back to article Yup, half of that thought-leader crap on LinkedIn is indeed AI scribbled

If you've spent much time on LinkedIn, you've probably run into self-congratulatory posts, tips on how to maximize your "grindset," and other business lessons from alleged thought leaders. It's tiring, but a study of such posts has pulled the curtain off the wizard: More than half of such posts are written by AI.  You know the …

  1. ColinPa Silver badge

    Is it self referential

    Perhaps the AI detector has been trained on Linked-in, so it says "I know about this, it looks like what Ive learned"

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Is it self referential

      Congratulated! It is congratulating the congratulations to congratulate the congratulations' congratulations.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Is it self referential

        They deserve the award of excellence for outstanding achievement in excellence!

        1. chivo243 Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: Is it self referential

          Yes, Out standing, in their field.

          1. Mast1

            Re: Is it self referential

            Out standing in its field.........

            So what is it, a horse, a cow, a sheep or an alpaca ?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "So what is it, a horse, a cow, a sheep or an alpaca ?"

              Nothing so useful...

            2. hmijail

              Re: Is it self referential

              Looking at the results, must be a bull

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Head of Feed Relevance

    Now, there's a job title that it has never occurred to me that I could aspire to. Perhaps I should get a LinkedIn account …

    1. Steve K

      Re: Head of Feed Relevance

      Head straight for the “B” Ark, please

    2. Ken G Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Head of Feed Relevance

      Formerly known as 'cook'?

    3. Mast1

      Re: Head of Feed Relevance

      Head of Feed Relevance : ie a hay merchant, supplier to those out standing in their field, such as horse, cow, sheep or alapaca. (See above)

  3. 45RPM Silver badge

    I’ve got way better things to do with my time than read the crap that gets posted on LinkedIn. Besides, the last thing I read there was some shite, purporting to be scientifically backed up (in which case, cite), claiming that global warming is nothing to worry about and renewable energy is pointless. It didn’t read as if it was AI generated - so either AI still has a way to go to be as stupid as humans or AI is now even stupider than I thought it was (which is oddly comforting - I’ll have a job a while longer!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Quite possibly an ex friend of mine. I told him he really needs to stop posting that nonsense on Facebook because potential employers tended to check there. Unfortunately the message was not received clearly. He’s more polite on LinkedIn but there is no hiding the sentiment.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If you're talking about the person I think you might be, he was a twat salesman whose modus operandi was to work at a company for a while and move on just as he was being rumbled as a twat.

      Worked with him in the '80s and again in the later '90s (IIRC - I've been asleep from time to time since then) . I think he might be retired now but he's still posting the utter bollocks you described onto Lunkhead In.

      1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        I think you just described every single salesman I've ever met. Can you be more specific?

        Just remember, the "Type-A" personality is named that way, because it's the first one they came up with, and as such, it's missing vital features, and doesn't work properly.

        note - personality "types" have, of course, been thoroughly discredited, once it was revealed that they were invented by the tobacco industry as a marketing ploy. What I'm really referring to here is the tendency for salespeople to exhibit traits of narcissistic personality disorder, because lying to people for a living is pretty much a natural fit for a narcissist. "Type-A" is a nice shorthand for this, though, and I shall continue to use it.

        1. 45RPM Silver badge

          Just remember, the "Type-A" personality is named that way, because it's the first one they came up with, and as such, it's missing vital features, and doesn't work properly.

          That's exactly what I think when I hear someone describe themselves as "an alpha male"

  4. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

    "Thought Leader"

    Sounds like some drivel spewed up by a LLM asked to invent a new job title for a role that is both unnecessary and useless.

    1. Paul Herber Silver badge

      Re: "Thought Leader"

      Can you sign off pay rises?

      No.

      Can you instigate disciplinary proceedings?

      No.

      Can you sign time sheets?

      No.

      Well, **** off then and think on that.

  5. Andy Non Silver badge

    "LinkedIn is too dull for the youths extends to adult users"

    This

  6. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Amazingly timely

    From the "Words Unraveled" podcast just this morning

    AI sounds like the average of every terrible LinkedIn post you've ever read

    -- Jess Zafarris (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqBYXlunxds)

  7. train_wreck

    Right now I am currently in between jobs. Oh. My. God. I. HATE. Linkedin!!!!!!! Like, i am looking for work. I am not looking for effing influencers. That fact that half of them are AI sewage is the cherry on top of the urinal cake that is Linkedin.

    1. EricM

      Along those lines ...

      ... the other half of these "insightful" posts on Linkedin does not generally have much more value than the AI generated crap.

      1. train_wreck

        Re: Along those lines ...

        They’re honestly indistinguishable.

