Comment by laacz
3 months ago
Should we care? It's a tool. If you can manage to make it look original, then what can we do about it? Eventually you won't be able to detect it.
3 months ago
Should we care? It's a tool. If you can manage to make it look original, then what can we do about it? Eventually you won't be able to detect it.
Objectively we should care because the content is not the whole value proposition of a blog post. The authenticity and trust of validity of the content comes from your connection to the human that made it.
I don't need to fact check a ride review from an author I trust, if they actually ride mountain bikes. An AI article about mountain bikes lacks that implicit trust and authenticity. The AI has never ridden a bike before.
Though that reminds me if an interaction with Claude AI, I was at the edge of its knowledge with a problem and I could tell because I had found the exact forum post it quoted. I asked if this command could brick my motherboard, and it said "It's worked on all the MSI boards I have tried it on." So I didn't run the command, mate you've never left your GPU world you definitely don't actually have that experience to back that claim.
“It's worked on all the MSI boards I have tried it on.”
I love when they do that. It’s like a glitch in the matrix. It snaps you out of the illusion that these things are more than just a highly compressed form of internet text.
Haven't we given some AI agents access to potentially motherboard-bricking commands yet?
If your wife can't detect that you told your secretary to buy something nice, should she care?
This is an absurd comparison - you (presumably) made a commitment to your wife. There is no such commitment on a public blog?
Is it that absurd?
We have many expectations in society which often aren't formalized into a stated commitment. Is it really unreasonable to have some commitment towards society to these less formally stated expectations? And is expecting communication presented as being human to human to actually be from a human unreasonable for such an expectation? I think not.
If you were to find out that the people replying to you were actually bots designed to keep you busy and engaged, feeling a bit betrayed by that seems entirely expected. Even though at no point did those people commit to you that they weren't bots.
Letting someone know they are engaging with a bot seems like basic respect, and I think society benefits from having such a level of basic respect for each other.
It is a bit like the spouse who says "well I never made a specific commitment that I would be the one picking the gift". I wouldn't like a society where the only commitments are those we formally agree to.
6 replies →
There are many discussions of what sets apart a high trust society from a low trust society, and how a high trust society enables greater cooperation and positive risk taking collectively. Also about how the United States is currently descending into a low trust society.
"Random blog can do whatever they want and it's wrong of you to criticize them for anything because you didn't make a mutual commitment" is low-trust society behavior. I, and others, want there to be a social contract that it is frowned upon to violate. This social contract involves not being dishonest.
Norms of society.
I made no commitment that says I won't intensely stare at people on the street. But I just might be a jerk if I keep doing it.
"You're not wrong, Walter. you're just an asshole."
Illuminating that you think the illustrated problem has something to do with a commitment.
We should care if it is lower in quality than something made by humans (e.g. less accurate, less insightful, less creative, etc.) but looks like human content. In that scenario, AI slop could easily flood out meaningful content.