These are normal patterns in US English. The zeal to accuse limits the scope of possible responses. There are all sorts of things humans do when writing that LLMs mimic — em-dashes for instance — that are entirely legitimate ways to communicate but get shouted down for… reasons?
Surely you’re aware that LLMs were trained on the ways humans write specifically to mimic them? Yes? So what’s the gripe? Someone cranked out a “thought piece” with no effort or actual thinking on their own?
But thats the promise of AI.
So are you advocating doing away with AI tools and research? Maybe we start asking “should we” not “can we”? Now that is a position I might get behind.
But really how the hell am I supposed to write at all when nearly ANYTHING I write could be interpreted as AI-generated and then shouted down in some quasi-ad-hominem attack on me while not engaging with any points made?
it's like AI-generated images, though those tend to be more obvious than AI-generated text due to the "average" effect being visually obvious. Yes, these are normal patterns in English, but it is not normal to use them with the frequency that triggers people's llm-lese senses.
I don't see a way out of it until either generated content is either completely unable to be distinguished from authored content (unlikely?), or there's a silver bullet for identifying generated content (also unlikely?)
Having thought about this for a bit now, I am honestly not sure. I think that obviously the end goal would be to not need to include such a disclaimer. But in the interim while AI is being constructed? Maybe that’s a good thing?
Somewhere in this conversation we need to make room for the following idea:
Mostly we seem to take in information, check who it’s from, and either digest or discard it. With AI acting as a “force multiplier”, so to speak, we can no longer do that simple check — we have to actually engage with the text, which is often longer than anticipated, and really attempt to understand it, whereas in the past we could lean on authority and reputation. And it could be pure bullshit! Reputation gets around that neatly. But it also makes it possible to disregard the thoughts and opinions of everyone without authority or reputation really easily.
All of society is based around that authority and reputation mattering. With AI, we all have to disregard authority & reputation and actually engage with the ideas presented. This is uncomfortable for many who have authority and reputation presently because they simply aren’t used to having to acknowledge the thoughts of people they consider themselves “better than” — or perhaps simply “lower status socially, economically, etc.”
Now if you want all points of view represented in society and for the socially and economically advantaged people to have less of a voice overall, perhaps AI furthers that goal? Perhaps the desire to label stuff as “AI or LLM generated” really is us just clinging to an old familiar way.
No, I don’t think anyone is being tricked. I think people aren’t used to accepting information from all parties, and are looking for a quick way to determine if an article (or whatever) is valid and worthy of their time. I think this applies equally to all levels of intelligence, from the dumbest to the smartest. We all want a quick filter.
I do find it more troubling when people who are very intelligent dismiss things out of a sense that “AI did it” so it isn’t worth engaging at all.
Surely you’re aware that LLMs were trained on the ways humans write specifically to mimic them? Yes? So what’s the gripe? Someone cranked out a “thought piece” with no effort or actual thinking on their own?
But thats the promise of AI.
So are you advocating doing away with AI tools and research? Maybe we start asking “should we” not “can we”? Now that is a position I might get behind.
But really how the hell am I supposed to write at all when nearly ANYTHING I write could be interpreted as AI-generated and then shouted down in some quasi-ad-hominem attack on me while not engaging with any points made?
It is the utter end of written discussion.