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Comment by xnorswap | Hacker News Reader

That could do more harm than good.

Like how California's bylaw about cancer warnings are useless because it makes it look like everything is known to the state of California to cause cancer, which in turn makes people just ignore and tune-out the warnings because they're not actually delivering signal-to-noise. This in turn harms people when they think, "How bad can tobacco be? Even my Aloe Vera plant has a warning label".

Keep it to generated news articles, and people might pay more attention to them.

Don't let the AI lobby insist on anything that's touched an LLM getting labelled, because if it gets slapped on anything that's even passed through a spell-checker or saved in Notepad ( somehow this is contaminated, lol ), then it'll become a useless warning.

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> That could do more harm than good.

The downside to having labels on AI-written political comments, stellar reviews of bad products, speeches by a politician, or supposed photos of wonderful holiday destinations in ads targeted at old people are what, exactly?

Are you really arguing that putting a label on AI generated content could do more harm than just leaving it (approximately) indistinguishable from the real thing might somehow be worse?

I'm not arguing that we need to label anything that used gen AI in any capacity, but past the point of e.g. minor edits, yeah, it should be labeled.

None of those AI written political comments will have the label added because it's unprovable, and those propaganda shops are based well outside of the necessary jurisdiction anyway. It will just be a burden on legitimate actors and a way for the government to harass legitimate media outlets that it doesn't like with expensive "AI usage investigations."

I bought a piece of wooden furniture some time ago. It came with a label saying that the state of California knows it to be a carcinogen. I live in Belgium. It was weird.

The proposition 65 warnings apply to carcinogenic materials used on furniture surfaces which can be released into the air or accumulate in dust. None of these substances are a conditio sine qua non, there are alternatives. https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/fact-sheets/furniture-product...

The same warnings and labels are used in the EU, for example for formaldehyde which will be severely limited in its use starting in August 2026. https://easecert.com/blogs/insights/formaldehyde-emission-li...

It may look weird, but personally I prefer a warning to being submitted to toxic substance without my knowledge.

Just an observation, but this California meme seems like the go-to talking point for anti AI regulation crowd lately.

It's not even a good argument. Studies have demonstrated it reduces toxic chemicals in the body, and also deters companies from using the toxic chemicals in their products.

That's a weird comparison, hadn't heard that one yet.

I'm very much in favour of regulating (and heavily taxing) AI. But I very much dislike silly warning labels that miss the point. Owning wooden furniture is not carcinogenic. Inhaling tons of wood dust (e.g. from sanding wood in a poorly ventilated room) could be carcinogenic. But putting such warning labels on furniture is just ridiculous scaremongering.

> Like how California's bylaw about cancer warnings are useless

Californians have measurably lower concentrations of toxic chemicals than non-California's, so very useless!

> Don't let the AI lobby insist on anything that's touched an LLM getting labelled, because if it gets slapped on anything that's even passed through a spell-checker or saved in Notepad

People have been writing articles without the help of an LLM for decades.

You don't need an LLM for grammar and spell checking, arguably an LLM is less efficient and currently worse at it anyway.

The biggest help a LLM can provide is with research but that is only because search engines have been artificially enshitified these day. But even here the usefulness is very limited because of hallucinations. So you might be better off without.

There is no proof that LLMs can significantly improve the workflow of a professional journalist when it comes to creating high quality content.

So no, don't believe the hype. There will still be enough journalists not using LLMs at all.

It is worse, even less than useless. With the California case, there is very little go gain by lying and not putting a sticker on items that should have one. With AI generated content, as the models get to the point we can't tell anymore if it is fake, there are plenty of reasons to pass off a fake as real, and conditioning people to expect an AI warning will make them more likely to fall for content that ignores this law and doesn't label itself.

Imagine selling a product with the tagline: "Unlike Pepsi, ours doesn't cause cancer."

"Good prices, no rats! That's the Fairsley Difference™!"

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