site banner

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.

Edit 1 Another point of general agreement among the mods was that talking about AI is fine. There would be no sort of topic ban of any kind. This rule discussion is more about how AI is used on themotte.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I find that the concept of "interesting" is often used here and on DSL in toxic ways. It's too easy to call a post "interesting" when people are responding to it a lot because of its flaws, deliberate (for trolling) or otherwise (for AI). Well-argued is fine. Interesting shouldn't even be on the table.

Edited. I'm using 'interesting' as 'enjoyable to read'. That is, a good post is (a) something you want to read, and (b) something you gain by reading. Does that help?

There are some people who claim that they will never find anything that AI writes enjoyable simply because they know it's not produced by a human, but I think that's cutting off their nose to spite their face.