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Notes -
We Have Taiwan At Home
There is a story that Su Shi, the great Song Dynasty poet, was exiled to Hainan in 1097. At the time, this was a death sentence. The island was a malarial backwater, the literal end of the known world, inhabited by "barbarians" and venomous snakes. Su Shi, being a stoic and a gourmand, reportedly (and perhaps apocryphally) made the best of it by learning to cook oysters and writing poems about how nice the weather was. Fast forward a millennium, and the Communist Party of China has decided that Su Shi's place of exile is the future of global capitalism.
On the 18th of December, 2025, Beijing officially "closed" the customs border around Hainan. This sounds bad. Usually, when you close a border, it means tanks are rolling in. In this case, it means the opposite: Hainan is now treated as a separate customs territory for goods, with a "first line" between the island and the rest of the world and a "second line" between the island and the mainland. The Reuters headline calls it a "$113 billion free-trade experiment." The details are drastic, the implications, as far as I can tell, immense. If you are a foreign company, you can ship a wide range of inputs into Hainan, subject to a negative-list regime, tariff-free. If you process those goods there, adding just 30% value under the Free Trade Port's eligibility and supervision rules, you can sell them into mainland China with zero tariffs (while import VAT and consumption taxes may still apply, depending on the product).
This is the "Hainan Free Trade Port", and if the Chinese government is to be believed, it is the successor to Hong Kong, a pilot for joining the CPTPP, and a strategic hedge against a hostile trade war with the US, all rolled into one tropical island.
This is a very big deal. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a big brain play at "dual circulation" economics or a doomed attempt to simulate a free market inside a panopticon. I for one, tend towards optimism.
Let's look at the mechanics, because they are fascinatingly game able. I suspect that might even be the intent:
The core purpose of the Hainan FTP is what we might call the 30% Loophole.
Under normal circumstances, if you want to sell a widget to a consumer in Shanghai, you pay a tariff. If that widget comes from a country currently annoyed with China (or vice versa), that tariff might be punitive. I wonder why tariffs have been a hot topic of late.
Under the new Hainan rules, the flow looks like this:
Imagine if the USGov declared that Florida was a separate customs entity. You could ship French wine or Japanese steel into Miami tax-free. If you turned the steel into a car in Orlando, you could sell it to New York tariff-free.
Perhaps just as important, the tax regime is aggressive. Qualifying firms in encouraged sectors can access a 15% corporate income tax rate (versus the standard 25%), and eligible "high-end" or "urgently needed" talent can be brought down to an effective 15% personal rate via refunds of the portion above 15%. This is a direct shot at Singapore and Hong Kong.
The economic incentives here are powerful. The "30% value added" is a low bar. The accounting details matter: bill of materials, processing costs, overhead; but 30% is low enough that assembly, testing, packaging, and integration often get you there. If I were a German chemical company or a Japanese electronics manufacturer, I'd be looking at this and calculating the margin. You can bypass the Great Wall of Tariffs by setting up a factory in Haikou.
Why is Beijing doing this?
The standard answer is "economic growth." China's FDI dropped ~ 10% in the first three quarters of 2025. The property sector is still a mess. They need a win.
But the specific timing and structure suggest two other motivations: The Hong Kong Problem and The CPTPP Gambit:
Hong Kong used to be the interface between China and the world. It was the airlock. You could keep the mainland pressurized with communism and capital controls, while Hong Kong remained a vacuum of common law and free capital. It worked great until 2019-2020, when the airlock started leaking politics. Beijing has effectively integrated Hong Kong politically, but in doing so, they damaged its unique value proposition. Trust in Hong Kong's distinct legal system has eroded. The "Hainan Option" is an attempt to build a backup airlock.
The theory goes: We don't need the British Common Law or colonial judges to have a financial hub. We can just simulate the economic conditions of Hong Kong (low tax, free trade) without the political pains (protests, foreign judges).
