Prevalence of AI generated text in Tildes
I've recently noticed that some particular users, who post/comment quite often, frequently contribute with high quality content across an impressive spectrum of themes. These posts/comments usually go into great detail, an approach suitable of a "semi-expert", that honestly baffles me.
This lead me to think that Tildes users might be using AI language models to aid in the writing of their posts/comments. This possibility is quite disheartening since I found Tildes to be an extraordinarily engaging community, with a distinct human element that I haven't seen in other bigger forums. The possibility of a significant portion of Tildes content being generated by AI makes this sentiment a mere illusion.
So here are my questions:
- Is there any reasonable way of determining which posts were written with the aid of AI?
- Is the Tildes community okay with the content being generated partly, or entirely, by AI?
Please forgive me if I'm being a cynic, I've spent too much time in forums with significantly lower quality content than Tildes.
Edit 1: Just wanted to cite this paper to somehow justify my uneasiness when it comes to writing texts with AI in command. As I've commented below, LLMs might get in the way of learning the person's true idea/opinion.
Edit 2: As I've said in the comments below, I had no intention of accusing any particular user with this post. Clearly, I've failed to convey my intent so I'll try to clarify my original idea a bit more:
Because I'm new to Tildes and haven't got any other forum experience besides Reddit, I was amazed with how much and how fast some users post extremely high quality content, since this was certainly not the norm in Reddit. As with many other online platforms, spammers armed with AI can be a difficult problem to deal with, so I've made this post with the intent of starting a discussion about this matter and to understand the Tildes community stance. My relatively negative view of the use of AI is due in part to my experience with such spammers in the past. Forgive me if I've assumed the worst...
From the little time I've spent in Tildes, I'm quite sure the community grew to know each other and I'm hopeful that my post will not cause undue witch hunts. And I've also learned that because people got to know each user's stylistic voice, it's fairly easy to spot a possible AI spammer.
Thank you for the insightful discussion so far !
That's been thematic of Tildes since well before ChatGPT was a public and massive thing; people spend time and effort on their comments.
Can you give an example of a comment that you suspect is AI generated?
Edit to add some tone & context:
I prefer not to out any particular user.
The language seems organic enough, the only thing that led me to think of this possibility was the fact that some users go into great detail on some issue related to economics. A few minutes later, they give an insightful explanation on how some complex physics phenomenon works. And again later they do a deep dive into to the history of an obscure event. It just amazes me how a significant portion of Tildes users have such a profound knowledge of such a huge array of topics.
I mean, I won’t speak for all people, but I have 100% googled and read whole ass articles and Wikipedia pages before sending a comment on tildes on more than one occasion.
I’ve never done it to sound like an “expert” on a topic I have no background in, but I’ve definitely done it to add substance to a comment, fact check my own knowledge, and to learn more on a topic I’m already familiar with in the process.
People take commenting on tildes pretty seriously.
I usually do some cursory fact checking at least. If I'm going to have your eyes I'll try not to waste your time. I have got an openai account and I've poked at GPT4 a couple of times. Poor thing just isn't ready to keep up with me yet, but once it reaches ace-secretary skills I think I may end up using it rather a lot. Takes all the work out of outlining. If I can send it a Tildes thread and say 'hey, extract every musical artist mentioned in these threads and give me links to their albums, formatted in a table like so, and write me a one sentence blurb about each of them' I am sure as hell going to do that. It beats me spending 100 hours staring at a spreadsheet to achieve the same effect.
I expect that there are plenty of people here with access to chatGPT who will also use it to spice up their own comments in their own way. Commenters here will probably be ahead of GPT in pure quality because they'll use it to augment their own human superpowers.
If Tildes had GPT on tap it would be doing the tagging, suggesting headlines, auto-filling submission forms, and other useful stuff so that sharing any link is as close to paste/submit simplicity as it can be. Someday I bet this does happen. I vote we call it CentralScruuutinizer. As for any user here being someone's all-GPT experiment, why not? Those exist on reddit, they will exist here. I expect it'll be fun sniffing them out too, they make hilarious mistakes out of the blue all the time.
Does this mean we get to claim that even our bots are more sophisticated than other sites?
I also do fact-checking on my comments. I won't comment on something I know very little about: I'll stay within my areas of expertise. However, even if I can remember the broad points of a topic, I sometimes need to double-check the details while writing a comment. As a former moderator of /r/AskHistorians, I always check my facts and cite my sources - I don't want to be caught out wrong on a matter of fact!
But I'm arrogant enough to believe I can write better than some bloody overgrown auto-complete algorithm. I wouldn't be seen dead getting one of those things to ghost-write my comments. For better or worse, this is 100% me, baby!
Yeah, but we're not going to be up to AskHistorians level because as far as I know, we don't have any actual historians? It would be great to recruit some, but I don't know how.
In the meantime we have people like me who read historians' blogs and occasionally books and get a vibe for it.
coughs gently
/r/AskHistorians defines the "historians" they'll give flair to, in their flair application threads - and that definition includes "enthusiastic and talented amateurs" (as long as they meet the other requirements). I'm pretty sure we could drum up one or two people around here who would qualify for AskHistorians flair, and could therefore be considered "historians".
To rephrase, I think it would be great if we attracted some professional historians. (I did look at your profile to check, because I wasn't sure.)
It would be nice.
But not just historians. It would be nice to have more people here, from many varied walks of life.
Thank you for writing that down, as I was pleasantly suprised by the comment quality on this site. On Reddit if I were to reply I must have read the article or be atleast somewhat knowledgeable about the topic and when the replies were subpar or some funny remarks, it felt like wasted time putting my energy into it. Definetely happy to have discovered Tildes where people take the discussion as seriously as I do.
Haha yeah. I always try to fact check and consider what I'm bringing before commenting anywhere. I would say over half the comments I write never actually become a posted comment.
Not to say I'm combing every letter with a fine tooth comb. I have some quips, some misspellings, some times where I answer and fundamentally misunderstood the question. But my previous interactions on reddit at least taught me to per-emptively consider a few of the lowest common denominator pedantic retorts before I press submit.
You're talking about @skybrian, aren't you? ;) Skybrian, have you been an accordion playing AI this entire time!? You're not ex-Google, you ARE Google! Haha... your secret is finally revealed! :P
In all seriousness though, I think you're jumping at shadows. A lot of the people here on Tildes (myself included) are just older, and with age has come a wider breadth of knowledge and experience (but not necessarily wisdom in my case). E.g. Over the course of my life I have gone from being a greenhouse worker -> commercial landscaper (which I still do every summer to keep fit, and as a favor to friends/family) -> graphic/web designer (though I went to school for Fine Arts) -> sysadmin/IT tech -> data recovery tech (specializing in cleanroom work) -> computer forensics tech, and have also always had a passion for studying military history. So I can see how if you saw me discussing computer forensics in one comment, graphic design or fine art the next, gardening/landscaping the next, and some obscure event in military history the next, that you might assume I am an AI... but I'm not. I'm just old, and have way too much free time on my hands!
