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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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I'm not a fan of AI generated text, but mostly because I believe it to be incapable of any original insight (ignoring the fact it's poisoned with a certain brand of selfishness).

I have a hard enough time when actual human users do that; a pithy one-liner is superior to an AI wall of text because in the former case I know the conversation's going nowhere, where AI use in that case is basically just a sophisticated version of a Gish gallop.

By that token I find "I asked an AI tool because I couldn't be bothered to make an actual fucking argument, here is what it said" to simply be egregiously obnoxious, as that is the general tone of the comments that do this. It's not leveraged to create meaningful discussion, that's for sure- otherwise, why go through the trouble of saying "AI says X"?

There has yet to be an effective suppressing meme for "I'm using AI, and it has drawn you as the soyjack, and me as the chad" types of comments, much like "tits or GTFO" is used on 4chan as a rejection of trying to cover up insubstantive commenting with social privilege.