On the other hand:
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is the trade deal that the US abandoned under Trump, leaving Japan and others to run it. It has very high standards for data flows, labor rights, and state-owned enterprises.
China wants in. Joining CPTPP would be a geopolitical coup, effectively isolating the US from the Pacific trade architecture. But China, as currently constituted, cannot meet the standards. The state subsidies are too high; the data laws are too strict. Hainan is the "pilot." The Reuters article quotes Vice Premier He Lifeng calling it a "vital gateway." The idea is to adopt CPTPP-compliant rules only in Hainan. If it works, they can tell the trade bloc, "Look, we can do it. There's enough trade in the Pacific without the US wagging its dick at us."
The skepticism here is high. As one diplomat noted in the Reuters piece, CPTPP members generally demand nationwide commitments, not just a gated playground for pilot projects. Beijing hopes Hainan will serve as a proof of concept; trade negotiators suspect it will be a showpiece rather than a structural reform.
Will it work?
If you are a fan of Gravity Models of Trade, you should be bullish (I do not know enough to claim to be an expert, I'm just doing this because it's been a few days and nobody else has bothered). Hainan sits right in the middle of the South China Sea, one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth. It is closer to Vietnam and the Philippines than Shanghai is. If you lower friction/tariffs in a high-gravity area/massive population centers, trade will happen. The physics of economics demand it. If you are a fan of Institutional Economics (think Acemoglu and Robinson), you should be skeptical.
The institutionalist argument is that Hong Kong worked not because of the tax rate, but because of the Rule of Law. If you had a contract dispute in Hong Kong, you knew a judge in a wig would apply English common law, regardless of what the Party Secretary thought.
Hainan does not have judges in wigs. It has the People's Courts. The "Hainan Free Trade Port Law" passed in 2021 promises protection for foreign investors, but we have seen how quickly laws can change when they conflict with "national security."
However, there is a middle path: the "Good Enough" Equilibrium.
Foreign capital might not need perfect British Common Law. It might just need "predictable enough" rules and "high enough" profits. If the 30% value-add loophole generates a 20% increase in net margin for a German carmaker, they might be willing to tolerate the risk that the local court is biased.
Dubai is a good comparison here. Dubai is more chocolate than it is a democracy. It does not have English Common Law (though the DIFC does). But it functions as a global hub because the ruling family understands that screwing over foreign investors is bad for business. If Hainan can establish a reputation for "commercial neutrality", even within an authoritarian state, it could siphon off a lot of the manufacturing-adjacent services that are currently leaving Hong Kong.
There is also the Trump Factor (implied by the fact that 2025 of all years is the date of implementation). If the US is ramping up tariffs on "China," Hainan offers a fascinating shell game.
If a product is made in Vietnam, shipped to Hainan for "processing," and then shipped to Europe, what is its origin? If a product is made in Hainan and shipped to the US, does it get hit with the "China Tariff"?
Probably yes. Customs agents are not stupid (alas). Outside China, origin is usually about substantial transformation or "last substantial transformation," often implemented through tariff classification changes or specific processing rules, not the Free Trade Port's internal 30% threshold.
But for the rest of the world, Hainan offers a way to interact with the Chinese economy without the full weight of mainland protectionism. The "30% value add" rule effectively turns Hainan into a giant mixing vat. You pour in global commodities, stir them with Chinese labor (which is still cost-competitive for high-skill work), and pour out a "Hainan" product. This helps China move up the value chain. Instead of just being the "World's Factory" (doing the scutwork), they become the "World's Processor" (high value add-ons).
Let's look at the numbers again. Hainan's GDP is $113 billion. Hong Kong's is $407 billion. To catch up, Hainan needs to grow at explosive rates. But it has a handicap: talent. Hong Kong is a nice place to live if you like cosmopolitan cities. Hainan is... nice if you like beaches and humidity. But it lacks the schools, the nightlife, and the cultural cachet of HK or Shanghai.
