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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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This sounds like a recipe for paranoid accusations of AI ghostwriting every time someone makes a disagreeable longpost or a weird factual error, and a quick way to derail subsequent discussion into the tar pit of relitigating AI rules.

If a poster's AI usage is undetectable, your "common knowledge" is now a "common misconception". Undetectable usage is unquestionably where the technology is rapidly headed. In the near future when AI prose polishing and debate assistance are widespread, would you rather have almost every post on the site include an AI disclaimer?

Edit: misread your original post - you arguably want to include AI disclaimers as bannable offenses. This takes the wind out of my sails on the last point... I'm going to leave it rudderless for now, might revisit later.

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