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cjet79  18d ago (text post)   Edited 17d ago   1383 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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My $0.02: non-critical appendix-style references to AI output are probably okay. Usage for generating discussion or argument should be banned. We do need a rule to match expectations between users and mods, to avoid encouraging excessive attempts at AI ghostwriting, and to reduce paranoid accusations of AI slop in place of deserved criticism.

  • The cost of generating AI content is so low that it threatens to trivially out-compete human content. The volume of output and the speed of processing by AI makes for an extremely powerful gish-gallop generator.
  • Unlike our resident human gish-gallop generators, nothing I say to the AI will meaningfully change its mind. AI can simulate a changed mind, but with substantial limitations and ephemeral results. Personally, the draw of the Motte is the symmetric potential to have my own mind changed and to change others' minds by sharing our own unique experiences and perspectives. (I am open to future AI advances that make debating the AI similarly engaging, but we're not there yet.)
  • Quoting books, blog posts, etc is an acknowledgement of the perspective and effort applied by the human being cited, regardless of topic-level value alignment. AI does not develop perspectives or apply efforts in ways that warrant social considerations (at least, not presently).
  • Quoting a source also serves as a natural bridge to further learning and discovery of the source for anyone interested. There can be valuable context, history, or interpersonal relationships surrounding the quote. In this sense, AI mostly generates shallow engagement opportunities. Where it could be more engaging (e.g. reference discovery or Google search replacement), I'd prefer to take recommendations from someone with skin in the social game.
  • Importantly, quotation is typically brief, poignant, and insightful. I'll grant that brief, poignant, and insightful are possible properties of AI output, but I've yet to see anything worth quoting by those criteria.
  • Pastebinning or spoiler-tagging AI output is an invitation for me to skip it. I'm okay with this for mentions or references, where there is already an implicit understanding that I may skip or summarize the content. I am not okay with "see my response [here](www.aislop.com )" replies.
  • I strongly agree with @SubstantialFrivolity that responding to a human with a wall of AI text creates an impression of "I can't be bothered, talk to my assistant instead." It's very rude. Critically, no amount of initial prevaricating about the effort you spent prompting, tweaking, and blessing the output makes this any less rude. On the other hand, if I can't tell if you used AI, you're likely using it well enough that I don't mind. It is in principle possible that I am already interacting with several longstanding AI characters and I just don't realize. The quality of AI output to date is not compelling evidence for this possibility. I also suspect that for each person successfully using AI to ghostwrite their posts, there would be ten other clumsy attempts that obviously fail. I feel that anything other than a blanket ban on AI ghostwriting is an invitation for people to push their luck, and will lead to more AI slop, more paranoid accusations of AI slop when mere slop is sufficient, and more moderation headaches as a result.
  • The growing pool of modhat "we didn't order you not to do this, but don't do this" posts on AI slop is a strong indication of an impedance mismatch between the expectations of mods and users, and of a need for unambiguous rules about how AI should or should not be used here.
  • I'm open to reviewing any rules made about AI posting in the coming years as AI gains increasing agency.

Aside: is $0.02 competitive for this amount of inference?

Unlike our resident human gish-gallop generators, nothing I say to the AI will meaningfully change its mind.

Woah, woah, woah, you might be expecting a bit too much of us.

(Seriously though, this is a good point.)

Aside: is $0.02 competitive for this amount of inference?

I believe that the going rate is about tree fiddy.

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