[HN Gopher] Show HN: Pledge Your Human-Made Content
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       Show HN: Pledge Your Human-Made Content
        
       AI generated content is on the rise. How can you be sure what
       you're reading is 100% human?
        
       Author : jonodonovan
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2023-04-28 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nonbot.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nonbot.org)
        
       | hammyhavoc wrote:
       | Like with the photography competition ending up with a winner who
       | just generated an image via AI, you're going to get the same bad
       | apples validating their AI-generated crap via this as there's no
       | validation going on in reality.
       | 
       | They're also incentivizing them with backlinks and validation
       | that it is legit content "because a third-party said so".
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | Should we also pledge not to use word processors or spell check?
       | 
       | AI and ChatGPT is a tool. When used appropriately, it can be used
       | to produce good content. For me, I have used it to make my
       | content more engaging and to do things like avoid using the same
       | passive verbs over and over again as I sometimes have a tendency
       | to do. At worst, it produces shallow or wrong or misleading
       | writing, but people also do that.
       | 
       | It will not replace humans providing insightful writing. I think
       | it is getting a lot of negative attention in the press because
       | the advertising, click driven press is predicated on producing
       | lots of words with minimal insight.
        
       | kaeruct wrote:
       | Reminds me of https://notbyai.fyi
        
       | RealCodingOtaku wrote:
       | I do not like that this exists, this shouldn't need to exist, AI
       | or ML should not write articles, but they should just be a
       | companion who helps you put things into words if you struggle
       | with it.
       | 
       | I guess it is too much to ask for in the clickbait-y,
       | monetization per-view driven internet.
        
         | bgun wrote:
         | If you've ever searched for recipes online and had to read
         | through ten pages of drivel before getting to the actual recipe
         | at the bottom, you may have realized that just because articles
         | are human-written doesn't make the article worthy of existing.
         | SEO made sure of that long ago.
        
           | RealCodingOtaku wrote:
           | Yes, and something bad happened does not make another bad
           | thing good.
        
             | bgun wrote:
             | Where did I say or imply that it was good? What the AI-
             | content-apocalypse Chicken Littles seem to constantly miss
             | is that the incentive structure of the public web for the
             | last 20+ years has rewarded trash content, so the public
             | web is an SEO-driven garbage heap. The cost to produce
             | trash content is already effectively zero, and AI will
             | neither reverse nor repair that fact unless the underlying
             | incentive structure changes.
        
               | RealCodingOtaku wrote:
               | I said that because SEO (or your entire reply) has
               | nothing to do with either the OP or my post said, your
               | reply sounded like an argument, sorry if I
               | misinterpreted.
               | 
               | But please don't change the topic to something
               | irrelevant.
        
         | mxuribe wrote:
         | I agree fully with you! Unfortunately, law enforcement should
         | not need to exist also...And yet, the incentives and behaviors
         | of so many a$$holes in the world requires at least some
         | mechanism to curb the bad stuff. (Not saying this not-bot
         | effort is effective, but just saying that sometimes in life we
         | need something even if not perfect...in order to keep some
         | things in check). /sigh
        
           | RealCodingOtaku wrote:
           | I don't think it is correct to compare my above opinion with
           | law enforcement, it doesn't need to be "enforced", may be use
           | it as a nice guideline for publishing stuff.
           | 
           | If someone did write things purely with some algorithm, just
           | annotate that it was not written by a human, so that people
           | who don't want to read made-up/generated articles can just
           | ignore it and move on.
           | 
           | Doing it the reverse way does not make any sense to me, it is
           | the same as treating all articles not having "written by
           | human" label as generated content. -- in the "law
           | enforcement" perspective, this is "guilty until proven
           | innocent".
           | 
           | What _can_ and _should_ be enforced is licence checks, like
           | reusing things not in public domain should follow the license
           | when publishing (looking at you Copilot).
        