  8. sarusa Silver badge
    Devil

    Does it even matter on LinkedIn?

    LinkedIn is just insufferable useless sludge even when not written by AI. Anyone who po-faced calls themselves a 'thought leader' is by definition a vapid berk. I suspect the LLM even writes better garbage.

    Well, I guess this steps up the overflowing quantity of sewage even though it likely doesn't diminish the quality on average.

    1. heyrick Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Does it even matter on LinkedIn?

      I'm a "thought leader". I think, then I do stuff.

      Usually a better outcome then being a "thought follower" - and since that following thought is often "oh, shit", it means I could probably optimise that down to "thought less", which even I'd agree with.

      But my head is noisy enough inside that I'd never be "thought less". Much more likely to be "thought what the hell do you mean 'juicy yellow paean', those words don't go!" and plenty of "oh, shut up you twat, you're supposed to be something something something what am I doing again?"

  9. munnoch Silver badge

    "LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors"

    "LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing [FULLSTOP]"

    FTFY.

  10. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    I don't get it. I provide a summary to an AI which turns it into a post. And an AI at the other end turns back into a summary. Can't we just send the summary? i.e. why do I get pulled up for writing in my "terse" and "detailed-focus" style in the first place? You've just shown that what I write is, actually, what you want.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Nailed it.

    2. imanidiot Silver badge

      No, no, if you write "terse" and "detail focused" that means you think about what words you put down, what they mean and use precisely the amount of words needed to express precisely what you need. That leaves no room for interpretation, denial and cherry picking. If you force someone to inflate their word count they start repeating themselves with variations, they start using more words than they need, they start to simplify and over expand on things. And then you can have AI interpret this into a summary while filtering it exactly on how they want so they can interpret your text exactly how THEY want, without any of the bothersome issues of what YOU intended. People who don't like terse and detail focused writing are imho best avoided in general.

  11. druck Silver badge
    Stop

    It's easy to skip over the AI generated text, but what really gets my goat is the AI pictures. Most are shockingly bad, and their overwhelming wrongness distracts from even the most interesting subject matter - JUST DON'T USE THEM!

  12. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

    With one exception!

    #fridayfloof by NZ Police!

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: With one exception!

      Also #dogsoflinkedin

    2. lglethal Silver badge
      Go

      Re: With one exception!

      I'm a big fan of ConkSat.

  13. Stu J

    Enshittification

    LinkedIn has been on a steady decline for a long time now, but this statistic does explain the steepening of the downward gradient I've noticed over the past 18 months...

  14. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn

    My profile is a resume and that's about it. It's a place where I can be found should somebody I know from days gone by want to find me. Maybe once a year I'll use it to find somebody I'd like to get in touch with. I don't read postings from anybody although I get the occasional email from LinkedIn about something or another that I just trash with barely a skim. I like the connections aspect since if I'm interested in contacting somebody and they are connected with somebody I know, maybe I can take some soundings first if that's appropriate.

    If LinkedIn strives to be the same as every other Social Media site, there's no point to paying them any attention. They need to define a path that's inline with professional relationships and stay away from personal relationship stuff, politics, religion, etc.

  15. Wang Cores

    There's something distinctly orwellian about the term "thought leader."

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Would you prefer "doubleplus goodthinker"?

  16. Homo.Sapien.Floridanus

    Picard: Data, can escape this gravity well?

    Data: Remember captain, success is 1% inspiration and 99% pers…

    Picard: [interrupting] If we survive past the next 5 minutes I’m going to sever the neural pathway that connects you to your Linked In account.

  17. hitmouse

    I'm humbled to be recognised by my peerbots for my contributions to unnecessary bits stored, transmitted and skim-read across the globe.

  18. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    Quelle surprise!

    "LinkedIn, you've probably run into self-congratulatory posts, ... but a study of such posts has pulled the curtain off the wizard: More than half of such posts are written by AI."

    Kinda of tumbled to that when I figured the tossers would be challenged to type their copious drivel one handed and the non-dominant one at that.

    I only recently bothered with a LinkedIn account to keep tabs on the 'tards still at a previous place of employment to "follow their future endeavours with great interest."

    I am surprised that a platform with near zero signal/noise ratio still endures if rather zombie like.

    "Pulled the curtain off the wizard" really rather has the sense more of disrobing the unfortunate mage than pulling the curtain aside but whether Dorothy would have shrieked in horror, delight or laughter at the former we can only conjecture.

  19. Grunchy Silver badge

    I have the LinkedIn presence, sort of the shame of the unemployed. They have this peculiar feed of notifications that arises from all these people that seem to frequent the site: this unending stream of consciousness that demands attention without providing anything “actionable,” I guess I would describe it. What’s interesting are some of the individuals, who I know to be real people, who are participating in it.

