Jason LefkowitzThere are lots of ways that AI is eroding the intellectual commons, but a subtle one is that now the discussion around every single essay and blog post is immediately dominated by a debate over whether or not it was written with AI
historic drystone sheep dyke@jalefkowit the exact inverse problem is that i saw this piece posted on metafilter a couple of days ago and i felt crazy because nobody else was talking about the fact that the illustrations are almost definitely ai, which feels egregious considering the topic https://bachmanrachel.substack.com/p/what-children-actually-want-from
@hannah Yeah, I would say it's all of a piece; you can't engage with the substance of a work anymore without first establishing how much of it is from the author's own hand and how much is AI, and there's no independent way to do that, so you end up squinting at every line, every illustration, every chart, asking yourself, can I trust this? Is this real?
It's exhausting, which is why it makes me fear for the future of thought. I find myself turning away from things just because I don't want to have to be the Em Dash Police
JJ Litke@jalefkowit @hannah "Em Dash Police" <— another frustrating bit, because I fucking love em dashes, and now I feel like I need to edit them out of my writing entirely.
@jalefkowit yeah it feels like a gresham's law thing where in a few years the open internet will just be 99.99% llm spam like what happened to usenet, and we'll all have to go back to small trusted sites or private group chats. oh well
Tyler SmithI read this described as breaking a social contract. Pre-AI, the writer always put more time into writing a piece than the reader would spend reading it. In effect, they were giving you X hours(days/months) of their work, hoping to earn Y minutes of your attention.
AI has inverted this. The writer now demands Y minutes of our attention in exchange for X seconds of their 'effort'. It's anti-social narcism: my half-baked idea is worth your careful consideration.
And of course there's the knock-on effect you describe, in that we now have to interrogate every piece of writing we encounter to determine if it's a good faith expression of someone's thoughts, or just some fleeting thought inflated to a grotesque imitation of human communication.
mathew@hannah @jalefkowit It’s on Substack, so I wouldn’t have expected any strong ethical principles.
un perro atorrante y marginal@jalefkowit habiendola Having only used it for comments on LinkedIn, ha ha ha... It should be possible to compare the human draft with the LLM product to decide who contributed more. It's a good tool, but we can't expect it to replace 'our' intention, well! For that, we need to have some, right?
Seth Honda@jalefkowit I would disagree here
We're really good at picking up on AI generated writing, and if a post sparks that debate, it is almost definitely AI.
Good writing doesn't beg this question.
Raff KarvaHow do you define 'good' writing, though?
Non-native and autistic writers (I'm both) get accused of using AI disproportionately more often than native speakers:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-people-getting-falsely-accused-of-using-ai-to-write.html
I ran my university essays from the early 2000s through AI detectors, and each one was flagged as AI-generated with almost 100% certainty.
We've created a system where excellence is penalised and mediocre writing becomes the expectation.
The below is also worth reading:
@RaffKarva @jalefkowit It's less the AI-detectors... those are bad.
People have a certain cadence of writing, even academically, that AI does not respect at all.
As a teacher, I see this all the time. Unless the student has rewritten the whole essay in their voice, individual sentences can stand out to me as AI generated.
Trust your gut, read more content from the author, and it's a bit easier to filter out the noise that way.
Based on your answer I am going to assme you didn't read the two links I shared.
@RaffKarva @jalefkowit I don't have a nymag sub, but I read the techdirt piece.
This responsibility falls on educators to not rely on this tool. While the "18%" may be scary, it's also going to be ignored in a lot of cases. It's the same when TurnItIn flags an essay as plagiarism when you're citing something from the source.
I'm not saying this isn't an issue, I'm saying that we've been trained our whole lives to detect this. The same thought you get when you see an AI generated image (less and less, I understand that) is the same feeling you get when you read an AI generated piece.
The difference, humans are linguistic creatures first. We are social creatures and we are trained to tell when someone sounds like they're lying or being coy or sarcastic. It may take a bit longer, and some practice, but we can tell when AI wrote something. An algorithm can't.
@sethhonda @RaffKarva You are focusing on educators evaluating the work of students, but that is not what I was talking about.
I'm just a layperson. A link circulates and I read it. Odds are I have no familiarity with the style of its author. I don't have the advantage you have of knowing your students. I have to evaluate each piece that crosses my desk de novo.