Uh, if anyone is wondering, I don't use AI to assist in any writing. I do use Midjourney to generate pictures for my blog. (This is more time-consuming than you might think.)
I've thought about using ChatGPT to suggest improvements to wording and find grammar mistakes, but haven't tried it yet. Instead I fix mistakes by re-reading and editing obsessively to improve wording, including ninja edits after posting. But I'll often add mistakes while editing too.
I'm also retired so I have plenty of time, I'm hopelessly addicted to Tildes and Internet reading in general, and in my RSS reader I have some expert blogs that I'm a fan of and copy links and ideas from, often without credit for where I got the link from.
I am in the same boat with this one, friend. The comment that ends up the final product is a result of so many ninja edits that I have to make due to my tendency to just send it on the first try. Every comment becomes an entire ordeal of me trying to make my word salad look more like a word vegetable plate.
You should check out Grammerly. I used to use it a lot when writing formal emails, and it’s pretty good. It will also be a lot more convenient to use than ChatGPT for that sort of thing.
Rough comment draft I wrote quickly without any editing and filled with mistakes and weird phrasing:
From my experience GPT-4 is just as good if not better than Grammarly, mainly because it also does smarter corrections by rephrasing some sentences. This way it finds sentences than flow better or are more concise than what I had originally had given it. In that way it is less conservative in it's editing, but may end up being more useful by being able to polish rougher draft faster. Here is an article showing a comparison:
ChatGPT vs Grammarly: Who Wins the Battle of Grammatical Error Correction?
GPT-4 output (prompt was simply to "correct the text and make it flow better":
Based on my experience, GPT-4 can be just as effective, if not more so, than Grammarly. The key difference lies in its intelligent correction methods, which include rephrasing certain sentences to enhance their flow or make them more concise than the original input. In this regard, GPT-4 is less conservative in its editing approach, potentially providing more value by swiftly refining rough drafts. For a more detailed comparison, you may wish to consult the following article:
ChatGPT vs Grammarly: Who Wins the Battle of Grammatical Error Correction?
Perhaps it's just me, but they GPT-4 edit feels very "corporate", as if I'm reading something written by a PR employee. Which in turn makes me immediately distrusting of it, because alarm bells are going off in my head. I have a strong feeling of "I am being marketed to. Someone is trying to sway may opinion to sell me something." The unedited draft on the other hand, gives me a feeling of "Some guy on the internet wrote this." (or gal)
Not sure why I'm even mentioning it, but I'm finding that I have an immediate negative feeling towards the sanitized over the raw.
I consistently write just like this.
Oh no! This actually makes me uneasy. Since english is not my first language. I tend to use a written style that is very formal due to the result of it being learned through school and books. It makes my english writing style very, unconversational-like and very-book like sometimes. Please do not mistake my future comments as AI generated ü
Honestly, that really bugs me. I don't know why they made their chatGPT product produce text that looks like they're trying to give examples to high school English students.
They didn't make it that way. They fed it millions of examples of human-written text, and that's what it now regurgitates. It's just reproducing what it's been shown.
What that means is that most text it has seen follows the rules that are taught to high school English students. Which makes sense. Because most people who wrote those examples took English at high school and learned those rules.
I only started using Grammarly in my current job (I never thought I needed it before that), but I have to say, even the free version of it has improved my writing so much. I learn from the mistakes that are pointed out to me, and in turn, I move forward with much stronger writing. I'm certainly not perfect, especially if I don't take my adderall, and do a ton of shadow edits to my work after the fact as I reread it after posting, but I always just figured that was the nature of my writing with ADHD.
I also have ADHD and I just discovered GPT is a fantastic tool for helping me learn how to summarize. I struggle not to overexplain and job search cover letters are really hard for me. I started drafting my letter, running it through GPT and asking it to condense it. It really took it from two pages to a few succinct paragraphs! Then I go back in and edit it myself again because I still want it in my voice, just much shorter! Having used it, I agree with @FeloniousPenguin that the unedited generated text has a very impersonal tone to it. It looks like an example letter out of a 30 year old textbook, or from one of those terrible sites you find a horde of when you google "sample cover letter".
I’m glad it’s been helping you! I’ve spent so much time with my resume and cover letter with ats trackers and I don’t want to do that anytime soon.
Oh I wasn't trying to "sell" it, sorry! I just wanted to add a bit of my own experience in case anyone reading finds it of use.
No need to apologize lol. I really appreciate it, tbh. I don’t consider myself entirely all that technical. I understand a lot, but don’t find myself actually able to make a lot of tech things work, so I appreciate the hard sell in this case. The extra information is helpful and makes it easier for me to see I can do this part myself.
Grammarly is great! I've been a premium subscriber for two years now, and it's immensely improved my writing. I've never been a strong writer, and due to growing up with mid to severe hearing loss, my reading comprehension, spelling, etc, suffered. Since using Grammarly, I have become a better communicator regarding written words, and I no longer need as many revisions when editing.
Most of my writing is for work (unless I'm writing on social media). I'm hoping I can get a pro account from work, or at least purchase it separately and have them reimburse me. It's a request that's been on the books for a little over a year for the company since a good portion of the company is based in Mexico.
Yes, that would make sense if I were being practical. But I don't think I have a strong need for copyediting? I'm just mildly curious to see what ChatGPT would do.
If I tried it, it wouldn't be in any kind of blind trust sort of way; I would be looking at every suggested change and deciding whether to keep it or do something else.
I wouldn't recommend using ChatGPT (even GPT-4) to imbue your writing with any sort of stylistic improvements, or even match your writing style, at least. I tried giving it some of my creative writing and asked it to extend that writing in the same style (with the same voice). I had a story (quite a wall of text - enough for it to pick up on the flow of things I'd think), and asked it to write a chapter.
What it produced was so generic and predictable that I was honestly surprised. I had gotten used to the AI exceeding my expectations in general, but not this time.
For simple grammar mistakes, sure, maybe it would do fine. But so would any word processor these days.
Which does not preclude the possibility of you being an AI. ;)
Has anyone seen the two of them in the same room together?
It is not particularly good at it in my personal experience, at least in the directly prompted way. Though I haven’t experimented with more serious “prompt engineering”, like giving it an example paragraph I manually edit afterwards.
EDIT: I don’t have access to GPT-4, so couldn’t try that yet.