             | mxuribe wrote:
             | > ...may be use it as a nice guideline for publishing
             | stuff.
             | 
             | Totally agree that guidelines/guidance is ideal rather than
             | zooming all the way to the enforcement side of the
             | spectrum. I think i must have been thinking of "community
             | policing" in that there is positive guidance and engagement
             | well before actual enforcement is conducted...and your
             | comment reminded me of this...so fully agree with you
             | there. :-)
             | 
             | > ...If someone did write things purely with some
             | algorithm, just annotate that it was not written by a
             | human, so that people who don't want to read made-
             | up/generated articles can just ignore it and move on...
             | 
             | I've heard others state something similar in this context
             | for AI-authored content (or not AI-authoered content as
             | whatever the case might be), and I'm entirely in favor of
             | this. Its conceptually similar - at least in my mind - to
             | "organic" or "fair trade" (or similar) that exists for
             | products, which i think is necessary and valuable to
             | society.
        
       | genpfault wrote:
       | I'm a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters and I approve
       | of this message!
        
       | SeanAnderson wrote:
       | Sorry, I don't understand. How does this work? I haven't kept up
       | with SOTA papers, but I thought it was currently not possible to
       | detect AI generated content with good confidence?
       | 
       | How do you prevent someone who is generating AI content from
       | applying the non-bot badge? If you can't, then what's the point?
        
         | hammyhavoc wrote:
         | Because it's virtue signaling. People are _seen_ to be doing
         | something. It 's a LARP.
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | Use the non-bot badge to feed bots their own effluvia?
        
       | thewataccount wrote:
       | I'm not anti-ai.
       | 
       | I think there's a ton of value in 100% human made art, and I
       | think AI art is still valid art - but I think it's still useful
       | to differentiate the two. It's like how unprocessed photography
       | is judged differently from photoshopped art.
       | 
       | Also useful for collecting training data.
       | 
       | However everything already was - and is - ML assisted at this
       | point. Any photo from a smartphone, autocorrect from MS word,
       | most photo editing, etc. How are those counted? Does github
       | copilot count? Not to mention non-ML but still automated work
       | with CI's, compilers, templates, etc. Does intellij's
       | autocomplete count? One could argue templates/stencils/stamps
       | predate computers.
       | 
       | I think there's also a difference between 100% AI made and AI
       | assisted work that needs to be differentiated.
        
       | bediger4000 wrote:
       | I suspect this is just a way for mega corps to find actual
       | artisanal content with which to train their AIs.
        
         | geraneum wrote:
         | Ah this came to my mind as well. Although I didn't consider it
         | a serious thought. But then if one day we find out that this
         | was the purpose (for a similar service), I won't be surprised.
        
       | danwee wrote:
       | > AI generated content is on the rise. How can you be sure what
       | you're reading is 100% human?
       | 
       | Why is that a concern? When you read a newspaper, how can you be
       | sure what you're reading is 100% true? When you watch the news,
       | how can you be sure what you're watching is 100% true?
       | 
       | What matters is not to have a "verification badge", what matters
       | is to educate yourself to know what to take and what to discard
       | regardless of its source of origin.
        
       | ivanmontillam wrote:
       | Exactly what I was talking about at [0][1].
       | 
       | Happy to see it happening.
       | 
       | To be clear, I'm not anti-AI. It's just that if I'm going to do
       | business with you I want to deal with the human, and this
       | includes content.
       | 
       | Reading AI content for stuff I care about, feels like I'm being
       | laughed off in the face. It feels fraudulent.
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35531041
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.ivanmontilla.com/blog/certified-human-made
        
         | SeanAnderson wrote:
         | This is nonsense. You're falling for the toupee fallacy. You
         | have no idea you're reading AI content when it's sufficiently
         | good enough for you to not recognize it. Therefore, you view
         | all AI generated content as bad.
        
       | jruohonen wrote:
       | Nice to see also "anti-AI" innovation. Something like this would
       | be much needed also for newspapers.
        
         | pc86 wrote:
         | Why? To both statements.
        
           | jruohonen wrote:
           | The first was mildly sensed humor. But the second one in my
           | opinion is important for ensuring the integrity in
           | journalism, i.e. a journalist should disclose his or her use
           | of AI. You can count the sport news, financial summaries,
           | etc. out.
        