When that happens, the only options are reviewing their entire body of previous work (if there is one), or shoddy heuristics like "check out all those em dashes." Neither of which are great. I don't have time for the former, and the latter is reading chicken entrails.
@RaffKarva This is the thing though... part of reviewing a piece and its credibility IS reviewing the authority of that author.
This is something that I started noticing a gripe with on Medium; publications started accepting any 'well written' piece maybe 5-years ago, the author would then get added to the publication and, via shoddy review processes, pieces that weren't as good as the original submission would get pushed through.
It is up to you as the reader and consumer of news and online content to evaluate who is saying what you're reading and make a decision on if you're going to trust that person. Cross-check sources, review their work, review the publication that they belong to. This due-diligence is not new, it's just more important now than ever.
Epic Null@sethhonda @RaffKarva @jalefkowit I will focus on the educator for a moment.
Students go from educator to educator. Good educators may ignore the 18%, but I suspect all students are familiar with the bad educators.
On top of that, we teach form over function in a lot of writing. Take a look at how much padding goes into academic writing - that is a sign of a systemic issue!
"How do you judge good writing" is a question with an unfortunatly twisted answer. We judge it by form, not effectiveness of capturing and communicating an idea.
And thus, AI becomes good writing.
I just don't see any teachers giving out an F for an 18%. I also think that there is this focus put on the 'bad educator' when that is just not the case most of the time.
If a student made the case for their writing and could defend it, I see no issue with a teacher holding that scrutiny in the first place, it's a part of the job at this point.
My school doesn't have access to an AI-checker so if I suspect AI, I'll call the student over for a few minutes and ask them to defend various points in their essay, this isn't because I'm a 'good' educator, it's because I'm an educator.
I would also argue that more and more, teachers are being FORCED to judge the effectiveness of capturing and communicating an idea, because there are so many missing fundamentals in students who were homeschooled during critical academic years.
That being said, the form is not what makes AI standout. The form is also not what makes or breaks good writing. A perfectly formatted and punctuated essay about garbage is still about garbage.
The things that stand out? Stale organizational structure, overly complex word-choice consistently and correctly throughout, short and to-the-point sentences, overly variable word choice (this is a new one and it's different from what it was like 6-months ago when AI didn't have enough variability in word choice).
If a student made the case for their writing and could defend it
Listen I remember my highschool english teachers, and 2/3 of them (had one twice) were of a type where being right would not be enough to have a leg to stand on. 1/2 (the one I had twice) of them were of the kind I could not afford to be alone in a room with.
I'll call the student over for a few minutes and ask them to defend various points in their essay, this isn't because I'm a 'good' educator, it's because I'm an educator.
If you think that isn't "Because I'm a good educator", I have some news about your standards compared to several others. There are things that still stick in my brain from those years.
And the threat is not an F. When I tried to leave after trying to ask a clarifying question during passing period (her answet was not helpful), she wrote an email home saying I "stormed out of class". This was not the first, last, or only power play she made. Teachers have a LOT of power over students, and bad educators make sure the students know it.
The form is also not what makes or breaks good writing. A perfectly formatted and punctuated essay about garbage is still about garbage.
I would agree in general. But when it comes to rubrics and grades? How about leadership?
There is a reason a lot of writers struggle to recover their inner voice after highschool, and a reason why empty jargon fills corporate speeches.
Something is deeply broken, and with it, the idea of "good writing".
I do appreciate this insight here... The education system is sadly failing in a lot of places and I am sorry you had to deal with these things.
Administration definitely has a part to play and so do parents.
One small note, the call or email home is not nearly as effective as it used to be... I've had students ten-toes down call their parents because I threatened to send an email.
@RaffKarva lol, clicked on your profile and realized I'm arguing with a linguist about... linguistics.
Here's a good article on some research that was done, albeit with older models.
Michael@jalefkowit Was that toot written by AI?
@mschfr Beep boop no beep boop
jwz@jalefkowit It has entirely destroyed my ability to enjoy memes, because now before sharing them I have to research a book report on each one first.
Wolfgang Müller (DE:er/EN:he)@jwz @jalefkowit Yes, everything unbelievable is possibly synthetic, now.
@jwz And even if you do that and are reasonably confident it's authentic, one of the first replies you will get when you post it is "ew, AI."
Sigh
Zeb Larson@jalefkowit the key is to be like me: not particularly visible or successful, and thus unworthy of further discussion