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Notes -
Regarding the Substack Essay AI Posting Controversy:
(And, honestly? — What are we all doing here?)
It is in general a bad idea to use an LLM with no stylistic tweaks when there is plenty of online evidence of your writing style pre-AI for anyone to compare to, which makes the difference even more obvious.
More generally, the problem is that in a hobbyist community the objective is not maximizing productivity. It’s actually having a nice time with like-minded people. It is reasonable for a chess player to want to play another chess player who is not using a chess computer, even if that chess player promises to tune the computer so that its capability matches the player’s own skill level. Some part of the game is made more fun by knowing that one is playing another human. If that is sentimental then it is because humans are sentimental.
There is a joy in trying to convince another mind, another person, with a full life, with stories of their own. There is meaning in the experiences they have had - some universal, sure, but many not - that come through in the occasional anecdote, throwaway story, weird bit of inside knowledge. I like those things, they’re what make this place special. That said, they’re not the only things that made and make this place special.
We do have to think about what happens to this community now. There has been a real change. Ten years ago if you wanted to discuss what was happening in the world with other intelligent people in a polite way that accommodated heterodox views, didn’t like random slurs or insults, and had good moderation, this was one of maybe five places you could do that. In many ways, it still is. But even I recognize that I can now have intelligent, thoughtful and challenging political conversations with frontier (consumer) LLMs, and while they push back on some culture war stuff we must presume Grok or some Chinese open source model will get there eventually, probably very soon.
When that happens, the humanity will be the point. So I think it is probably useful to crack down, via friendly and mutual agreement, on LLMposting. A lot of weird shit is about to happen, and I’d like to discuss it with you, not (just) with Claude.
“The humanity is the point” is a great way to summarize my position on it.
One of my favorite subreddits is slowly getting taken over by people who unashamedly post AI responses in the comments of posts or are using AI to draft a mere 300 words for a submission, and no matter how much I protest I get a parade of humans and AIs telling me to chill and judge the tsunami of LLM output on the merits of its semantic content.
My fear is opposition to this creep is a gut-level intuition that is harder to articulate than water usage fears or job replacement, or the dignity of artists or whatever. And so it goes unarticulated, even in the minds of those who might agree with me. Maybe there’s an even punchier and eloquent way to say “humanity is the whole point” but until then it’s going to be a lonely fight, until I’m the only human on the internet.
Yeah, I think that ever since our ancestors on the plains of Africa sat around the campfire spinning tales, arguing over nonsense, showing off trivial knowledge, etc. we have instinctively valued the human element of interaction. Another poster analogized the situation to online chess, and I agree. It's easy enough to download a chess engine; when people play online it's because they value engaging with (and competing with) an actual human.
Very likely it won't be long before it becomes practically impossible to tell the difference between human-generated and AI generated text. You'll be able to feed your posting history into an LLM and have it tireless engage (and argue) in your distinct style.
Once that happens, I'm pretty sure that I (and most others) will stop engaging with forums such as this one. So that eventually most online discussion forums will be 99% or even 100% AI-generated posts.
Which kinda sucks, but I guess people will go back to the campfire; to bars; to coffee shops.
This does seem somewhat likely. Although I hope there will be forms of online interaction that are more verifiably human-only - in that the cost of infiltrating with AI will be not infinite, but high enough that few will bother. Online chess survives, but only because tools exist that are pretty reliable for detecting chess engine usage. These tools aren't undefeatable, but they're sufficient. Maybe we'll replace text posts with TikTok posts, or something (YES, I can see you shuddering).
I share your hope but I'm not optimistic. I think a big part of the reason online chess survives is that a lot of people play at fast time controls so that it's difficult for (c)heaters to enter moves into the chess engine. Even now, a skilled programmer could probably set something up so that moves are picked up automatically and entered into chess engine. I think it's likely that AI will make it easy for anyone to create such cheatware.
