The BS-meter: Detecting Politics and Labour through ChatGPT's Language

[2411.15129] The BS-meter: Detecting Politics and Labour through ChatGPT's Language Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Computation and Language arXiv:2411.15129 (cs) [Submitted on 22 Nov 2024 ( v1 ), last revised 27 Aug 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: The BS-meter: Detecting Politics and Labour through ChatGPT's Language Authors: Alessandro Trevisan , Harry Giddens , Sarah Dillon , Alan F. Blackwell View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: What can we learn about language from studying how it is used by ChatGPT and other large language model (LLM)-based chatbots? In this paper, we analyse the distinctive character of language generated by ChatGPT, in relation to questions raised by natural language processing pioneer, and student of Wittgenstein, Margaret Masterman. Following frequent complaints that LLM-based chatbots produce "bullshit," in the sense of Frankfurt's popular monograph On Bullshit, we conduct an empirical study to contrast the language of 1,000 scientific publications with typical text generated by ChatGPT. We then explore whether the same language features can be detected in two well-known contexts of social dysfunction: George Orwell's critique of political speech, and David Graeber's characterisation of bullshit jobs. Using simple hypothesis-testing methods, we demonstrate that a statistical model of bullshit can reliably relate the Frankfurtian artificial bullshit of ChatGPT to the political and workplace functions of bullshit as observed in natural human language. Comments: 17 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in AI&SOCIETY Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL) ; Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) Cite as: arXiv:2411.15129 [cs.CL] (or arXiv:2411.15129v3 [cs.CL] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.15129 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Alan Blackwell [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:55:21 UTC (486 KB) [v2] Tue, 10 Jun 2025 07:11:59 UTC (192 KB) [v3] Thu, 27 Aug 2026 06:58:01 UTC (790 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.CL < prev | next > new | recent | 2024-11 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI cs.HC References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from

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