| ▲ | lijok 6 hours ago |
| Why should they disclose how much AI was used to write an article? |
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| ▲ | hombre_fatal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Because it's a trapdoor function. You generate heaps of content with AI with 1:10 or 1:100 amplification of time/attention invested, but your readers spend their time reading it at 1:1. Also, what are we doing using AI to write our blogs? Surely that's the final domain of human writing outside of our local circle? |
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| ▲ | invader 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the author hasn't bothered to spend time writing the article, why should I spend my time reading it?
Let agents do it for me! |
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| ▲ | Bjartr 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If nothing else, it should be done as a courtesy to those who would like to avoid such content. If the result is better for having used AI, why wouldn't an author want to disclose it? |
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| ▲ | lijok 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Should they disclose the use of a spellchecker? A translation app? Gramarly? A writing tutor? | | |
| ▲ | btrettel 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A spell checker, grammar checker, and tutor change a relatively small fraction of the writing, preserve the writer's style/voice, and rarely introduce errors that are hard to detect like hallucinations. A translation app changes nearly 100% of the content, often changes the writer's style/voice, and can introduce hard to detect errors. But there's a far closer correspondence to what was written by the original writer. The basic ideas are still from the writer. A translation app is not expanding a short idea into something longer, and including some things the original writer never thought in the process. *** Pre-LLMs, I did in fact disclose when I was using a translation app in some translations of scientific articles I produced. It would be weird to disclose the use of spell checking, grammar checking, or who previously taught me writing as these things are ubiquitous. I will also acknowledge people who were influential in my thinking. If a LLM is doing a lot of the thinking for me then I do think disclosing LLM use is appropriate. | |
| ▲ | ben-schaaf 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I find it's incredibly helpful to know when someone's using an automated translator, as they usually get details wrong while still reading like a native speaker. Not using a translator at all, or disclosing that one was used means I can make a better educated guess as to what they mean. It also changes how I reply. | |
| ▲ | Bjartr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If there were groups that voiced a desire to be informed of that, then it would indeed be courteous to do so. | |
| ▲ | BiteCode_dev 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It used to be the polite thing to disclose that you used a translation app. In fact, traditionally, you disclose when you translate anything so people know the context in which to interpret your text. In the same way, I wanna know if a book is written by some famous people just ghost written. Of course, the point is moot. Somebody using AI to write a blog post is unlikely to be self conscious enought to thing it's necessary to disclose it in the first place. |
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| ▲ | NeutralCrane 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think the need to jump through hoops to disclose anything and anything that might offend someone’s particular sensibilities is a losing battle. What if I want a disclosure on if the content is being hosted via AWS vs some non-magacorp that agrees with my sensibilities more? Or that the power being used by the data center is renewable? Or a disclosure for the author’s every political position so I know if I agree with them and if I should amplify their message and/or generate ad revenue through their site? At the end of the day, the ideas within the content are what matters. An idea has or does not have merit regardless of if it was produced entirely by a person, or by a person using AI as an editor, or 100% generated by AI. If you need a disclosure on if an idea was produced by AI, you are saying that you have no interest on debating the content on the grounds of the arguments it is making, while simultaneously ceding you can’t tell the difference between someone using AI and someone who isn’t (which undermines one of the primary arguments against AI, that it makes for inferior outputs). | | |
| ▲ | lumpysnake 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > if the content is being hosted via AWS vs some non-magacorp > power being used by the data center is renewable That doesn't change anything about the content itself. AI writing is a disservice to the reader. Why should I even care to read an article you didn't even care about writing yourself? At this point a 300-character tweet would've achieved the same effect. | | |
| ▲ | NeutralCrane 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s my point. The AI writing either affects the content or it doesn’t. If you require a disclaimer to tell the difference, then it isn’t affecting the content. Requiring a disclaimer is essentially admitting the content isn’t meaningfully different than human generated content. At that point, who cares? Just engage with the premise on its own merits, rather than on how it was written. | | |
| ▲ | infamia 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Requiring a disclaimer is essentially admitting the content isn’t meaningfully different than human generated content. At that point, who cares? Just engage with the premise on its own merits, rather than on how it was written. The problem is the reader has to invest time to find out and LLM written text will (on average) lower the quality towards "meh" and spend more words doing so. Even if the author is making an earnest effort to produce high quality content, they need to admit to themselves and others that their results will be more hit or miss. The disclosure allows the reader to make a more informed decision about how to engage with the material (e.g., have an LLM summarize or analyze the content, or just dive in because we know it will very likely be a good read). Editing what someone has written is like reviewing code, you're by default not as invested, so the results will likely reflect that reality. | |
| ▲ | lumpysnake 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Then you're totally right. In this case, it's a poor usage of AI because we are able to tell it's slop. Odds are very high at this point that I've come across a piece of content I enjoyed that was at least partly written by an LLM without having detected it. |
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| ▲ | lumpysnake 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Because I would've completely avoided the article if I knew that I would be served slop. I was interested in the content, but I was immediately thrown off by the writing style, which closely resembles what I've been getting from Opus 4.8 lately in my dev work. Filler language and useless metaphors everywhere. > Booleans look tidy until somebody adds a third case and exhaustiveness silently doesn’t kick in. Strings narrow honestly. Like, nobody truly writes like that. It wouldn't get past any competent editor. Strings narrow honestly? What does that even mean? This kind of 3-word precision is useless and they appear everywhere in the article. We get the point with in the first sentence, no need to add more. |
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| ▲ | hombre_fatal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Strings narrow honestly. This is a great example of the latest "LLM tell" I'm seeing in prose. It's so terse with its "power-verb" that I have to read it multiple times. It's a clever compaction of English, not something I want to read outside of a headline or motto. Here's another example from a Claude convo I had open: "Alerts flag mirrors". It's agreeing with my proposal that the alert system should be expanded to consider duplicates, and it came up with a cutesy phrase for it that ends up reading like three unrelated words. Makes me appreciate how helper words help make the structure of a sentence more obvious. More examples: "Errors surface drift", "Tests anchor scope", "Guards screen input". That's probably what it is: when the verb is also the form of a noun (flag, surface) or adjective (narrow). Slogans mask meaning. | | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I just flag like I would terrible writing by a human and move on. It’s frankly depressing when (2018) oldies-but-goodies get reposted here for the Nth time. The clarity of thought and obvious effort that went into communicating that thought was expected for top-voted posts at the time. Now those posts appear exceptional in this era’s standard of “the LLM just cleaned up my notes” slop. |
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