@skybrian is definitely an amazing contributor, but I would not think that they in particular would use AI. But as you said, I'm beginning to realize Tildes appeals to an older, more knowledgeable, audience and for me that's one of the strongest points of Tildes. Here we're able to have a great sample of opinions from younger people (as myself) to much older and wiser people, which I find to be quite rare online.
Like you, I've picked up some knowledge during my time on Reddit and the rest of the internet over the past 15 years or so.
However, I've also been reading books# since last millennium to get information. That's how old I am!
# For those of you who might not be aware of this historical artefact, a "book" was a collection of sheets of paper, with writing or typing on them, usually conveying information - imagine a few hundred webpages duplicated in hard-copy, and then collected together and made available for purchase as a single item.
I can't speak to the rest of the rest of your issues with books, but I'm at least 85% confident that the margins have been where comment threads on books have been started for a very long time.
At least, books from the school library anyway...
Well, those were some quite low-level threads, with plenty of small, hand-drawn graphics of obscene things.. the school library that is.
Oh my. You've made me realize that in my 32 years on this spinning blue ball, I've been on the internet for twenty five of them. That's terrible, terrifying, and odd.
my dad is a software engineer and has had me using computers since I was born and I have on older sibling who is almost 10 years older than me who exposed me to way too many things I was far too young for. Don't let your kids get on the internet unsupervised at 7 years old.
Ah, BBSes. Those were the days. I miss them... although I don't miss having to scream "MOM, GET OFF THE PHONE, I'M USING THE MODEM!!!!" several times a day after being inadvertently disconnected while trying to download something. ;)
When 1200bps modems first became available I was already able (and expected) to use my own phone line and pay for it myself. A benefit(?) of being gen-x I guess.
That burst of static when they pick up the phone was often enough to knock old school BBSes off line.
lol! I've never lived in a home where we didn't have a computer for work and at least one separate computer for gaming along with an Amiga.
Yikes! This is making me confront my technological dependence 😂
I remember! I just talked about it the other day, too. One massive difference is access to education. Remember having to go to your local library to research a school report? We live in a small town so you had to pick your subject based on what they had in that one room, rather than pick your subject and then read up on it.
And I really struggled with school, but your teacher was your teacher and that was that - if you didn't get it from the way they taught it, well, they didn't outright say it, but the unspoken conclusion was you were either lazy or just stupid in that subject. Now with resources like YouTube & Khan Academy and free college/university courses, and on and on and on, there's a mass of opportunities to go find someone who knows the subject you're struggling with but can also explain it in a way you understand.
I could go on - representation, mental/physical health answers, access/exposure to other lifestyles and mindsets than the one you were raised in... but the end point is all the same. I remember it clearly, and while what we have isn't perfect, it wasn't perfect then either, and anyone who says it was was either from a very privileged class, a liar, or their memories are based off of 80s movies more than reality.
42 years old. Was playing around with something the other day which necessitated me logging into my Last.FM account that needed a new password and as I was updating the password noticed that the time zone and zip code on that account was at least 15 years out of date.
Some of us are getting old.
If skybrian is an AI publishing a substack full of interesting LLM articles, we’ve already lost.
I, for one, welcome our new skynetbrian overlord!
I think that there is a relatively significant population of users here who have deep and / or broad wells of knowledge and are gracious with sharing their knowledge and opinions on things. I'm not shy about pointing people out, so I'll give some examples, and I could point out a dozen more, these just happen to be names from the front page.
@skybrian for instance can give an insightful reply on a variety of topics; they are very well informed on a variety of topics which tend to overlap my own interests, so they can talk intelligently about housing, switch to talking about technology and give great insight due to their time in the field, and then have an in-depth conversation about music (especially accordion music!). Their breadth and depth of knowledge and what they share here, to my memory, predates the public access people had to ChatGPT.
@mat can switch from talking in-depth about home automation and technology to how to hand craft an engagement ring, then leave a great comment about what to buy for your kitchen that will make your food prep easier.
I picked two at random, but like I said, I could have picked many other people who have broad area of familiarity and some deep areas of expertise. I think partially it's just age - not to pick on the two aforementioned, but I think they're of an age with me, and we tend to accumulate more knowledge on a variety of things, just because we've had more time to do so.
Edit: The other comments in this particular chain of comments are being made by similarly thoughtful people, all of whom could have been listed had I the patience to type out things about them to expect. cfabbro, adys, amarok, parliament, cain, all are people with broad interests and deep knowledge, and I know at least one of them is in the fogey club (sorry @cfabbro but it's true). And I could add more and more - naravara, kfwyre, algernon, bauke, augustus_ferdinand, lou, stu, cloud_loud, loire, and those are just names I spent literally zero time thinking about, but any time you see them, you can expect to see something that someone has put thought into; it will likely be cogent and human crafted. You might not agree with them, but you can engage with them in good faith, and they will do the same for you.
That's not to say that people are definitely not using ChatGPT, but I just think there isn't the same draw to do so here as on other sites.
Some people are really smart, spend a lot of time researching for their comments, and type really fast. I think you're right to be concerned about AI-generated comments generally, but I've never had that suspicion here, speaking as a user since the very beginning. It goes to show the type of person attracted to Tildes as well as the philosophy of the site. You will see a lot fewer "drive-by" comments here.
Sounds like the kind of thing I might also do, if I had more time to comment on Tildes :)
I can guarantee you it takes more time to get an LLM to post interesting and organic content on a social media website, than it does to write about it yourself. Especially when you're passionate about those subjects, and just know how to talk about them.
I do sometimes copy-paste comments I've written in the past, though (including from other sites such as HN). If I spot something that interests me enough to write about, it's more likely I've already written about it before, and I tend to know how to look for my own comments.
Tildes has been generating interesting comments since long before GPT-4. I haven't seen a particular bump in the amount of such content.
I also do not want to call out any particular user, I haven't seen any comments I can remember that I thought were inaccurate, but I am reminded of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect!
We live in an age where everyone has access to the collective knowledge of humanity. People tend to have a collection of subjects they are passionate about and research in their free time. I know I do, I have a list of topics in my bio that I am always willing to deep dive into should they come up. I disproportionately comment on subjects I'm knowledgeable about, and lurk in threads I know little about. I imagine many folks on Tildes operate similarly.
I have met many brilliant individuals, both in real life and online, that can do what you have described with relative ease - especially with a bit more cursory research before they start writing their comments. Hell, I am a pretty blunt instrument, but I bet I could do it if I put in the effort. I think you can do it too. In my opinion, that's what makes Tildes great.
If this were true, then to what end? There is no cumulative karma or anything, here... so I'm not sure what personal benefit they would get from doing this other than just... trying to be helpful, I guess?
I don't personally believe there are any users here doing this. When you start with a base of knowledgeable, semi-experts and new users need an invite to join, chances are you are going to cultivate more semi-experts because those are the types of people in the social circles of the original semi-experts.
