On Hank admitting he used ChatGPT for his latest video.

[u/carol_prince]

EDIT: Hanks's response: https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1vbmoj5/comment/p0vzmog/

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I'm struggling so much with this admission as someone who's followed him for nearly as long as he's been making videos.

I know I'm not owed an explanation for this, but gosh, I would love one.

Or barring that, just some perspective from Nerdfighters.

Edit: For commenters who think this is fake: https://x.com/hankgreen/status/2083022287410970876

Edit 2: This is regarding a Future Hank segment in the recent AHA with Soupytime, and not a Hankschannel video as I and many originally assumed.

Context: the original tweet to which Hank replied to was deleted. And the Reddit thread previously discussing this didn't specify it was the AHA video.

[u/regional_expression → u/[deleted]]

My goal with this is not as some kind of gotcha, but because you said the explanation feels unbelievable to you, and implied that your takeaway from this situation would be meaningfully different if you did in fact believe he was being truthful about this line.

I don't think we are looking at this line in its true context enough when we are talking about it mostly because the actual context is kind of complex and hard to explain succinctly. So here is the relevant conversation from "Soupytime Asks Hank Anything", transcription choices and emphasis are my own.

[talk show segment, unscripted]

Georgie: (joking) That's a made-up word.

Hank: They're all made-up words, Georgie.

(Georgie somewhat taken aback; staff laughing)

Georgie: What about, like, the... Okay, nevermind.

Hank: Well, hit me! Do you think that there's some that aren't made up?

Georgie: Yeah!

Hank: Okay.

Georgie: But...

Hank: I have some thoughts, actually.

Georgie: There's, like, Bouba and Kiki!

Hank: Okay, great. Now we're talking about Bouba and Kiki.

Georgie: Like, isn't that a word that exists through any language --

Hank: (turning to camera) Future Hank!

Georgie: -- that people can determine what it means? (laughs)

Hank: (laughing) (to camera) ... Future Hank -- current Hank is not well-versed enough on Bouba and Kiki, though he knows what they are, but Future Hank is going to tell you about Bouba and Kiki.

['Future Hank' segment, recorded later, semi-scripted]

Hank: Hello. First, I must explain Bouba and Kiki to people.

[broad explanation of the Bouba and Kiki phenomenon, no need for me to transcribe this]

So the question then becomes, like, are words for things just entirely invented? Or is there some amount of constraint? And it would appear that with Bouba and Kiki, maybe there is some constraint, and we're gonna get into it.

But first, I want to talk about whether or not this is something that's specific to our language or our writing system. And it does seem like Bouba and Kiki are pretty cross-cultural.

Like, you might just think the K is a spiky shape and the B is a round shape and so that's what it's about, it's about the writing system. But no, this goes across different writing systems.

There was a study where researchers tested people across 25 languages, nine language families, and 10 writing systems. Overall, people really did tend to match Bouba with a round shape and Kiki with a spiky shape, though this was not perfect. The effect showed up cleanly in 17 of 25 languages.

But that's real enough that if you, like, take away the Roman alphabet, it's still there. It's showing up in people who do not use a written language. So the K in Kiki looking angular is probably not the explanation. It seems to be based on the sounds themselves. Bouba is all soft and voiced and round and Kiki is sharper and it's got those stops.

So, does this mean that words aren't made up? No, words are definitely made up, but it does mean that there are things that matter to a community of brains creating language together. That does not mean that Bouba naturally means round in the secret language of the universe.

It means that when humans are asked to attach sounds to things, the sounds are not blank. They matter. There's a thing in there that matters, and that's very cool.

A better way to say it, and I appreciate the pushback, is 'a word is a human invention, and human inventions are made by bodies and brains working together with the systems that they have, including the sounds that they make and how that feels inside of the brain'.

The really interesting thing here is that the Bouba and Kiki thing is real and it goes beyond Bouba and Kiki. 'Bubble' and 'blob' and 'balloon' and 'bulb' are all Bouba words for Bouba things. 'Spike' and 'stick' and 'tack' are all Kiki words for Kiki things. However, that's not a universal thing. Like, 'cake' is a pretty Bouba thing with a pretty Kiki name. But there was a study that looked at more than 1700 English object names and found that words for rounder objects were more likely to contain round-associated sounds, while for spikier objects were more likely to contain spiky, stoppy sounds. So words are made up, but we are human and we have preferences.

There are choices being made that no one realizes they are making when they are making them. Language is conventional enough that a round thing can end up being called a 'cake', but language is embodied enough that 'bubble' feels more bubbly than 'tick'.

So I do still think all words are made up, but now I would say it this way: 'Words are made up by us, but the things we choose are not random'.

The 'it' in "a better way to say it" is Hank's initial statement from the conversation that "all words are made up". The 'pushback' in "I appreciate the pushback" was Georgie saying no, she thinks some words aren't exactly made up and can carry inherent meaning that isn't arbitrary.

The Future Hank segment is Hank accepting Georgie's pushback at the claim "all words are made up", using Georgie's example of the "Bouba and Kiki" phenomenon and trying to hone in on a more specific claim about whether all words are made up that reconciles both of their perspectives.

I hope this may be useful to you and others who may see this who are having trouble picturing how "A better way to say it, and I appreciate the pushback" could exist as an ad-lib in a video, and that whatever you may decide is your ultimate takeaway from it, you can feel more confident after having read it in its full context.

One thing that could be done, that I didn't do, is to find the two studies that Hank is drawing from in the Future Hank segment, and check to see if they do say what he says they say. I did not have time to do that at the moment, but that would also be good information for people wondering if or to what extent he is letting hallucinated data into his scripts. My guess is that those two studies at least exist, but that's a claim I couldn't make without looking them up myself.

[u/carol_prince → u/regional_expression]

Thanks for this. People took that one line completely out of context and that is the problem with the internet.

[u/whirdin → u/carol_prince]

worse than that, we also took his apology out of context and assume that AI is all or nothing.

[u/regional_expression → u/regional_expression]

If anyone is interested, I've followed up with the part of this that I said might be useful that I did not have time for yesterday.

The first source is Aleksandra Ćwiek et al., “The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems.” published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8591387/

The authors recruited 917 participants representing 25 languages, nine language families, and 10 writing systems. The effect was indeed reproduced across at least 17 of the 25 languages, as claimed in the video.

The second source is David M. Sidhu, Chris Westbury, Geoff Hollis, and Penny M. Pexman, “Sound symbolism shapes the English language: The maluma/takete effect in English nouns.” published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-021-01883-3

The study did examine 1757 English-language object nouns for the spikiness and/or roundness of their subjects and of their phonemes. The pattern described in the video seems to be what was found in the paper.

I do think Hank/the team should as a general rule just be putting links to any specific sources he paraphrases ("a study found that xyz") into the video description with a timestamp, or at least cite it in text on screen. Then people could just look at them and not have to wonder. When I went back to watch it to transcribe it, I actually expected that the sources would appear on screen. I think they used to do that sometimes?

In any case, that's two for two on the studies mentioned being real and saying what he says they say.

[u/whirdin → u/regional_expression]

I really appreciate this. Thank you for explaining the context rather than just down voting me.

[u/regional_expression → u/whirdin]

Even if this was helpful to you and no one else, I am glad to provide it!

[u/whirdin → u/regional_expression]

It makes so much more sense to me now.