Comment by refulgentis
8 hours ago
If the byline said "written with AI assistance, anecdotes verified," I'd have no issue. The problem isn't the tool, it's the undisclosed institutional author using a sympathetic topic as a vehicle.
Editing suggestions are qualitatively different from writing the thing wholesale.
The anecdotes appear fabricated. I couldn't source the DC Shoes / Florida designer claim.
Generally, I'm sympathetic towards this worldview, and it would be disruptive to its impact to have obviously AI-written articles being passed around as authoritative grounding.
Even if 100% correct and verifiable, "obviously AI-written" and "100% correct" is enough for people who aren't as sympathetic as us to the overall point to dismiss it.
I'm sympathetic to their case, the phrase I'm trying to make happen is "AI DDOS'ing" - we can't people new to the material to read and verify endless reams of words, they approach infinity in the limit.
Really good points, thanks so much.
This feels like the new frontier for "journalism": can we easily verify it?
That feels like a step in the right direction, regardless of how it happens.
People like Steve Bannon know this, and have called what you describe "flooding the zone" and it works. Our brains can't process excess information so we search for simple answers. AI will make this exponentially more effective as a tactic for spreading narratives.