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cjet79  18d ago (text post)   Edited 18d ago   1385 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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the end of my interest in a thread and a sharp drop in my respect for the user

This is because it indicates that the other user is not particularly engaged. Ordinarily, if I'm having a conversation, I know that they read my response, thought about their position, and produced what they thought a suitable response was. If an AI is doing it, then there's no longer much sign of effort, and it's fairly likely that I'm not even going to convince them. This point should be expanded upon—if, often, much of what fuels online discourse is "someone is wrong on the internet," then that would no longer be a motivation, since it's not like they'll even hear the words you're saying, but just feed it into a machine to come up with another response taking the same side as before. You may retort that you're still interacting with an AI, proving them wrong, but, their recollection is ephemeral, and depending on what they're being told to do, they will not ever be persuaded, regardless of how strong your arguments and evidence are.

Otherwise, long form content - the hallmark of much of the best content here - is immediately suspicious, and I am likely to skip it.

Currently, length indicates effort and things to say, which are both indicators of value. Not perfectly, but there's certainly a correlation.

With liberal use of AI, that correlation breaks down. That would considerably lower the expected value of a long-form post, in general.

It sounds like you just feel entitled to an arbitrary terminal preference. That's not compelling.

At least you hedged it with "it sounds," but I don't think the preferences are arbitrary.

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