The whole premise of checking for human writing is daft

Posted by shehuphd 4 hours ago

The whole premise of checking for human writing is daft(mohammedshehu.com)

37 points | 72 commentspage 4

tracerbulletx 3 hours ago|

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asdfasgasdgasdg 3 hours ago||

I dunno man. If you had something worth saying I kinda feel like you would figure out a way to say it with your fingers and a keyboard.

There is SO MUCH STUFF that you could read. You could read all day every day and not keep up with the human-written output in just a single sub-niche of writing within a niche sector. That being the case, you must use some heuristics to determine what should be read. Whether the entity publishing a piece felt it was worth human time to write that piece seems like a fine heuristic.

The privilege argument is so bad! We aren't doing this any more! The tyranny of edge cases is over. It ended some time in 2023. I am not going to feel obligated to read every piece of slop out there because 0.01% of authors have lost the use of their hands. Stephen Hawking somehow managed to write without AI.

doug_durham 3 hours ago|

The heuristics you are looking for are "editorial" and "curation". That's why there are things like newspapers and magazines. The world has always been awash in more low effort content than can be consumed. We rely on trusted human editors at these organizations to filter content. There is nothing new going on. Perhaps subscribe to sites with editorial that you agree with.

johngossman 3 hours ago|

Sorry but I think this essay is largely wrong. First, there is tons of evidence that working your thoughts on paper, word by word, helps develop the idea and exercises the brain. Secondly, in other endeavors we have defined clear lines between human and machine labor: chess computers are banned from human tournaments; race cars and bicycles are not allowed in footraces. And while I am very sympathetic to the advantages of AI writing for the impaired and non-native speakers, we make allowances all the time for this today: handicapped parking, special sporting events, and allowing dyslexics more time on written exams for example. The existence of these does not justify parking in a handicapped spot when you don't need it.

From the title, I expected a different argument, that it's going to be increasingly difficult to determine. Many people have demonstrated that careful prompting can already produce prose that passes as human, and this will only increase as models get better and inevitably are trained to bypass checkers. Maybe someday we'll have novel-writing rooms where, like grandmasters coming into a tournament, the writers must relinquish all their digital tools at the door. Because it's difficult to imagine any other system that will guarantee human authenticity.

doug_durham 3 hours ago|

How can there be tons of evidence for a 3 year old technology? Everyone seems to think that all writers using AI are one shotting their content. A writer can carefully edit and revise their content using AI tools just as well as manual writing. That's what I do when I use AI to write. I also never use AI to write interpersonal content. Just like I won't type a Valentines letter to my wife, I'll handwrite. I only use AI to write technical documents.

johngossman 2 hours ago||

Look, I understand. There is a ton of low-value writing in the world: legal boilerplate, press releases, most documentation. That writing can and will be replaced or supplemented by AI. But look up cognitive offloading. It doesn't take centuries of research to show evidence for that, and in fact the benefits of writing for thinking have been known long before AI writing became available (the alternative being just talking or thinking without writing).