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Comment by CGP_Labs | Hacker News Reader

If someone has to ask, "Is this AI?" before they can tell the difference, then at least part of their reaction is about the label rather than the content itself. If they genuinely can't tell the difference, then whether it was created by a human or by AI makes little practical difference in terms of the content.

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I think it matters because for a lot of us writing and thinking happen at the same time.

Something that's been written "well" shows that someone has thought about it, maybe reframed it some way or just done something by thinking about it for a while.

AI can think, but whether it's thought about something or not it's always going to sound the same.

If you are using it to help you think fine but I think it's about effort and I would want to know how much effort you've put in.

I think that's a fair perspective. I also see writing as part of thinking. Personally, I don't mind people using AI as long as they're still doing the thinking themselves rather than outsourcing it entirely.

I think it matters because AI can hallucinate so it makes me doubt the truthfulness

It's also somewhat dishonest to present unedited AI-written content as your own work

People also say things that are untrue? So I guess it boils down to reputation and attribution. I kinda feel like there is a wierd knee jerk to pretend like “ before AI, if it was written, you could trust it” which absolutely was never true.

Thing is that pre-AI even for that you need to spend time and effort. Now those deterrent barriers are not anymore so that kind of content can be produced massively at industrial scale.

Automated (semi)intentional lying on internet predates LLMs

Generally, people have to make an active decision to spread false information, or be misinformed themselves in the first place, and that's not actually particularly common, whereas for LLMs it's just the default due to how they work and it's difficult to filter out due to how they present everything with such confidence and authority

That's a fair point. For factual content, AI output should be verified rather than trusted blindly because hallucinations are real. I see AI more as something to challenge and verify my thinking than as something to make decisions for me.

"Somewhat dishonest"? It's plagiarism. Just because you claim the output of a machine as your own instead of the writing of another human as your own doesn't somehow make it yours and not plagiarism.

If you can't tell the difference between deception and truth, does it matter whether I lied? You only focus on the labels true/false, rather then the content of what I tell you!

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