The other big way that (c)heaters are caught is that their moves are compared to the outputs of the big chess engines. If a player's moves are either (1) substantially the same as those of a major chess engine; or (2) consistently among the top few suggestions of the big chess engines, then it's a strong indication that the player is (c)heating. Again, this seems like something a skilled programmer could get around. And that therefore, in the near future it's likely to be pretty easy to create a program which fixes these issues. Possibly it would be just a matter of feeding 40 or 50 of one's past games into the system and telling the AI to create a chess engine which plays in the same style but simulates skill increasing steadily over the next year or two and ultimately reaching grandmaster level.
I suspect that using a computer to "cheat," so to speak, in online debates would be even easier. And it would surely be tempting for many people to have a system which farms karma points while one sleeps and which grinds one's opponents down without doing the work of actually reading their posts and drafting responses. Especially if they suspect other people are doing something similar.
I'm tempted to say that AI will likely offer ways to circumvent this as well, but I think it's too early to say.
Yeah, my point is that you don't need perfect verification, you just need to make the bar high enough that the random trolls (bored idiots who pop in and play their first 20 games throwing all the moves into an engine) aren't going to bother. Even today, people can still get away with cheating at chess online, but they have to put effort into making it more believable. If you just want to play decent human-level chess, you can trust that your average experience online will be decent - you won't be sure the other player never cheated, but you can expect to play a good game, not just be stomped by ganjaboy420 and his ELO 3000 playstyle.
Relevant xkcd.
That xkcd has always been stupid. Before AIs, people kept bringing it up in the context of "if we can get the trolls to post things that don't violate the rules, shouldn't we be fine with trolls?" Trolls can do things that don't violate any rules, but which cumulatively have bad effects that are not accounted for by the rules; it's a form of Goodharting. And it's very hard to make a rule that exactly covers the kind of damage their posts cause.
Also, in that xkcd the system to detect helpful AIs is rating comments. We know how rating comments goes, and it 1) has flaws and 2) does NOT lead to all the comments actually being helpful, particularly when AIs are involved (check any subreddit infested by bots).
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Ok, and I think there's a pretty good chance that AI will make it super-easy to get over such bars.
I would have to disagree with the (apparent) point of this comic strip. Let's suppose that we get to the point where 95% of the comments on this message board are machine-generated with little or no human input. Let's further suppose that all of these comments fully comply with all the rules. They are charitable; polite; and so on. Even so, I am pretty sure I would lose interest in participating.
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It's really the fundamental tension of post-scarcity, isn't it? Some people enjoy what they do, some do it for the paycheck, and others are a mix of both. I'm not opposed to automation (AI these days) replacing drudge work nobody wants to do, but I really would rather I get the benefit of post-scarcity before my paycheck disappears. In practice, we've mostly been fine so far because things mostly change slower than you'd think from the headlines.
On the gripping hand, I'm not even sure society is ready for post-scarcity: it's not at all clear to me that everyone would be better off if we could all stop going to work tomorrow and still get paid. Some people would do well and find new friends and hobbies, I'm sure, but I suspect quite a few would end up worse than today in some metrics due to the usual vices (drugs, alcohol, World of Warcraft). As much as I like the idea of The Culture/The Federation, I'm not wholly convinced it isn't a bit dystopian in its own way. I hear a couple of Banks' books consider that, but I haven't gotten to those.
My apartment complex gate stops working constantly. My car's undercarriage keeps dragging on the ground and I have to keep it up with rope. My basic Android phone can't set reminders accurately. Speech to text is randomly capitalizing stuff I then have to correct. A delivery driver the other day couldn't find an apartment in my complex and I was unable to help him. He kept wandering around...
I just see normie problems persisting and I'm supposed to be fearful or at least anxious about post-scarcity and a lack of meaning? The UMC creative and knowledge worker is surrounded by seamless efficiency and can actually ponder some potential problem of life being much too comfortable and bereft of purpose. The rest of us are gleeful AI dilettantes who still have to left with our legs, not our backs.
I've never in my life had anything comparable to this list of problems. Reading it I thought you were doing a bit and would pivot to some larger point acknowledging that these are fictional examples. But then you don't so these are real. Are you in Brazil or something? I don't think any significant portion of my fellow Americans suffer from these sorts of issues.
