A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
LinkedIn 加了一个"这看着像 AI 写的"按钮。三个星期，被点了一百万次。
LinkedIn Added a "Seems Like AI Slop" Button. It Was Clicked a Million Times in Three Weeks.
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LinkedIn Added a "Seems Like AI Slop" Button. It Was Clicked a Million Times in Three Weeks. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 Chinese listening episode that runs about 3 minutes. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 7 key vocabulary words such as 写、看、工作 and walks through 2 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
There is a website called LinkedIn.
A lot of people write articles on LinkedIn.
A great many articles.
On LinkedIn, people write about work, and about other things too.
In the past, these articles were all written by people.
The articles of the past were all written by people.
Now, it is not the same.
Now, a lot of the articles are written by machines.
Articles written by machines are on LinkedIn too.
When you read one, you do not know.
An article written by a machine looks like an article too.
The characters are right, the sentences are right.
But you will think: where have I read this before?
This article has no flavour.
Articles written by people have flavour.
Ones written by machines do not.
On the thirtieth of July, LinkedIn did something.
Under every article, LinkedIn made a button.
On the button it says: this looks like a machine wrote it.
You read an article, you see that it looks machine-written, and you press it.
You press it, and that is reporting it to LinkedIn.
Three weeks, and a number came out.
One million.
One million times.
A million people pressed this button.
Three weeks, a million times.
A million people all pressed the same button.
Was pressing it any use?
It was.
LinkedIn says: for articles written by machines, forty percent fewer people read them.
Forty percent fewer means: ten people used to read it, now six do.
A lot fewer.
And there is another number, also very big.
Someone looked at the longer articles on LinkedIn.
Out of a hundred, forty-one were written by machines.
Not a little bit machine-written — written by machines from beginning to end.
Out of a hundred, forty-one.
That button is not a small thing.
A million people pressing it are all saying one sentence:
I do not want to read this.
I do not want to read articles written by machines.
Think about it:
You read an article — do you know whether a machine wrote it?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇The verb the whole episode turns on: who 写 it, a person or a machine.
你看的时候，你不知道 — when you read it, you cannot tell.
What people write about on this site.
三个星期，一百万次 — a million times in three weeks.
按 to press, 钮 a knob. The one thing this episode is about.
机器写的文章 — an article written by a machine.
Used figuratively: writing without 味道 is the whole complaint.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法A 写的
Written by A. 的 turns the clause into a modifier.
机器写的文章 — an article written by a machine
人写的文章 — an article written by a person
少了 + amount
Decreased by a certain amount.
看的人少了四成。 — Forty percent fewer people read it.
少了很多。 — A lot fewer.
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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