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cjet79  1mo ago (text post)   Edited 1mo ago   1442 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.

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.

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In the long term, I think the only way a forum like this survives is if users learn to be bored by AI-tier content. Weve just seen some labled AI posts get mass downvoted, but I think something like the Mihow post could totally have been a normal top-level and even be successful if it was a current topic. IMO its a bad post, it doesnt tell me anything I didnt know, and this is something everyone needs to internalise, downvote, and collapse. You should think primarily about how to get there - once we can all agree about what is unlabled AI content, or might as well be, the remaining problem wont be difficult.

"AI-tier content" will rapidly improve (unless WWIII, in which case theMotte will probably not be available either). This isn't a permanent solution.

I dont really agree. The current wave of AI improvements happened because someone found a way to utilise a much bigger dataset than anyone before. This is not a way to make indefinite improvements, and weve already picked the low-hanging fruit.

But if Im wrong about that, then Im not sure theres much else we can do?

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