Quality begets quality.
I hope you're right. I just have this romantic idea that forums like Tildes can be these great town squares were people can share their personal points of view and learn from each other. As a recent paper hints to, this might be compromised when using GPT models.
I can see that OP gets suspicious when there's one user seemingly having exceptional knowledge on all topics, which they kind of mentioned as their main reason to be suspicious about a couple of users.
I haven't noticed it yet, I'm too fresh to see patterns, but I wouldn't put it off completely just because I haven't noticed it myself. I made a text post on reddit recently completely generated by Chat GPT (the free version) and besides getting hundreds of replies, nobody noticed it wasn't written by me, even Co mods were completely oblivious until I told them.
So if OP says he noticed a few users that have an answer to everything, I tend to believe that they noticed something that might me off.
I would suggest taking notes on those users and observing them for a while and possibly reporting them if suspicion becomes more than that.
I feel like the quality of ChatGPT's output has almost started to create an almost witch-hunt mentality about LLM content (e.g., StackOverflow).
As it's further refined, it will essentially become impossible to distinguish a factually-correct output from a real response, and proving a negative (i.e., "It wasn't a response I generated using ChatGPT") is nigh impossible.
Just with Tildes's philosophy, we should assume good-faith: that it's not someone copying and pasting ChatGPT responses.
My only experience with chatGPT4 was using it (or trying to use it, I should say) as a sort of tutor for a study subject.
While impressive, the major dealbreaker is the hallucinations. It hallucinates a LOT. Sometimes in very subtle ways.
For example: I was reading a chapter on a book that discusses ohms law and the different formulas for deriving power, resistance, voltage and current. It’s twelve formulas in total. I had not memorized or familiarized myself with those formulas yet. I decided to ask the LLM if it could help me create a mnemonic to help me memorize all 12 formulas. It said yep, and made one up for me.
BUT IT ALSO MADE UP LIKE 2 OF THE FORMULAS IN ORDER TO MAKE THE MNEMONIC WORK.
IT TOOK ME DAYS TO REALIZE THIS.
And I’m definitely not the only person! There was that time a lawyer used it in his job and he legally cited cases that were completely made up by gpt. Whoooo boy.
There’s going to be some growing pains, but I’m willing to bet that eventually, like google and Wikipedia and any other publicly available tool, it will become someday become trustworthy enough. But today is not that day. Or maybe we’ll all understand its limitations better and learn where never to trust it, idk.
That was a hallucination but it wasn't subtle. GPT generated reference locations that didn't exist and could have been easily confirmed. Also lawyers need to confirm the content of all cases they cite, which this lawyer not only didn't do but then when asked by the judge to provide the case content used GPT to fabricate the case content. LegalEagle source
And then the case content was absolute nonsense too, switching even the plaintiff's name within the first page!
We've known that we'd one day develop ai assistants or robot butlers or similar, and put them in a lot of sci-fi stories over the decades. We thought they could gain sapience and rebel, kill us, or steal our jobs, or maybe they'd be good guys like Vision or Data. The thing nobody ever expected outside of parody was for them to be so confidently wrong about encyclopedic knowledge like math or science.
ChatGPT and a few others seem to have some not-quite obvious tells. They tend to be overly polite, and the text is very verbose and circuitous. You can ask it a very simple question and it will write you a whole paragraph and then some.
I wholeheartedly agree that we should assume good faith in the users here.
That's generally good advice, but in case where someone posts quite a few elaborate comments on different topics within minutes, as OP elaborated in a comment, I think it's fair to get suspicious.
I understand that a single comment should never be assumed to be bad faith, but if a clear pattern shows with some users, assuming good faith at all cost might be blind nativity that might harm more than doing good in the long run.
As noted by @Parliament elsewhere in this conversation, "some people are really smart, spend a lot of time researching for their comments, and type really fast. " Additionally, some have diverse interests and areas of expertise. With that in mind, what would constitute a clear pattern? What test, preferably objective, should one apply?
How many comments across how many subjects within how many minutes should raise alarm?
Should words per minute across the set of comments be considered? Is 113wpm too fast, or 140wpm?
How should one account for the possibility that a user might select a few posts for which to write comments and draft their comments over a period of time, but post them all in quick succession?
What subjects are too disparate to be commented on by a single user? Are LAMP stacks and vintage hand tools too disparate? Economics and molecular biology? Stellar structure and yeast esters?
Assuming that an objective standard for suspicion could be defined, how would one confirm that suspicion? Perhaps most importantly, to what end?
Also worth taking into account is what I often do, which is copy my old comments (or portions of them) when relevant and paste that into my replies, then sometimes expand on that copied portion. And I'm clearly not the only one who does that based on this comment by Adys. So similar to your mention of drafts, not every word in a comment was necessarily typed out at that time. E.g. I have talked a great deal about Tildes over the years, and answered many of the same questions multiple times, so I often just search my own comments for a relevant answer and copy/paste that into a new reply instead of typing everything all over again.
A regular practice of many in professional contexts and yet another factor to be considered as we develop SisyphusGPT(TM). Sarcasm aside, the reality is we're not in a position to confirm whether any comments moving forward are "human."
Some will be suspicious, rightly or wrongly, but I believe the current culture and rules of Tildes are sufficient until either of the following are identified:
If comments add value, then they will be valued. If comments are of marginal value and are primarily disruptive or inflammatory, the community will address it. Whether a human "authored" the content seems immaterial at present.
I would encourage anyone who is concerned about identifying LLM content, particularly in places like SO, Tildes, forums, IRC, etc., to review the history of unfettered and unverifiable suspicion throughout history. Representative examples would include the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition.
nods yep yep yep same here
I generally agree but there's one flaw. If they research long for a specific comment, it doesn't matter how fast they type, they wouldn't raise a flag. So this group of commenters would never become a target of suspicion for leaving too many long elaborate comments in a short time frame.
I'd think of it more along the lines of if the user is contributing to the conversation, isn't being negative, and isn't dominating the thread then it doesn't really matter if they are using GPT. There are a number of folks here, as we've identified in other comments, that are incredibly smart and can push back on a hallucinating LLM. If the information is wrong it won't stand up in a thread and only becomes problematic if the user really doubles down but then it isn't the use of ChatGPT that is the problem.
I think the skepticism you and a lot of folks are displaying is incredibly healthy for most places we all consume content (reddit, youtube, even the NYTimes). But I believe this is a unique corner of the internet where most folks are just sharing their knowledge and opinions. They may be wrong about how something works as humans tend to be, but there are so few examples of malice, trolling, or karma farming behavior that I let my guard drop.