The "talent" question is usually where these top-down economic zones fail. You can build the airport and the office towers, but if the bankers and engineers don't want to live there, you just have a very expensive ghost town. However, the tax incentives for "urgently needed" talent are the counter-weight. In a world where Western nations are talking about wealth taxes and China's mainland tax is high, an effective 15% cap is very attractive. It might attract a specific class of mercenary expatriates and Chinese tech workers looking for a tax haven.
Explain the implications like I'm an idiot, or a precocious 5 year old:
I predict a golden age of smuggling. The "Second Line" (the border between Hainan and the mainland) is the critical point of failure. If you have a zero-tariff zone separated from a high-tariff zone by a ferry ride, the incentive wedge is enormous. Expect the "Second Line" to become a cat-and-mouse game of drone deliveries and mislabeled cargo.
Hainan is geographically closer to Hanoi than to Beijing. The marketing for the FTP explicitly positions it as a gateway to Southeast Asia. If Hainan works, it becomes the de facto capital of the South China Sea economic zone. It pulls Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines closer into China's economic gravity well, regardless of the naval disputes.
I suspect this splits the functions that used to be united in HK. It makes HK less indispensable to Beijing, which in turn makes HK more vulnerable politically. Hong Kong keeps the IPOs; Hainan takes the supply chains.
And of course, the Taiwanese elephant in the South China Sea. I get more than a whiff of "we have Taiwan at home", an effort to make a China that is less... Chinese. Perhaps a proof-of-concept that Beijing can take the boot of the neck if you unite amicably.
In a letter from exile in 1097, Su Shi wrote of Hainan: "I have no meat to eat, no medicine for my illness, no house to live in, no friends to visit, no coal for winter, no cool spring for summer. But for some reason, I've got a lot of raw fish. FeelsBadMan." (I am not sure he said any of this at all, I asked ChatGPT for cool quotes. At least Wikipedia confirms he was exiled to the area)
In 2025, you can get all of those things in Hainan, tax-free, likely imported from Australia or France. The fish, you probably want from somewhere with lower levels of mercury.
China is attempting to engineer a free market organ and transplant it into nominally communist body. The rejection risk is moderate. I, for one, am interested in seeing how it all plays out.
AI output detected.
Sigh... It's all so tiresome....
Before the accusations of paranoia: I am highly confifent that AI output is present and found it with my brain first. But other supporting factors (not a smoking gun, just supporting evidence):
97% score for a randomly chosen section on gptzero
Comparison with past writing by self made on the topic of china: https://www.themotte.org/post/3302/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/374614?context=8#context - writing is substantially different in style - 0% score on gptzero
Discussion of using AI in general, though not one particular circumstance: https://www.themotte.org/post/3411/a-broken-model-of-the-world/392472?context=8#context
Self_made, your writingnis better than this. AI or not, I can't read this, but I read the entire essay about broken world models just fine. As a mod, I'm sure you're much more familiar with the rules than I am and wouldn't break them, but whatever AI or other peocess used here made the final essay worse in my imo.
I agree with you that using LLM output directly in an answer should be banned, if not as a rule (not least because it’s impossible) then by mutual gentle(wo)man’s agreement of the regular commentariat.
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My man, I quite literally said, in the essay itself, that I used ChatGPT for help. That is not the same as using it to write an essay!
I am not an expert on geopolitics or economics. I asked ChatGPT for help with relevant theories (I do know about the Gravity model of trade and am tangentially familiar with Acemoglu). Why? Because nobody with more expertise brought this up first in a hot minute.
You do realize that's in the context of an essay with no AI involvement beyond feedback? I have few qualms about disclosing it when it's actually relevant, or denying my usage. You don't have to use GPT-Zero, which is an unreliable tool at the best of times. You can just ask. The honest answer here is I ran into a very interesting article, wrote a rough draft of an essay, asked multiple models for feedback and edit passes, then did the tedious work of checking for hallucinations. This was over multiple days, and several good points noted by the AI, such as the applicability of various economic models, was probably accepted by me into the final version. As far as I can tell, there are no hallucinations, beyond quotes from poorly sourced Chinese literature that I can't read (suitably signposted and kept as a joke).
