We really need more terms for AI-assisted writing. There's degrees to everything and writing is one of those things where there's LOADS of gray areas. Did you use AI for research? What about generating random names for characters/places? Did you use it to check your grammar (why do people even care about this? They do!)?

Anything touched by AI is starting to become "the fruit of the poisonous tree" for a lot of people and it's getting ridiculous. I've chatted with people who will refuse to read a story because they think the cover art was generated by AI (even though they don't really know; they're just guessing). "It's AI slop."

One of the listed stories was almost disqualified for that very same reason (AI cover art). Another was controversial because the author used AI to generate a random name for a disease.

If we had better terms for the levels of AI involvement, maybe people would get a little less worked up about it?

There are like 5 gazillion books to read, even without AI. As a reader to curate your limited time you cling to every indicator of quality you can get.

And authors not bothering to write their own books or publishers not caring enough to get someone to design a good cover (which you would think would really be in their own interest...) is a good sign that the work is of low quality and that I'd be better served to just read something else

Fiction requires charting a path through the infinitely large space of what is possible. I think AI can be very helpful assistant when plotting, figuring out how you lead characters naturally, as the storyteller, to where you want to get them through manipulation of circumstance.

One is limited as a writer because of the hard problem of bringing to attention possibilities you haven't considered yet (ie writer's block). AI can be very helpful as a search tool for the "possibility space" even if its judgment and voice are mediocre.

A term is all you need?

> I've chatted with people who will refuse to read a story because they think the cover art was generated by AI (even though they don't really know; they're just guessing). "It's AI slop."

There is beyond enough literature on offer for me to read in my lifetime. I'm not certain what this new age of expression will bring us, but the genie is out of the bottle. It is obvious to me that viewing llm output is distinct from the fusion I am part of traditionally when reading, even in the case of a shoddy translator. So for me personally, I will be attempting to continue reading in the same spirit traditionally. Anything contemporary I am reading, I will more fittingly treat as introspection or a window for dialect.

“Today’s old world won’t get in our way,” said the machine, enigmatically. “It even came to our aid. History has ceased its flow; no need to refer to it any longer."

In PRs at work (software engineering) we distinguish between drafting, editing, review, and straight generation.

In creative writing I think it's less about the tool(s) and more about the investment. Reading takes time and attention. If an author offloads the actual composition (the deliberate thought, structure, and prose) to an LLM then they've reduced their effort to as close to zero as they can while still asking for the reader's full attention.

There is nothing unreasonable about identifying this as a bullshit proposition.

>If we had better terms for the levels of AI involvement, maybe people would get a little less worked up about it?

I think this suggestions lacks an appreciation for why people get worked up about it.

Anybody willing to actually apply some nuance to all of this aren't these people. If you're willing to write off an entire book because you suspect AI may have been involved in its creation, then you're likely just grandstanding. That's not even to say it isn't a valid "strategy" for "dealing" with AI, but the approach is to just hardline the issue to a degree that there's explicitly no room for nuance. This strategy suggests there's a way for people to suppress AI basically back to the point of nonexistence, and it will take an absolute position that any AI is bad.

The people who are willing to apply some nuance will eventually have to learn that being a consumer almost requires you to ignore how the sausage is being made. If you get more value from something than it costs, then it is ultimately a worthwhile product to consume. It doesn't matter if it was made by a team of passionate humans who have never even touched a computer or if it was spit out by an AI seconds before you consumed it (or anything in-between, of course). This is the way it worked before AI, when most people didn't care to acknowledge that they were just consuming some engineered slop that lacked any semblance of a human connection, and this is the way it will work "after" AI.

At this point, the only reason this is still a factor is because there are still tells which remind consumers of this greater context which is uncomfortable (thanks, in part, to the first group of people). But at some point, it simply won't be a significant factor and people will assume their products were created with at least some AI input the same way people are generally fine with assuming their products are being manufactured with slave labor, cause global warming, make them dumb, etc.

> If we had better terms for the levels of AI involvement, maybe people would get a little less worked up about it?

I feel like the people getting worked up about it are the ones collapsing everything into a single term they can blanket apply everywhere.

[dead]

To be honest I doubt it. As far as I am concerned at least, it's a bit like the distinction between a shit sandwich and a sandwich that uses shit as a condiment.

In the terms of the fruit of the poisonous tree, the tree is not AI or what it touches, it is an author who chooses to use AI in the process of writing. The fruit of that tree is simply not one I care to eat.