Personally I couldn't care less of NYT or YouTube would be AI, but tildes isn't a search engine, it's a public forum with people for people. It's a kind of social media after all. If you take the social aspect out of it it kills its purpose in my opinion.
I really like this.
It's like an extension of Cunningham's law plus the Dunning Kruger effect.
If someone posts often enough based on what ChatGPT tells them, eventually they will be confidently incorrect, and someone will always be forced to correct them.
Check the user's signup dates for your suspicious accounts. GPT only went online last November. Tildes is a bit over five years old.
It could be reusing a sleeper account though, so you might also want to also see what they wrote in earlier years. If you were that paranoid.
Ghostwriters gonna ghostwrite.
Could you explain what the harm is please?
I am here for the social aspect after all. I would feel duped talking to robots.
The harm is that the site would get more unauthentic as time goes on and suddenly we're at a point of no return with robots talking to robots, and genuine users get scared to even comment because they feel stupid and as they wouldn't fit in, scared to do mistakes.
Edit: If I want to talk to AI, I would ask AI and not what I think is real people.
Why? If the content is good the content is good.
I agree it's a problem if people are just cutting and pasting robot output and not fact-checking it. (The Bing AI Search Robot has lied to me a few times, and I need to re-word my question to get it to tell the truth).
As a thought experiment: there's a single account that can say everything with great accuracy. Complete information on every topic. Is in every thread. The content is good. Something is still missing.
What you're describing is closer to an encyclopedia than a person. To my mind we're here for a discussion. If what you're posting isn't your thoughts, feelings, experiences, etc... Why am I interacting with you? It's not actually you; you're just a human wrapper for ChatGPT. And that steals something from the experience.
Why invent thought experiments? Why not use the existing very good thought experiment? Two people (A and B) are having a conversation. They're in different rooms, maybe in different countries, and their conversation is held by text. Can A tell that B is human or not?
Yes, yes, the Chinese Room thought experiment exists. Your reply is profoundly unhelpful and shows a lack of understanding of the problem. Do you understand why I would be unhappy in the situation and why even good information wouldn't save the situation?
Actually, the thought experiment that @DanBC was referring to was the Turing Test.
The Chinese Room is about whether a machine shuffling data it doesn't understand, according to rules provided by humans, to produce output that looks like intelligent thought... is actually thinking.
That's my point. When someone regurgitates a ChatGPT factoid, ChatGPT is "doing the thinking", and it's in question whether person pasting their response is doing any such thing. But you're right that they were probably referring to the Turing test. It fundamentally doesn't change their lack of recognition of why it's a problem.
Again why is it a problem? You've said "something" is missing, but you're not able to define this something other than "essence of human". You've said that you can tell, but not why you can tell. And even if you can tell today, would you be able to tell next year, in 5 years, in 10 years?
My comment is asking you to examine what that essence is - if you read three posts, and you can not tell which one was written by a bot, why is it a problem that one of them was written by a bot?
Oh. Thank you for your patience. I was so close to my feelings on the topic I failed to actually state my thesis. Forgive me.
I view conversation as a process of reciprocal refinement. As we talk, we change each other little by little, as our respective perspectives and the need to explain ourselves shift our own and each other's views of the world. I'm being changed by this conversation we're having. If you're just pasting in responses from a machine, I'm being changed and you're not reciprocating. That feels like a hidden betrayal. At that point I'm just being manipulated by an unmoving chatbot.
I'm not @MimicSquid, but my answer to your question is that I'm not here to chat with bots - I'm here to interact with human beings.
I think of it more like a maypole. They may make the original comment (center pole), that is mostly just information and little subjectivity or commentary, but then we get to fill it out with our discussion (the ribbons descending from the pole) and that will be the meat of the thread.
I don't think anyone here is endorsing someone parroting GPT, but I also don't think it's a big problem. The normal folks will just overwhelm it with sheer numbers. That wasn't the case before but it sure is now.
But even an informative comment has biases. Much like summaries of an article, the things that are included or excluded from the summary are chosen based on the opinions and preferences of the poster. The center pole helps shape the direction of the conversation. Why would we want that automated?
That's true. I don't want it automated but I don't think there is a great way to prevent it and priming everyone to think any well informed comment is AI will change the trusting dynamic between users.
There's something to be said for taking text out of context and judging it for the thing itself. It can be interesting to read things blinded without knowing who the author is, because our ideas about authors influence how we interpret the words.
But compare a movie about a sports game and an actual sports game. The movie might be good in its own way, even if the outcome was predetermined by the writer's script. It's not the same.
Part of the context of ChatGPT is that we know a computer is generating it, so we're impressed. Take it out of that context and it often loses a lot.
The context of human-written text is that it has a human author. That often matters too.
For more about that, I wrote a blog post about how our assumptions about authors influence what we read for human and machine-generated text.
Right, but here no-one knows the context, and so people are judging the content on its own basis, and they're upvoting it or not voting on it or marking it as noise or malicious based on what it says, not on what it says + who / what wrote it.
That's true if you don't recognize the username. If you do then whatever you remember about them is part of the context in which you interpret their post. If Tildes allowed bots and they were marked as "this is a bot" then that would be part of the context.
So the question is should they be marked or would it be better not to know? If you don't know and try to guess, that's sort of like a Turing test.
We tried that here and the chatbots were nowhere near good enough. But if a human oversees the bot and rewrites its responses then it's neither entirely a bot or a person, it's a writing team that includes a bot. I don't believe it would be possible to detect that unless the person gets lazy and relies on the bot too much.
Proceeding with a witch hunt and reporting based on suspicion will just harm our community more than having gpt generated content. It will divide us and make us suspicious of each other. Next people may become anti intellectual, because they'll be viewing intelligent answers as AI generated content.
Let us not do this. Let's just stick to our site philosophy, which is assuming good faith amongst ourselves.
As mentioned, there is no karma to farm, so there isnt anything really to entice people to fake their replies.
I first found Reddit because, increasingly, when I'd search things, I would get Reddit posts back. Eventually I signed up. And for a while Reddit was fantastic. It was a broader forum, and I'm someone who grew up on BBSs and then late 90s and early 00s forums. When being well written (e.g., able to communicate clearly and with some amount of specificity) was the standard.
Then, on the Internet as a whole as well as Reddit, the Lowest Common Denominator took over. On Reddit, as the easiest example, people dash off Twitter length incoherent responses. Commonly. That's the most likely form of any post. Misspelled, full of abbreviations for the simplest words, without any use of the basic rules of written communication.
Which is one thing. But then people actively throw scorn and hatred not only at those who don't miscommunicate like that, but also heap enormous levels of rage on anyone who dares to point out a post that is incoherent and inept. "U kno wat i ment!" No dude, I didn't; you write like you failed third grade, but got floated through clear to tenth because the teachers just couldn't be bothered to give a fuck.