The current moderation consensus is that the use of AI to generate all or even most of a post, particularly in an attempt to pad effort or mislead, is a clear violation of the rules. We have refrained from declaring what proportion of an essay or post must be AI written to be worthy of action. It is a ruling mainly made to dissuade spam or bad-faith actors, and using it for editing or proofreading is, as far as I'm aware, above board.
While it's very kind of you to say that you prefer 100% raw SMH, you haven't even seen the raw essay! How would you know if it's better? I don't, or I'd have posted it.
The previous essay on China was a throwaway written in the middle of the night, it lacks the spit and polish of an effortpost written over hours or days. You will see a lot of variance in my style based on how much effort I'm putting in.
Much like goods "manufactured" in Hainan, I believe I have added enough additional value to the base product to post without qualms. It is, after all, mostly mine. Or perhaps the AI added enough value to my base product. The day I throw raw ChatGPT output in here is the day I welcome public crucifixion.
There are multiple schools of LLM opposition, with different concerns that lead to different levels of tolerance. One, which the current policy as you understand and implement it does address, is the one about effort asymmetry - "why should I read and parse a post in good faith if it was generated in a click" etc.; another, though, which I am increasingly coming around to, is more about some sort of neurolinguistic programming Lovecraftian corruption aspect, where you can see an LLM flavour to the writing style, the narrative structure, or even the underlying thought process even if the text was composed by a human using "LLM help", or perhaps just by a human who has spent too much time interacting with LLMs at all. For the latter group, "I edited it myself" may be as reassuring as "I am a human, not a pathogen" coming from a terminal plague victim shambling towards you.
I agree that it is a mistake to assume that people complaining about LLM-usage are monolithic or homogeneous.
When I object to LLM usage, I would point to aspects like:
At the risk of flattering myself, I think these are the "reasonable" reasons to disapprove of specific examples or LLM outputs as a whole. But I haven't made any of those mistakes, which is why I consider myself misunderstood rather than someone cheating their way into the discourse.
Well I can say that this latest post was super-boring to read -- you say that this is not so important to you, which is kind of a weird thing for somebody who wants to be a writer to say. Unless you are writing strictly for your own entertainment, in which case there seems no need to make the product public?
In any case, given that you consider a boring end product undesirable to at least a certain degree, maybe consider the extent to which the LLM's "help" with your writing was actually having the effect of making it more boring to read before "writing" any more of these pieces?
Agreed. Possibly part of the problem is that low-effort top level posts are disfavored. A long boring post might be boring but at least it gives the (possibly false) impression that it required some effort.
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I don't think the draft would have been too exciting either, on top of lacking polish. It's a dry topic. China opened a new free trade zone. Nobody has been shot, yet. Even the Taiwan connection is tenuous.
I'm sure someone could make it exciting, that someone might not be me. I settled for accurate journalism with Chinese characteristics. Any more "spice" would have been the less palatable kind of Yellow Journalism.
Of course. Have I ever struck you as being not into introspection or lacking self-awareness? I have a lot of things written that I haven't shared because I think my own output or with LLM support didn't make it worthwhile.
I have seriously spent time considering that. My takeaway is that the answer is no. LLMs aren't the best at making things exciting or novel (not that they can't do it at all), so what I mostly rely on them for is to take something I think I've done well, then re-arrange, proofread and edit. Most of their suggestions go in the waste bin. Sometimes they do actually say things that make me sit up and go huh, not bad, and those are worth stealing.
You've raised a valid point, speaking generally, so I can only beg the benefit of doubt that I thought of it too.
Must... not... make... obvious zinger...
As I said to the wizard last night while he was measuring out collateral fireball damage...