             | lusus_naturae wrote:
             | Why does it matter if an AI wrote the article, though? Does
             | the nature of what's being reported change because of who
             | or what is doing the reporting. You can still hold the
             | organization accountable for any infactual or inaccurate
             | statements. Having a human to hold accountable seems
             | unnecessary and onerous.
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | An organization can not be accountable, unless a human is
               | accountable.
        
               | flangola7 wrote:
               | Someone ordered the use of AI and someone gave it the
               | prompts. Those someones have names that can be written on
               | a subpoena or warrant.
        
               | pc86 wrote:
               | We're talking about (real) journalism, so presumably
               | there's going to be a byline. That person is responsible,
               | as is the editor, whether AI is used or not.
        
               | jruohonen wrote:
               | Accountability is one thing; as actionfromafar notes
               | below, a legal person may not be accountable in all
               | cases. Transparency is another thing. The third thing
               | relates to ethics; here the guidance is still in the
               | making, but many have indeed stated that a journalist
               | shouldn't put his or her name to a story generated by AI.
               | 
               | https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-
               | journalism/ai-...
        
             | bediger4000 wrote:
             | I already only read the business section for laughs.
        
       | Brendinooo wrote:
       | What does 100% human mean?
       | 
       | Not being obtuse, trying to figure out if the threshold is, like
       | "ideas 100% my own, no auto spelling and grammar check, etc" or
       | if it's more "I used GPT to workshop a page title but didn't
       | copy/paste anything".
        
         | drdaeman wrote:
         | It's like "natural ingredients". Consumers seem to like it, and
         | it doesn't really mean anything that you can't redefine to your
         | benefit.
         | 
         | Looking at the linked page (which is claimed to be "human-
         | made"), I'm sure that it was made with a significant automation
         | assistance. A template engine had compiled the HTML (or someone
         | was very sloppy with indentation and did a lot of copying and
         | pasting), SVGs code was surely generated by a machine rather
         | than coded by hand (and surely the fonts in those used a bunch
         | of algorithms too), etc etc. The fact that they haven't used
         | some particular kind of matrix multiplication feels irrelevant.
        
         | cyrialize wrote:
         | I wonder if it's better to just say "No language models were
         | used to generate this text".
        
           | Brendinooo wrote:
           | Yeah, I dunno. It's a sorites paradox. I'm annoyed when a
           | search engine delivers me a site that's clearly GPT-generated
           | rubbish (and greatly annoyed when it's not 100% clearly GPT-
           | generated rubbish, but likely is), but it's unrealistic to
           | say that something is 100% human also.
           | 
           | I'd love a way to generally assure me that there's a human
           | behind the thing I'm reading, but I'm not even sure I can
           | define exactly what I'm after when I say that.
        
       | aaroninsf wrote:
       | This endeavor is most akin to a performance art gesture--and not
       | at a bad one.
       | 
       | Specifically because of the silence around every critical aspect
       | of what this might mean, and why someone might pursue such a
       | pledge, or what verification means, and with what aspiration.
       | 
       | All that is provided AFAICT is a "how"...
       | 
       | ...and almost all that results is a wake of perplexity,
       | punctuated by a froth of debate and publicity. Which I take to be
       | the intended product.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rchaud wrote:
       | Nice idea, but this is self-selecting groups of people that
       | already would not be bad actors. Does this do anything except act
       | as an "open letter" type pledge?
        
       | detrites wrote:
       | Can some things, eg writing, actually ever be "verified"?
       | 
       | Because if it is impossible, sites like this further what we
       | already have. A mix of AI and human, and the inability to -
       | definitively - discern.
        
         | thewataccount wrote:
         | Most likely not https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11156
         | 
         | tl;dr - it's highly unreliable to detect them and because of
         | the risk of false-positives it's not likely a good idea to rely
         | on it.
         | 
         | IMO the only way forward is a reputation based system.
         | 
         | Also moving forward identity verification might have to be
         | cryptographic (IM NOT SAYING CRYPTOCURRENCY) because
         | impersonating text/video/voice convincingly is becoming doable
         | for home users.
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-28 23:02 UTC)