The Paul Graham vs Nigerian Twitter Saga; Lexical racism and language bias masked as ChatGPT hysteria

10 min readApr 10, 2024

*In Beyonce’s voice* America has a problem and it’s apparently big words and dictionaries.

Don’t worry, I’ll delve into this gist but first I want to pay homage to the gods and witches of Nigerian Twitter. May you cook forever and your soup never burn.

Throughout the article, I will be making use of Comrade memes from Nigerian Twitter, because why not?

Language is basically the use of symbols and signifiers that point to a paradigm for the purpose of expression and containment.

I don dey speak big english, ema binu. Let me reduce my volume. (Translation: I’ve been speaking ‘big words’, let me dumb it down)

Language is how we point to things.

So yes, memes like emojis are a form of language (they just have varying levels of nuance for you to understand them).

I’ll break this article into three parts: The main gist, Vawulence ensues on Nigerian Twitter and Why does it matter.

Ok let’s enter the koko of the matter (Translation: Gentlemen, shall we)

Part 1: The main gist

So Paul Graham came on Elon Musk’s Twitter and decided his biggest problem in life was the use of the word ‘delve’ because apparently it is a ‘complicated’ word and shows a text was written by ChatGPT.

First question

Quick survey, if you have used the word delve in an everyday conversation or while writing, quick show of hands.

(I’m assuming you have, otherwise here is a dictionary link for the word delve)

When I used ‘delve’ in the beginning of this article, did it feel like a big word written by ChatGPT to you?

OK, let’s even assume the text was written with the aid of ChatGPT, why does it matter?

Isn’t ChatGPT created to help people in such ways?

Isn’t Paul Graham himself an investor in several AI companies? I would even assume he has used ChatGPT at some point.

Aha, so it’s either Paul G and a large number of Americans on tech Twitter cannot speak English past the vocabulary of a third grader or something else is happening beneath all this.

Part 2: Vawulence ensues on Nigerian Twitter

Nigerian twitter got whiff of this Higgy hagga and was not having it. Rightly so, man was chatting bare shit innit.

You might be asking?

I believe it all started when @lolaloveandart quoted a tweet under the Paul Graham’s thread (which has now been made private)

Oh I found the tweet:

There was a mix of responses; shock, critical analysis, deep concern and of course humour (because Nigerians are funny as hell).

We had a few sucers (in French), but their opinions are not significant in this discourse as they offer little substance in terms of comic relief or thought-provocation.

Meaning, boringggggg…nextttttt

Soon after a trend started as it usually does on Nigerian Twitter.

It was a humorous comparison of the lacklustreness of american’s speaking english and Nigerian’s communicating the same things but with a more superfluous and developed vocabulary.

Let’s examine a few honourable mentions

Tweets:

And of course videos of ‘big words’ being used casually by Nigerians without any ‘ChatGPT’:

In summary,

Twitter also weighed in via notes:

Pauly G said no oooo, this 2024 no gree for anybody.

He continued to double down, resisting any form of intellectual critique.

This increased the concerns of many watching.

Who is learning English from movies please?

This wasn’t just a one-off tweet, it was a topic he felt quite strongly and immovable about. There was a big air of hubris around his arguments; just vibes, sweeping statements and “trust me bro”

Isn’t “complicated” a big word uncle pauly?

Why does it matter?

I remember one time at my former work place, I sent an email template to a colleague who also happened to American. He told me he would rewrite my email because it was obvious it was ChatGPT.

I was confused and told him I had written the email from scratch myself but he was more than welcome to rewriting (cos frankly, I had no stakes in the matter).

Now I know he was probably surprised by how eloquent and structured my writing is.

This is the reality of non-westerners and people considered as “non-native” English speakers.

Systemic discrimination and the soft bigotry of low expectations

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her Ted Talk, “The danger of a single story” narrates how her professor was commending the person who had the best essay he had seen in the class. He asked the person who had written it to stand up, only to express shock and disbelief when he found out it was Chimamanda.

This is a perfect example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

According to Wikipedia the “soft bigotry of low expectations” was first used by George Bush, and it “refers to the practice of expecting less from members of a disadvantaged group and thus implicitly encouraging those people not to reach their full potential.”