Do it.
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Kind of? You are getting quite a lot of feedback right now that this particular writing is worse than your less-LLM-inflected (infected?) pieces, and are continuing to bluster on about how great it is.
So why are you doing it? Is there some shortage of actual journalism about China that needs addressing so badly that boring prooompted longposts on the Motte are required?
You could always, like -- write about something that isn't boring?
That doesn’t seem fair. For the world’s biggest rising country and the greatest threat to the American-led world consensus to break with its own economic model and institute effectively a freeport on its own territory seems like big news.
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I'll throw in my two cents and say that prompting things like "summarize the sequence of costs tariffs impose" is fine because it can probably provide a clearer summary, and in less time, than you. Your perspective + predictions are presumably your own and not just pasting LLM opinion on the state of things.
Ultimately I learned a lot from the post relative to the time reading it, that's what I care about most.
That they are, but I must admit that I feel a lot of Stonetoss_rope.jpg at you being the person backing me up here.
With that said, I'm the safest here from that accusation because no LLM would assist writing my posts or helping my arguments haha.
True, unless you go to the bother of finding a potent jailbreak or some OSS model tuned till the safety filters fall off. Unfortunately, I seem to recall @Amadan catching you using LLMs to generate "normal" posts and thus decrease the relative density of Joo-posting.
Sigh. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I feel like PETA would, if Hitler offered to do a public endorsement of vegetarianism. A very kind and humanitarian impulse, just... A lot of other things.
PETA would absolutely take him. They're that committed.
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No, that was just one time I made an obviously generated comment reply (not a top-level post) to make a mockery of the dumb rule that was created to target me. It was an obvious protest and not something I have seriously done in any capacity.
You having to resort to prompt generation to not Jewpost is not the defense you imagine it is.
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I eagerly await the day when a user posts alongside a comment the Git repository containing all of his iterations and the LLM responses thereto.
This is something I have considered (but let's be honest, I'm too lazy to do so). Last time this happened, I went to the effort of sharing screenshots of multiple versions of my drafts in progress, which is a serious pain.
The main issue is that there is no robust way to ensure that the text presented as "human" wasn't LLM influenced in some way. Even a system that monitored raw keystrokes is vulnerable to someone simply looking at another monitor and typing in LLM text manually. It is trivial to fake the whole process if someone wants to, especially when text is usually copied in wholesale. It is also trivial to pass off AI content as entirely human written, but it requires a degree of effort that the average troll is unwilling to devote.
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My opinion is just the opinion of an angry old man, so you are free to disregard it if you wish. But I believe there is a huge massive difference between using AI for research, ideas, and brainstorming, versus using the output of an LLM in directly as part of the final product, tweaked or not. Those strings of characters which were output from an autoregressive language model will forever never be equivalent to characters created from human neuron activations resulting in keyboard buttons being pressed. No matter how much you fact check or change up the output of an LLM it remains what it fundamentally is.
What I am fairly confident of, is that some substantial portions of this essay were originally copy pasted from ChatGPT or some similar tool, and then edited, fact checked, iterated or whatever. Irregardless of the correctness and merit of the argument, it's not really something I am able to read.
I don't because I already know. The tool results are just something for the naysayers who may believe a tool more than "I said so"
Noted.
Again, this is the opinion of an angry old man, but what you say is spit and polish, I can only see strings of bytes that came out of an algorithm.
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And this, unfortunately, is why I now skim past your posts without reading them.
I won't comment on the object level question of how good the post is. I haven't read it properly either, and the spinoff question about AI-influenced content (specifically, on a discussion forum) is more interesting to me anyways.
