campbel]

100%. I use em-dashes a decent amount and plan to continue. If someone wants to incorrectly assume it was AI writing so be it.

[bee_rider]

I use them occasionally and have never been falsely accused of being an LLM.

The stakes are a bit different for students unfortunately, who who’ll have their writing passed through some snake oil AI detector arbitrarily. This is unfortunate because “learning how not to trigger an AI detector” is a totally useless skill.

Generally, I don’t think we need AI detection. We need dumb bullshit detection. Humans and LLMs can both generate that. If people can use an LLM in a way that doesn’t generate dumb bullshit, I’m happy to read it.

[marcus_holmes]

I think this is a passing phase - academia and the education system will have to adapt to the fact that LLMs exist and will be used, and that therefore the essay is no longer a useful artifact as evidence of learning. This is probably a good thing in the long run.

[SoftTalker]

Same. Years ago I took the time to learn the difference between an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen and I'll continue to use them regardless of what AI does.

I don't use AI in my writing. If I were still in school would I be tempted? Probably. But in work and personal writing? Never crosses my mind.

[NoGravitas]

For me, learning the difference between em-dash, en-dash, and hyphen, and what each of them was supposed to be used for was a side-effect of learning LaTeX.

[harlanlewis]

I agree completely with this as a human reader - but do wonder about the gradual codification of these markers in systems that will have increasingly have LLM detection as a standard feature, as frequently and obviously enabled as spam detectors were on blog comments back when blogs had comments.

[brookst]

Certainly! I’m right there with you.