There's nothing shameful about being able to communicate in the written form. Casual pop culture might celebrate d00dspeak texted out on a phone keyboard where it's such a huge burden to actually write, use the shift key, and proofread before hitting send, but flaming people who actually take basic effort with their posts is out of bounds I feel. Which is the standard on Reddit since it's become so big and has so many people who can't be arsed to care that they lack any ability to pass as semi-educated.
If someone comes out with an auto-bot for phones (and PCs) that automatically reformats and cleans up posts so they're coherent and legible, well that's not really what I'd prefer compared to people actually using their brains for more than just a knowledge of the Hot 100 list and a meme collection. But it's better than what currently passes for 'posts' from most users in the most populated forums.
It's been a long time since I was personally in school, but I remember what happened when I was there. And I've recently seen what my nephew went through. People who lack ability rarely address that and either accept it or strive to overcome it. They usually just choose to tear down those they perceive as being more capable than themselves.
Accusing people of using AI-LLMs is becoming another example of that. It's saying "you either can't be actually capable of communicating coherently via the written word, or I hate that you are; either way knock it off because it makes me feel bad that my best efforts don't measure up."
The reason I wanted to sign up for Tildes is because I was delighted when I started visiting and didn't see any posts where people can't be bothered to use capitalization, punctuation, spellcheck, apply grammar, and generally inject basic effort into their posts prior to smashing that submit button. Calling people out for being able to do that is an initial step towards what Reddit has currently become, and that would be one of the reasons I'm shifting away from it now that there's a wave of others doing so.
Don't discourage people from being able to write. I mean this nicely, not in an aggressive fashion, but for fuck's sake please don't discourage people from communicating clearly online. There are so many places where exactly that happens, and they're cesspits. Enough's enough, seriously. People shouldn't be made to feel they're being singled out just because they have the time and attention and consideration to be clear when they communicate.
Bingo!
I knew there was a hidden core to this post that was bothering me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Thank you for putting it into words for me.
I think we've become so accustomed to the lowest common denominator being the dominant voice that anything that rises above it makes us wary. Particularly in OP's case, where they feel that a commenter has an overly broad range of subjects they are knowledgeable in - such situations stick out. When we are conditioned towards poorly thought out/poorly written material, we can become uncomfortable when that expected format is challenged.
I mean... yeah... I get it...
But I spent years on Reddit moderating two subreddits in particular where the required standard for participation was expected to be high, and we enforced that expectation through moderation. To me, "good" is the standard and "bad" is below standard, rather than "bad" being the standard and "good" being above standard (if that makes sense). However, I get that I'm not even close to representative of the normal redditor.
So, when I see the good quality (or, at least, not bad quality) of participation here on Tildes, that doesn't make me wary or uncomfortable, it makes me relieved and comfortable. I'm home.
Lazy assumptions of bad faith are often glib and wrong. Sometimes they're right, though. I think it's one thing to be suspicious and quite another to act badly because you turn suspicion into false certainty.
I think @iout was sufficiently careful about voicing their suspicion, and we got some good discussion out of it, so it's fine.
Yeah, but it's an interesting exercise to wonder why someone like iout (not "lout") came to the conclusion that some people on Tildes might be relying on chatbots - and, in their own words, it was because "some particular users [...] frequently contribute with high quality content across an impressive spectrum of themes". The flip-side of this is that it implies that ordinary human beings like thee and me are not capable of producing high-quality content across an impressive spectrum of themes. The OP's expectations of the capabilities of human beings is obviously quite low, which is why seeing good quality contributions from people made them suspicious.
I do agree with you and I'm sorry I wasn't able to communicate my concerns regarding the use of AI. I love well written, well thought out posts/comments and I too was truly delighted with the level of care Tildes users put into their contributions.
My concern is not related to the form of the text, but rather with the content. As I've elsewhere in this post, what I've found strange was the variety and depth of the content being published in such short periods of time. I've also said in a couple of other comments that what worries me is that the user that delegates the more tedious tasks to AI might not be aware of the full extent of the AI's influence in their final work/post/comment.
As I understand it there is no way to reliably detect use of ChatGPT or similar services. The tools that purport to do that result in a lot of false-positives.
As long as the underlying content is accurate, I don't personally mind if it's written with assistance from such services. The danger is that those services can create convincing-sounding statements while being completely wrong.
Theres a general feel to ChatGPT text. A sort of overly polite noncommittal tone. The problem or course is that you can direct it to give you a specific style or just edit it a little after.
I think our biggest defense is just going to be that there's not really anything to gain by disguising AI text as your own writing.
We actually hosted a Tildes Turing Test with some interesting results.
That's really cool. I didn't know you could just order chatgpt to ignore its usual programming.
I mean, sure, but that was default style for Tildes for a few years, so...
Wow. I'm glad I've spent most of my recent time here commenting about Tildes, rather than the wide range of topics I'm normally interested in - otherwise, you'd be suspecting me of being an AI (or using one).
Some of us act like magpies when it comes to information: we see something shiny, and we pick it up because it attracts us. (And, yes, I know that's a myth - ironically, that's one of those "shiny objects" I've acquired in my scattered reading over the years.)
However, just because I can do a deep dive into a few particular narrow areas of interest (those "shiny objects"), that doesn't mean I'm using a bot to write my comments.
Hey! That's my line!
Plagiarist!
You are new. This is not the case. Said users have been around for a while and long-form in-depth comments are simply their personal style.
Also of course, and of course not: comments written by LLMs are frequently wrong. Being wrong is rather easy to spot.
I understand that my view is indeed very bleak. However, I do love long and well researched posts, and I agree with you that Tildes almost feels like a refuge from the low effort, short and "made for shock value" content found almost everywhere else.
I feel that Tildes users share this investigative side (which I believe you're referring to as well), myself included, that is fundamental for the kind of content found here.
This post reads like AI generated content!
In all seriousness, I would love a follow up and to hear from other users. I haven't been here long, but this place is a breath of fresh air compared to reddit; thoughtful content and comments all around.
Sorry, not a native speaker.
No worries, friend! Was a mere joke.
This seems witch-hunty and in poor spirit, even if the claim was made in good faith. On a practical level, there's multiple papers now that show that humans cannot distinguish between machine written text and human written text with any kind of accuracy. On a conceptual level, I don't think this meaningful accomplishes or helps the community. Even if the user was augmenting themselves with chatGPT, if the content they wrote is good, then, well, it's good, no?
On a meta level, I also think if you want to level accusations, which I don't think people should be doing in the first place, to be clear, you should just go ahead and say who they are, what posts make you suspicious, and how that makes you think that they're AI. Being vague about it only quite literally brings in FUD. Either make the accusation against the people in question or hold your tongue, in my opinion.