There seems to be 2 competing ideas of the purpose of this forum:
I always just sort of assumed that truth-seeking was the primary goal of the forum (and the socialisation stuff like Wellness Wednesday kinda just happens, because we are in fact humans and not inference machines), and interpreted all the rules as acting in service to that (e.g. we get free speech, because sometimes the truth is highly offensive, etc)
But the recent discourse around AI usage seems to go against this. If this place is about human interaction, then using AI is automatically dumb, irregardless of quality, as you say downthread:
...but if we are here for truth-seeking, then it shouldn't matter if someone used AI or not, it's like retroactively deciding you don't like a dish because the chef used cumin.
As in, it still makes sense to stop reading/engaging seriously with a poster because they establish a track record of bad (irrelevant, uninformative, lies, etc) posts - but the reason should be because the actual end result is bad, not because you disapprove of the process.
Well, I can't speak for what everyone's own personal model for what the Motte should be is. However, the mission statement that's been up forever is:
I would emphasize "their ideas." To me, using an LLM to pad your posts casts doubt on how much thinking you are actually engaging in or testing, or engaging with the community.
If you view the Motte as a place to find "Truth (tm)" by any means possible, well first of all, good luck. But secondly, sure, I guess at some point that purpose could be fulfilled by people just unleashing AIs to argue with each other.
See, right now I think the end result of an LLM-written post is bad. It's visibly written by an AI, and in the same way that there is some AI art that's "good" and a lot that basically serves its purpose (draws your RPG character, generates a book cover, whatever), most of it is still in the uncanny/not-quite-human/plastic and slightly "off"/overly-polished yet much of a sameness range. I feel the same way about the majority of AI writing, including smh's post. If you see it, you see it. If you don't... shrug.
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In my opinion, self_made is a textbook narcissist who only writes to puff up his own ego. I also skim all his posts and I think it's regrettable that he's a mod here.
Textbook narcissist? I've read the actual textbooks, and I'm afraid that I do not share your opinion. You can keep it, for what that's worth.
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Criticizing his use of AI is one thing, but personal attacks are unnecessary.
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I am aware. I find it most unfortunate, since I do genuinely believe that LLMs help make my writing even stronger.
You have a very uniquely identifiable writing style. Your posts are among the most memorable that I've ever read on TheMotte.
I can assure you that the LLMs make your writing weaker, not stronger.
That is high praise, thank you. I will say that the intent behind my use of LLMs was to both improve quality and maintain my distinctive style in the final output. If people are pointing out deficiencies in the latter, then I am clearly doing something wrong (by my own standards) even if the content itself is unimpeachable.
Looking back at this particular post, it's clear to me that I let the damned bots insert boilerplate and verbiage into my text that did not originate there. It is also on me for not being careful with more edit passes, by which I mean manual ones. I live and I learn.
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You misspelled longer.
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That feeling comes mainly from your head, unfortunately. That is a terrible pro-CCP essay.
I am not pro-CCP in the least, and I am genuinely unsure what gave you that impression from the essay. One would assume that LLMs would be anti-CCP by default.
All I can see is that I haven't opted to vociferously lambast the CCP for past poor choices. I think everyone here knows enough about Hong Kong or Taiwan to not need a detailed explainer.
I think that the Hainan FTP is a good idea, a great one even. It represents liberalization and something closer to true free trade, which I'm all for. It is a shame that the CCP is the one enacting it, but I don't want to correct my enemies when they are trying to do something positive sum.
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That's not the point. LLMs would make many people's writing stronger (for some value of "strong"). I'd rather read your writing, weaker or not. Now when I read you, every point you make, every turn of phrase, every word choice, I don't know if it was you or the LLM. Sure, maybe 80% to 90% of it was you. I can't know, and that makes me not care. I can prompt ChatGPT for its sparkling shiny opinions all day long.
I genuinely do not understand the intuition at play here. Let's imagine someone who has an instinctual aversion to the use of AI image gen: is using Adobe Firefly to change a single pixel with it sufficient to taint a larger painting? Two pixels? Ten? To finish the blocked-in background that the artist would have been too lazy to finish had he not had the tools at hand?
What if the artist deletes the AI pixel and reinserts one himself, with the exact same hexcode?
