This is a special post for quick takes by Linch. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Should I point it out when a post I read seem to have heavy markers of AI, to me? Especially if Pangram and other AI detectors[1] don't clock it.
Reasons not to:
I could be wrong (I think this is unlikely, but I'm not sure. I don't have ground truth. What I do know is that pretty much no pre-2021 writings trigger this in me).
I personally get very mad when people accuse my (fully human-generated) writing as AI, excepting occasional meta-jokes. So admittedly I'm on both sides of this.
False positives are far more harmful than false negatives. FWIW I'm only tempted to do this when my subjective probability exceeds say 90%.
Is this something people actually want to be aware of?
I can't tell if the situation is something like Writers: I consent to passing off AI writing as my own. B: I consent to reading AI writing as if it was written by a human. Linch: I don't.
There's not a precise demarcation between using AI to help flesh out your ideas, organize your thoughts, and proofreading vs just dump a few notes into an AI and have it write out the whole piece for you. If a piece wasn't written 100% by AI (and it probably wasn't, Pangram would've probably caught it if there's literally no human in the loop), should I care?
I certainly regularly use Claude for research assistance and editing feedback!
Reasons to:
Seems dishonest for people to use AI assistance without disclosing
Writing that's heavily AI-assisted comes across as same-y, and more so than you'd expect from the default EA Forum/LW "voice."
I agree-voted, specifically for cases Pangram etc miss, and if you explain why you think so. Pretty curious to see examples of harder-to-discern AI smells. Re: false positive harm, some combination of non-confrontational delivery and a link to this quick take should mitigate it no?