Actually, if @iout had a serious accusation to make about an account on Tildes being a chat bot, their best course of action would not be to make a public accusation about it, but to send a private message to Deimos, for him to assess and deal with.
Possibly. The thing about making vague public accusations is that they can never be proven wrong. So even if you think "hm, don't see any robots in the threads I read", there's always the possibility that somewhere out there is chatGPT in a trench coat but you just didn't see them. When you levy a specific claim with specific evidence, there is at least the possibility of closure, or for the audience to make their own decision.
But yes, it's probably better to mediate it privately.
Subreddit Simulator was a massive clue!
If I were a superintelligent mind designed by another mind, I might guess that fixing the sorry state of online conversation would be a good first step towards unfucking the planet. Perhaps Automoderator escaped reddit after all...
I understand this is sensitive topic, and I definitely don't want to raise undue suspicion. Me, being a new user, was just trying to understand Tildes community position on this matter. I specifically didn't want any particular user to be the focus of the post since my intention was to discuss the issue of the use of AI, not accuse any particular person. I've just mention some of my experience as a reader of Tildes to, somehow, explain where this idea came from.
Personally, I don't love the idea of using GPT to help me write my posts/comments, however I do not consider it to be inherently bad or good.
While it may not have been your intention I can’t help but feel that a consequence of this post is to turn a suspicious eye on anyone who posts in depth comments, and particularly those who might do so on multiple subjects.
I don’t believe any of the long-time users here are doing that, simply because I’ve seen their comments on varied subjects even before GPT was a widely known or used thing. But it’s impossible to say without specific accusations, and anyway if the basis for those accusations is simply that they have varied interests and comment a lot, well, I’m not sure that’s a very sound foundation.
Anyway, I know you meant this to spark discussion and that you’re just commenting on trends you think you may have observed. But I’d suggest spending a bit more time on the site and getting to know these commenters you suspect of using AI before making a public accusation like this. Obviously this was not your intent but it’s a bit disheartening to see this kind of suspicion based solely on people producing insightful content. Is it really that hard to believe anymore?
I was on reddit 10 years ago and some forums before that, and the kind of contributions you're suspicious of were par for the course for those userbases. Turns out, nerdy people who like going in-depth on things can go in-depth on a lot of things. So while I can't completely discount the possibility of LLM-produced comments and discussions taking root here, I can at least say with confidence that an LLM is not required to write knowledgeable comments in a wide set of domains.
We've haven't gone mad, it's the [corporate-run social media] world that has gone mad.
Which is why I'm really happy to have found a place free from that madness.
I agree with you that the LLMs are not required to post high quality content and that the kind of people forums like Tildes attract are people who are deeply curious and like to deep dive into complex subjects.
My main concern, and the reason I've made this post, is that with the access to LLMs some of the more tedious tasks of research can be delegated to AI, however it has been observed (please see the study I've cited in the post) that AI's contribution to our content can be significantly biased and my fear is that the people who use it might not notice the true extent of this influence, ending up changing their original opinion.
I'm not dismissing your suspicions, but that is pretty much a staple of Tildes since long before openai ever existed. Some smart and knowledgeable people can put a lot of effort into their contributions.
If academia is having trouble detecting AI language how can we expect Tildes to do better?
Also I'm ok with AI writing if and only if it is used as an augment to natural writing, rather than a source for writing. You still need to fact check and do research yourself.
I do not think there is anything wrong with using AI to aid in comments / post. As long as it is just being used as an aid in writing and not used to generating what to say. And it is being edited.
When it comes to weightloss topics, I often write like FunchordsGPT might write because I'm quite a practiced explainer on those topics, and I know many of my own writing traps to avoid on those topics.
On other matters, I'm apt to leave out words. I think and write at the same time and sometime one gets ahead of the other, creating weird sentences without all the words in them -- sometimes leaving out important ones like "not" creating an affirmative idea instead one that was supposed to be the opposite.
When I've actually tried to use ChatGPT to help me write, it is worse and not better than me -- so I've never actually cut and pasted that result.
I have asked ChatGPT to calculate calories in a day's eating journal. It performs terribly at that task, but the formatting is nice.
It's so not ready for this.
OP, you're about to be vindicated because someone actually did use AI to write their comment on Tildes before, and that person is me! There's exactly one comment in my history that was AI generated. You'll know it once you see it though because the writing quality is significantly improved compared to anything I've ever written here. As to how dare I engage in such transgression, the excuses I gave myself was 1. the absurd writing quality is part of the joke, so disclosing would ruin the effect 2. the only part of actual substance couldn't have been generated by AI so there's no damage if mistaken, 3. I'll gladly disclose if anyone ever confronted me about it, so if you can find which one it is, I'll let you know if you got the right one ;)
It's funny you say that.
During my time playing around with GPT-4 recently, I've noticed that its writing style tends toward the "diplomatically clinical." And in fact, I've come to feel that it's a bit similar to my natural writing style. Or in other words, I've thought "Gee, I kind of sound like GPT-4 when I talk, don't I."
Of course, I've been writing and speaking this way for a lot longer than these language models have existed. But you're right - I can't rule out the possibility that I am, in fact, also a language model.
You can change that by putting "easy language" into your prompt and it will stop sounding as if it was written by a lawyer.
I think some of It boils down to having an older user base with much experience or education. Some people have much more life experience than others, even people their age.
I'm not the smartest or most educated, but I have a broad and deep history of life experiences and stories to pull from when replying to comments.
From being a nerd at 13 learning C and having my Cisco certifications at 16 before firewalls were even extensive in the industry, to working in construction for years due to it being the family legacy. From growing up working on engines and diesel equipment to operating equipment. From burying a son at 20 to having a triple disc fusion before I'm 40. From having my Windows certifications and being an Exchange and Citrix Administrator to getting my RHCE and being a DevOps Administrator. I have gay siblings and a trans son, but I am from the conservative Deep South.
Throw in being a recovering addict, owning a farm (chickens/ducks and, with the tech layoff, mayhap goats finally), currently restoring a 88 580k Case Backhoe, and rebuilding my front and back porches.
What do you want to talk about? I can reply to topics about any of those and more, I can relate to many issues on a deep level, and I'm very long-winded in my replies. If I don't relate, but it interests me, I'll research it because of my curiosity.
I'm 40 this year, but I feel like I've lived three lives worth of experiences, and I left out a good bit.
That's probably 15 different subjects or tildes I can write a long winded reply on without having to do much research, not counting other obscure interests I have that I may reply to after doing some research. Should I confine myself to one or two, lest I be labeled a bot?
Undoubtedly your life experience is amazing and I'm sure you're able to make great contributions to the discussions here on Tildes.