(It is worth noting that at one point, in the not so distant past, that even Photoshop itself was treated with similar suspicion)
Where is your threshold for "too much"? When you recognize an AI fingerprint? The problem is that once you begin suspecting it in a particular user, it is easy to imagine that there is more of it than in reality. Of course, if you have an all-or-nothing attitude, then I suppose that sounds less horrible to you than it does to me. I skew closer to a linear-no-threshold model, or perhaps one where, for the average writer, there exists an x% of AI usage that will increase overall quality as measured by multiple observers. Preferably blinded ones.
This x% can be very high for the truly average. I'm talking average Redditor. It can be very low, vanishingly so for others. Scott has mentioned that he has tried using LLMs to imitate his own style and has been consistently disappointed in the outcome.
I think, for me, the optimal amount is 1-10%. 20% is pushing it. This essay is closer to 20%. But even that 20% is closely vetted for factuality. Alas, it has not been vetted for style as hard, or else this topic wouldn't have arisen. In fact, I didn't particularly try. Performing edits to launder AI commentary as my own strikes me as dishonest.
I envision myself as the artist using the tool to finish painting that unfinished background. Sometimes, it makes something so good it's worth bringing to prominence in the foreground. The day where I can see no conceivable value-add from my own contribution is when I pack my bags as a writer. I suppose it is fortunate that I've been at it so long that there is a sizeable corpus of time stamped, archived evidence showing that I am damn good without it. That I don't need it. I still think I benefit from it, though I'm not sure I can change your mind on the topic.
After all, there are a lot of people making pure slop. I try not to ever become one of them.
There's a minor scandal in the tumblr video game sphere, because Studio Larian discussed the use of AI tools in the development pipeline. It's not clear exactly what they were using the tools for, but most critiques have interpreted it as only using AI-gen for concept art that won't even get a pixel in the final game, and they're still very unhappy with it.
((I've been trying to come together with a top-level post on the topic, but I dunno if it'll be interesting enough or if it'll be me going full Gelman Amnesia given that we have actual video game artist experts around.))
That's a shame they're being shamed. One of my takeaways from GPT-4 was that it was good enough to beat a lot of video game text and dialogue. Filler content, conversation with NPC #987, and side quests? AI can jazz up things budget doesn't allow for. It should no longer be cost prohibitive to develop the 120 filler fetch quests into something slightly more meaningful and engaging. Extra flair, storytelling, or character development where there was barebones effort. Someone needs to weather the criticism, raise the bar, and get paid for it.
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There are definitely some hysterics who can't stand AI touching anything whatsoever. And like I've said before, if you integrate AI into your work smoothly enough that we can't tell, well, we can't tell. But I think just about everyone who read @self_made_human's OP could spot the AI signature.
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I know it when I see it, and when I see AI writing, it's too much.
Come on, spare me the "But what about PHOTOSHOP????? What about SPELLCHECKERS????" I am not an AI newb, nor an AI-hater. But you should not be using AI to generate your words for posting here. That is my opinion, and it will remain my opinion.
Just 10%-20% slop. That's too much slop.
I'm wounded that you think my argument is as unsubtle as that. What I intended to get across is that a black-or-white approach is closer to an article of fate. The real world is not made of pixels, it is made of atoms (or wave functions or...) which do not come with convenient metadata attesting to origin. Even a digital pixel can produce the same outcome, and so can the larger arrangements of pixels, regardless of whether meat or machine or meat machines placed them. I care about the image, not the brush. Eventually, knowing that there was (or wasn't) a brush will not add much information, or at least pragmatically valuable information. Just a Planck Time later (as implied by the Intermediate Value Theorem), the brush will be an active detriment. Are we there? I suspect we are oh so close.
I am powerless to change your opinion here, but know I do what I do for principled reasons and not laziness. You assume the slop will stay slop. It will be better than you, or me, sooner than is comfortable.
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