Going by the headlines, the matter seems to be settled. El País announces that Neanderthal men "chose" sapiens women. Science journal speaks of a "partner preference." National Geographic is already imagining the "Romeos" of prehistory. The Telegraph suggests that Neanderthals "had designs on" sapiens women.
Agreed it’s quite noticeable and irksome. I think part of the weirdness for me isn’t just the wordy final product it’s the fact that I know I’m reading human supervised writing rather than someone’s thoughts on a topic. Teacher friends are feeling pretty uncanny valley about having to grade the philosophical writing of LLMs.
I guess I was previously taking for granted when reading something that it meant at least one person cared about the topic and thought it was worth writing out. Not so anymore!