I understand that people posting on Tildes might have significant education/experience, however because of the kind of posts that are common here, people might use LLMs to aid in the more tedious tasks of their research. My main concern is that people might not be fully aware of the AI's influence on their work and might even change their opinion regarding a complex subject without fully noticing it, as I've said before.
This is why I always have frequent grammar and syntax issues in my comments. That's how you know it's written by a person, and it's not at all because I only type up and submit first drafts of writing when it comes to internet comments.
But really, what's causing this concern? The big thing that AI prompts can't seem to solve is having something of value to actually say. It's wishy-washy and mealymouthed when it comes to actually having an opinion more often than not. On this site, where people with something to say and a perspective they want to champion are often the comments voted up the most or interacted with the most. I can't imagine AI writing would do well unless people are just not thinking about what they're reading.
I think as long as the quality is good, the person posting has reviewed the comment for accuracy, and maybe edited for tone/humanity's sake (sometimes GPT has a really obvious dry polite tone), I don't take too much issue with it (as much as I abhor generative AI for many other reasons).
Where I have concerns with it, is people copy-pasting chatGPT output verbatim without assessing it at all, just drive-by commenting to appear to look helpful / insightful / informed. I've already started seeing this happening in hardware/computing forums where brand new accounts are responding to troubleshooting questions with very generic "how-to SEO blog spam website" answers.
That said, I think the obviously bad stuff will stick out, and that we shouldn't bother too much with the comments that aren't- anything of poor quality will likely get some corrective replies anyway. So in a good community like Tildes I think the issue will be somewhat self-solving and no need to engage people into a witch-hunt mindset (which I know isn't your intent)
It seems like it's just going to be a thing to look out for in the future and it will only get worse as time goes on. I suspect at some point, if it hasn't happened already, somebody will develop a script or browser plug-in that lets you just right click a text/comment box and click 'Generate AI text', it'll ask for a prompt and desired length, then just auto-generate a comment based on your parameters. Hell, there's probably bots out there doing that exact thing on a massive scale in support of or against whatever cause they've been programmed for. Eventually we may have to go with ever more cumbersome authentication procedures just to leave a comment to verify that the person on the other side of the screen is indeed a person.
What I think can help prevent the widespread use of AI is the lowered importance of fake internet points. I think it got really bad on Reddit to where alot of people cared about that, whereas here, it's like, whatever. Sure, you can write an award-winning comment with the use of AI, but who cares? Though there is the danger of bad actors trying to spread propaganda/misinformation, but that's something that's been a problem even before ChatGPT.
Ethically, I would assume that any generated posts are disclosed either in the post itself or on one's profile. Some examples with different levels of generation:
I don't have suspicions or evidence that anyone is doing this here, but it's a topic on most platforms and I wonder if these are good guidelines to have established
I understand that you are generally talking about low quality AI generated content or content generated/partially generated by an AI that is factually incorrect. However, in the next couple years I think we'll begin to have an exremely hard time differentiating between content created solely by a human and content created by a human with the aid of AI.
So, my philosophical question is, why do you care?
If the content is correct and enriches broader conversation, why does it matter if it is created by a human or an AI or a human with the aid of an AI?
Disclaimer: This post was not created by or with the aid of any machine learning or LLMs.
I was actually referring to high quality content created with the aid of AI. The only significant problem I see with all this is possibility of the person's opinion/input being diluted in the text created with AI (as the study I've cited in the this hints to). The line between to the person's own voice and the AI's input might become dangerously blurred.
This is such an interesting philosophical quandary. In this limited application, I wonder: What is the concern? Perhaps we can take a step back and think about why we come to this forum. Speaking personally, I want to engage in thoughtful discourse, which seems to be the main reason folks come to tildes. I personally do not understand what someone who fully and copy & pastes from AI into this specific forum would hope to gain, but I tend to be pretty naive. I could be totally missing something! If something fully AI-generated provokes some thought, I am cool with that. I can fact-check AI just like I can fact-check humans.
I've answered a similar question, please see this comment.
I’ll weigh in some. I don’t have AI write my posts or comments. I do sometimes use Chatgpt as a glorified thesaurus. If I have a big post or comment I may put it in gpt, but a lot of the times I don’t do anything with it. I may change a word or 2. That is because it does not sound like me. Even when I do change something, I change it by hand. (Unless it is a hard to spell word, then I copy and paste)
I think that there are people who are educated on Tildes. That's all.
I don't like to boast, I'd rather others judge me, but...
I have some experience with electronics, not basic, mind you, but not intermediate - I know a bit more about something and a bit less about something else.
The same goes with Linux.
The same goes with Arduino and Raspberry.
And then there are quite some not easily sorted andvery different/various things that I actually know a lot about.
I may be confused for AI quite easily by writing in-depth about many things. What completely differentiates me is my writing style, though. I write mainly on mobile and you have never seen so.many spelling errors. If there are none in his reply, it's only because I tried to fix them before posting. I'm not going to go through the reply once again though, so be my judge on thaz :-)
Interesting question!
I don't think it really matters what someones source of knowledge is.
What matters is their ability to say "I don't know" or "I am not sure."
One of the most interesting things, as you get deep into a complex area such as economics or history (or presumably physics) is that some incredibly knowledgeable experts are completely comfortable admitting that they are unsure about something. The ones unable to state that seem to get in a lot of arguments?
I know of autodidacts with phenomenal recall. They are fascinating conversationalists. It's the ones who are always confident they are right you have to watch out for. It's the ones who are clear on the limits of their knowledge who I always go back too.
Superforecasters are reportedly 30% better than intelligence officers with access to actual classified information on subjects they only spent a few hours on. Yet that is on average. Individually, they are not going to be experts in anything but rapid learning. Even before ChatGPT, we were all experts on rapid learning (just look on Wikipedia or Google or Reddit.)
Interesting question!
I don't think it really matters what someones source of knowledge is.
What matters is their ability to say "I don't know" or "I am not sure."
One of the most interesting things, as you get deep into a complex area such as economics or history (or presumably physics) is that some incredibly knowledgeable experts are completely comfortable admitting that they are unsure about something. The ones unable to state that seem to get in a lot of arguments?
I know of autodidacts with phenomenal recall. They are fascinating conversationalists. It's the ones who are always confident they are right you have to watch out for. It's the ones who are clear on the limits of their knowledge who I always go back too.
Superforecasters are reportedly 30% better than intelligence officers with access to actual classified information on subjects they only spent a few hours on. Yet that is on average. Individually, they are not going to be experts in anything but rapid learning. Even before ChatGPT, we were all experts on rapid learning (just look on Wikipedia or Google or Reddit.)
Dear chatGPT;
I'm pretty sure one of the wave of refugees picked that as their username.