    “Why,” well one such individual has stated there, on the LinkedIn, that he is on a mission to stamp out “why”.

    (I know what he’s talking about, there is a current trend of “idea bankruptcy” in which you can’t think of anything worthwhile to say, so you take old, vapid, formerly-trendy ideas and now you disclaim them as discredited or disproven, for example the “Five Whys” junk philosophy of yesteryear. It has a real strong “feasting on your own feces” musk about it.)

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      Five whys isn't neccesarily junk. It can be a very good way to force a good in-depth study of what went wrong. But only if applied at the right time in the right situation. And this is where all those management types go off the rails because they all love to espouse the latest fad technique as being the best and greatest and always applicable with no defects and no caveats. And THAT is the bullshit.

  20. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "Thought leaders"

    Are the sort of type that switched Birmingham City Council to Oracle from SAP badly

    Or the person who did the same for West Sussex.

    Or Simon Bong.

    Other people might call you it, but calling yourself one?

    Head far up own bottom.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LinkedIn?

    Really?

    I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to bat off requests to join that spam-nation!

  22. Ken G Silver badge

    Microsift is missing a trick

    Instead of offering Premium to let you post this shit, why not offer it with an AI powered AI filter that removes everything but a person's employable skills and location?

  23. Dieclops

    Just for kicks and giggles, I plugged in "Write a random article to post on LinkedIn" into MS CoPilot

    Sure enough: The content it came up with looked exactly like a *lot* of the content we see on LinkedIn, today.

    Tried it three more times - same thing - each article looked hauntingly familiar.

    (No: I posted none of them to the site)

    -Marc

  24. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    1/2 ?

    All of the text especially the leadership stuf on LI is bullsht.

    Leadership in the west is nothing but a tax, demanding lots of money for absolutely nothing.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "Leadership in the west is nothing but a tax"

      Real leadership anywhere is a)Rare b)Damm tough.

      Some of the best advice I've ever seen was "If you're finding most of your decisions are easy, you're not delegating enough. You deserve the big bucks for making the difficult ones (provided they are correct of course, which can be difficult to assess).

      A key issue is that stock options have de-coupled senior management insiders from a)Lower management and b)Stock owners.

      Their goal ceases to be "What is best path for the long term success of the company (that's going to be best for my career)" to "What's best for they types of stock I hold (which could have privileges regualr stock holders don't).

      Remember investment banks selling "Garbage" financial instruments to their own customers before the 2008 financial crash?

      1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Re: "Leadership in the west is nothing but a tax"

        John: Real leadership anywhere is a)Rare b)Damm tough.

        cow: Unfortunately we have to talk in the language of the masses and their broken definition of leadership instead of pretending it means something else.

        ~

        John: Some of the best advice I've ever seen was "If you're finding most of your decisions are easy, you're not delegating enough. You deserve the big bucks for making the difficult ones (provided they are correct of course, which can be difficult to assess).

        A key issue is that stock options have de-coupled senior management insiders from a)Lower management and b)Stock owners.

        cow: THis may all be true, but it doesnt change that the concept of leadership and the entire process is broken.

        There is no leadership, finding 1 in 100 doesnt cut it, we dont pretend that it works because its true 1 in 100.

        ~

        john: Remember investment banks selling "Garbage" financial instruments to their own customers before the 2008 financial crash?

        cow: exactly there is no leadership, leading anyone. They are simply parasites doing whatever they can for their own personal gain and nobody else. Thats not leadership at all.

  25. The Central Scrutinizer

    I've leveraged my position as a thought leader to create a paradigm shift in customer centric business practices that will lead to groundbreaking customer experiences utilizing AI to provide double plus good quarterly returns for stakeholders at all levels of the enterprise.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Thumb Up

      "I've leveraged my position as a thought leader ..."

      Nice

      And I suspect not a trace of AI anywhere.

    2. Chris 15
      Thumb Up

      that makes me think

      We should unleash amanfrommars1 on spammed-in as a 'thought leader', he might get a cult following!

  26. tatatata

    AI or Real?

    The question whether it is AI or real is a bit more difficult on LinkedIn. Some points to consider.

    Recruiters and HR require a specific language and a specific set of incantations. Divert from that and you might not get invited for your next job. Do not write "use", but "utilize" , things like that.

    "Thought leaders" are in general people with little or no actual skills. They subsists by copying each others "inspirational" quotes. It is therefore easy to confuse them with AI.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Linkedin?

    ... Oh now I remember. That's the site that leaks some old out of date contact information every couple of years.

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