We constantly have to prove how educated we are; colonised and forced to learn a foreign language that doesn’t communicate the complexities and nuances of our lived experiences.

If we speak ‘worse’ than you, we are seen as illiterate. When we speak better than you, it’s too complicated and a sign of AI.

Before I proceed further, let’s talk about the elephant in the room cosplaying as Olumo rock; colonialism.

The Colonalist bias

Nigeria is a former British colony, we are native English speakers because most of us grew up socialised into speaking English from birth.

Nigerian native languages are generally more complex, nuanced and expressive than English language. Linguistic and non-linguistic expressions are also baked into our experiences and culture. It’s often really hard to find an English word that describes the specificity of what we are saying.

We use as specific a word as possible because we understand the power of words and how language can be a conveyor of meaning. Often making use of idiomatic and poetic expressions for emphasis.

For example, how do I say “Ebi fe pa mi” in English?

The literal translation would be “hunger wants to kill me” but that is not what I mean. What I am trying to communicate is that I am “thoroughly and utterly famished to the point of being vehemently hangry and on the cusp of exhaustion”.

Even that doesn’t cut it.

Nigerians love a rich vocabulary. Being able to communicate with intentionality has been a part of our lives since we were kids:

We have teachers, parents and popular figures with an extensive yet effortless use of English, done in their own stylised way.

We read dictionaries for fun in secondary school and engaged in debates for the sole purpose of intellectual and word sparring.

Nigeria is the number one country in scrabble in the world

We read books and newspapers with titles like these:

Can we just take a note of the casual use of “faux pas”

Even with all these accolades and being a former British colony, we still have to prove our ability to speak English. Only to get to these same countries and find out that we speak better English than their average citizen.

Because of colonialism, there is an assumption of the west as the standard. America as a nation generally has a sense of self-conferred expertise when relating to issues involving non-westerners.

Now you’re attempting to policing language use even more, the bar never seems to stay in one place.

So the question I’d like to ask, what is a big word? And who is it too big for?

The same Uncle Pauly that used both ‘complicated’ and ‘novel’ in two different tweets is alluding that ‘delve’ is a big word. Isn’t he using ChatGPT by his own standards and definition?

The hypocrisy is telling, not just with him but his ‘lexically-challenged’ posse.

These people who also seemed to agree with him had used similar ‘big-words’.

So are you saying a word is too big?

Or are you saying, it is too big for a certain demographic because of your biases and narrowed view of language as a technology including the different ways it can be personalised?

Paul basically said “You speak good English for a black person” but in tech bro terms.

AI checkers and Biases in training models

Several studies have been released in recent times which show that AI checkers are biased toward non-westerners.

The second article is especially interesting. I’ll ask ChatGPT to summarise for us but I’ll quote some facts from the article.

“The numbers are grim. While the detectors were “near-perfect” in evaluating essays written by U.S.-born eighth-graders, they classified more than half of TOEFL essays (61.22%) written by non-native English students as AI-generated (TOEFL is an acronym for the Test of English as a Foreign Language).
It gets worse. According to the study, all seven AI detectors unanimously identified 18 of the 91 TOEFL student essays (19%) as AI-generated and a remarkable 89 of the 91 TOEFL essays (97%) were flagged by at least one of the detectors.”

ChatGPT summary:

“The article discusses how AI detectors used in writing tools are biased against non-native English writers. It highlights a study by Stanford University researchers who found that these detectors tend to give lower scores to texts written by non-native English speakers, even when the quality is comparable to that of native speakers. The study reveals that the bias stems from differences in language use rather than actual writing quality. The findings underscore the importance of addressing biases in AI systems to ensure fair and accurate evaluations, particularly in educational and professional settings where these tools are commonly used.”

PS: This is the only point I have used ChatGPT in this entire article.

Imagine if no one raised a critique of Uncle Paul’s one-sided story. He’s someone with such a large platform and influence that many organisations would easily run with that narrative.

These are the people who have a direct influence on benchmarking AI use and are also being used as benchmarks for what constitutes AI-generated content.

Being one of the top tech figures doesn’t make you an expert on other domains like language. That’s why you hire people who are.

We need to have more discussion around the biases being baked into technology and the tech scene as well as the people designing and funding them to begin with.