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cjet79  7hr ago (text post)   250 thread views

Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content

There has been some recent usage of AI that has garnered a lot of controversy

There were multiple different highlighted moderator responses where we weighed in with different opinions

The mods have been discussing this in our internal chat. We've landed on some shared ideas, but there are also some differences left to iron out. We'd like to open up the discussion to everyone to make sure we are in line with general sentiments. Please keep this discussion civil.

Some shared thoughts among the mods:

  1. No retroactive punishments. The users linked above that used AI will not have any form of mod sanctions. We didn't have a rule, so they didn't break it. And I thought in all cases it was good that they were honest and up front about the AI usage. Do not personally attack them, follow the normal rules of courtesy.
  2. AI generated content should be labelled as such.
  3. The user posting AI generated content is responsible for that content.
  4. AI generated content seems ripe for different types of abuse and we are likely to be overly sensitive to such abuses.

The areas of disagreement among the mods:

  1. How AI generated content can be displayed. (off site links only, or quoted just like any other speaker)
  2. What AI usage implies for the conversation.
  3. Whether a specific rule change is needed to make our new understanding clear.
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  1. When talking about AI content, put examples in quotes if they are brief, provide an off-site link if they are verbose.
  2. When using AI content, treat it like citing Wikipedia in your high school paper: using it for research purposes is fine as long as you understand its limitations. Using AI content in your messages is not allowed, trying to hide the fact and pass the content as your own is just as bad as saying "here's what ChatGPT thinks about X".

But these cases are easy to judge. Here's one where it's less clear-cut: someone believes they are discriminated against by the wordcels of The Motte because they cannot write well. They have an idea they want to defend, they know how to attack the arguments of their opponent, but they think their command of the English language is insufficient to eloquently argue their point. So they turn to ChatGPT or DeepSeek and tell them, "computer, here's what this asshole says, here's what I think about it, please help me destroy him like I'm one of these fancy Substack writers".

On one hand, I can sympathize with them. AAQC compilations highlight a lot of passionate prose that can be hard to emulate. On the other hand, allowing people to ask AI for editorial and rhetorical help is a small step to "computer, here's what this asshole says, here's what I think about it, please help me destroy him like I'm one of these fancy Substack writers". On the gripping hand, forcing people to post their original argument and link to an off-site AI-edited version of it makes them sound unnecessarily passive-aggressive: "here's what I think about your argument, and here's my reply in moar words, because that's what you really care about, don't you".

If someone does post AI because they have their own ideas, but can't express them well, they should be willing to stand by everything in their post. If they use AI, we should be entitled to assume that they edited out everything they don't agree with and that even if what's left isn't literally their own words, we can treat it as their own words.

I greatly appreciate your insight. It has occured to me that since EoPs as a group have different political inclinations than ESLs, the site language being English means the former posseses an unfair advantage, thus making ideologies favoured by EoPs seem more justified. AIs can thus also be thought as free legal aid, to use your more general framework, or as a way for perspectives which Americans are less likely to espouse, to be given a fair shake.

Edit: Mods have on several occasions expressed that diversity of opinions is something they strive towards, when it is on the basis of US left vs US right. (They faced problems as attracting members of the underrepresentated side, would mean banning some members of the overrepresented one, purely of the basis of their beliefs.) Thus the principle to which I am appealing isn't alien to the mods.

I didn't mean just native speakers vs ESLs, but also wordcels vs shape rotators. Some people are just good with words, you pick up their book or blogpost and it just slides into you like the best Mormon jello.

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