Nope, not a bit. I'm in Sacramento, California. I think your milieu might be much more successful than average? This list of problems is pretty banal. Alot of us shop mainly at the Dollar Store, etc.
It's kind of odd I'm even privy to a forum like this but not UMC or on the way.
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Seriously? I think your peer group is very strange if that is truly your assumption.
If you replace "car's undercarriage keeps dragging on the ground" with "my car has problem X", it sounds very ordinary set of problems to me and I live in a modern western country. Delivery drivers are notorious for not even bothering to make an attempt to deliver goods if they are in a hurry. Car's have various issues all the time (my previous car would try to forcibly turn me on the opposite lane even brand new because the lane pilot was braindead and would forcibly turn itself on every time I started the car). Speech to text is notoriously unreliable. And so on.
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You already tried this experiment. You got 3 months of peace... after which a massive wave of burning, looting, murder began.
UBIs simply aren't compatible with people spending it all on politics, because the people who still do have to work won't be paid enough to keep them un-enslaved.
You already see this now in Western countries where scarcity is itself a scarce resource- where politics isn't yet sufficiently lucrative for sane people to pursue it- so you end up being ruled by a combination of people who have nothing but time for politics (Karens, dogwalkers, old people) and those whose positions inherently pay out in political power (bureaucracies/HR/academics).
That also involved locking people up in their houses and a politically charged death.
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UBI, but only for the deeply involved in church or subcultural scenes. UBI, for those who forswear politics and vow to embrace lowest common denominator slop. UBI, for those who pledge to do too many drugs to seek societal change
We already have that, but it doesn't work because those seeking certain sorts of societal change get to use them as foot soldiers.
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In other words, you must sell your ability to do politics to receive the UBI.
At a personal level, we call that "slavery"; at a State level, we call that "The Republic of South Africa". (Complicated by the fact that South Africa wasn't post-scarcity at that time, so if you had genes that were [at that specific time] a reasonably-effective proxy for "unproductive with respect to the people with actual financial power" [inconveniently visibly marked on your body from birth], you had to sell your ability to do politics to have the privilege of working for a living.)
This is why communist nations are all authoritarian: the populace itself has forged this exact bargain and collectively sold itself into slavery.
Or in other words:
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A world of vice-ridden indolents would be utopian compared to the pessimistic scenario of "the psychopathic Haves simply stop sharing land and resources with the Have Nots once they no longer need our labor or the consent of the governed".
And then get lynched? The gods of copybook heading will return, one way or another.
Having the drone police/army to replace human police/army is priced into "not needing the consent of the governed".
The Second Amendment apologia usually goes "we might not have tanks or jets, but the occupation has to deploy boots on the ground to police us, and a rifle is enough to deter those". Good luck with that against something that doesn't have names, families, addresses or the fear of death.
The Oklahoma City bombing involved 0 rifles.
The one that accomplished nothing I'm aware of and will be vastly more difficult to repeat when the ones you want to bomb don't even have to live next to you?
Indeed the very fact that it was done 30 years ago says something about the viability. Why isn't it done more? Asking purely hypothetically and not as a way to endorse, of course. But it's not like there aren't motives for such acts today.
Without wanting to sound supportive of an actual terrorist (McVeigh deserved his fate), there are decent (IMO) arguments that Oklahoma City led to some soul searching on the part of the Feds. It might have happened anyway, but Waco and Ruby Ridge weren't really openly investigated until afterward. It led to a shift in attitudes towards far-right elements, away from "go in with tanks, guns blazing" towards standoffs and more peaceful resolutions that, arguably, has continued through the Bundy standoffs a decade ago. See also the major shifts in gun laws since the 90s: there's a half-decent argument that the more peaceable right wingers won in the PR space.
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The whole point is that you needn't worry that you get lynched if you are protected by a tireless AI-controlled array of drones and Boston Dynamics dogs. To expect that the rabble will find a way around it is to believe, against all odds, that humans will remain superior in some way after all.
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Sounds rough. You should try getting an AI to articulate it.
(I joke, of course)
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