arXiv AI By Gordon Burtch

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Monoculture: AI Homogenizes Syntax, Not (Necessarily) Semantics

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arXiv AI
Jul 16

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Monoculture

arXiv:2607. 13077v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) often produce homogeneous outputs, raising concerns that AI coding assistants may lead to convergence in the software artifacts that developers create.

By Gordon Burtch
arXiv AI
Aug 26

Evaluating Language Models on Cross-Language Code Functional Equivalence

The paper introduces PolyHuman, a dataset of human-written programs in C++, Java, and Python, to test whether large language models can judge functional equivalence across languages. Using this dataset, the authors evaluate several open-weight and proprietary LLMs, finding that models struggle more with harder problems, show language-specific biases, and rely partly on superficial similarity cues. They also observe run‑to‑run instability in GPT‑o4‑mini, concluding that current LLMs do not reliably capture functional equivalence within or across programming languages.

By Hui Sun, Anderson Uch\^oa, Rohit Gheyi, Wesley K. G. Assun\c{c}\~ao
arXiv AI
Aug 28

How LLMs Distort Our Written Language

Large language models (LLMs) are widely used to assist writing, but this study shows they alter both tone and meaning of human text. A user study found that heavy LLM use increased neutral essays by nearly 70% and made writers feel less creative and less in their voice. Even when prompted to make only grammar edits, LLMs changed the semantic content of essays and produced AI-generated scientific reviews that were less focused on clarity and significance and scored higher on average.

By Marwa Abdulhai, Isadora White, Yanming Wan, Ibrahim Qureshi, Joel Z. Leibo, Max Kleiman-Weiner, Natasha Jaques