To Delve Or Not To Delve: Y Combinator's Paul Graham Kicks Up A Storm After Receiving A Pitch Allegedly Written Using ChatGPT

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has kicked up a storm on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, by alleging that a pitch he received via email was possibly written using OpenAI's ChatGPT.

What Happened: Graham took to X to post a theory he had about a pitch email. He thinks that the pitch was written using ChatGPT and not by the sender.

But how did Graham even arrive at that conclusion? His theory is based on the use of the word "delve."

That kicked the hornet's nest and Graham was slammed by X users. Reactions ranged from people digging up the colonial past to its wider usage in countries like Nigeria.

People who have learnt English in the countries which have British colonial past – this is exactly how we learnt English.

'Delve' is a normal word which we speak.

There is no sense of what word is archaic/out of fashion and what's not!

Often times when I speak English with…

— Osho, ओशो (@oshosidhant) April 8, 2024

You should take educational background into consideration at times.

Folks from certain parts of the world use certain words like "delve" in their sentences. I can tell you for free that Nigerians do. I do. A lot of immigrants who studied under the British system do.

— Ovie (@OvieO) April 8, 2024

"delve" or "delve into" is a very common word in Nigeria and for Nigerians. Words like expatiate too which might not be common are used daily by many Nigerians

— uchi uchibeke (@uchiuchibeke) April 8, 2024

However, Graham reiterated that there's an analysis that points to signs that the sudden rise in the use of "delve" coincided with ChatGPT's surge in popularity.

My point here is not that I dislike "delve," though I do, but that it's a sign that text was written by ChatGPT. pic.twitter.com/2i3GUgynuL

— Paul Graham (@paulg) April 7, 2024

The analysis notes that ChatGPT tends to overuse words like "delve," and Graham spotted this in the pitch he received.

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But why is this bad? Graham says that it's not a commonly used word.

See Also: OpenAI Rolls Out ‘Majorly Improved’ GPT-4 Turbo Model Just As Google’s Gemini Gets A Boost

"No one uses it in spoken English. It’s one of those words like ‘burgeoning' that people only use when they’re writing and want to sound clever."

No one uses it in spoken English. It's one of those words like "burgeoning" that people only use when they're writing and want to sound clever.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) April 7, 2024

Why It Matters: The arrival of ChatGPT and other AI tools has led to an increasing number of incidents where researchers and authors of papers use the output generated by these AI chatbots without caring enough to edit out instances of overused words like "delve," "captivate," "tapestry," to name a few.

In some cases, researchers have seemingly pasted ChatGPT-generated text, including the "Regenerate response" button's text, without caring enough to see what they are doing.

Graham, on his part, says "It feels like being sent object code instead of source code," which makes the pitch feel less authentic.

One reason I dislike being sent stuff written by ChatGPT is that it feels like being sent object code instead of source code. The source code was the prompts.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) April 8, 2024

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