It occurred to me that Many posters are beginning to quote AI composites.
In order to maintain the integrity of personal input, should all direct AI quotes be identified as AI generated?
How would you know the difference?
That’s going to be a question for the age. Cut and paste I can identify if a search finds it. I can spot some AI, I can fact-check it, I can be suspicious that I’m talking to a bot, but no way I’m going to be able to enforce that in any systematic way.
Come to think of it. Does it make a difference if the quote or excerpt comes from a publication or from an AI search of those publications?
If one reads it and agrees with it, it is no better than agreeing with any other narrative.
Usually, AI does not really give their sources, AI are prone to mistakes, AI cheat……
In the context of this forum, if one uses an AI to post, one endosses the responsibility of what he posts, even if he did not write it.
2 Likes
Using Chatgpt is sometimes more entertaining than talking to people. That said I would be willing to bet that no post here I have read was generated by AI. I haven’t read them all of course and people could just paraphrase the output in their own words.
I have always had kind of a strange view on this sort of thing. I sort through about a hundred emails a day in maybe 15 minutes. I don’t really find filters to be all that useful because you still find the occasional mistake, the main use of filters is to do the preliminary sorting. For the most part the same applies to forums. The users can pretty quickly sort through the posts and figure out what is spam or bot like pretty quickly. That has lead me to believe that moderators would be more useful as participants than censors. Now of course some spam has to be blocked and I’m sure that is time consuming. Maybe there are some legal implications or terms of services with hosting companies etc. I don’t know about that. Still a lot of moderators are knowledgeable people with interesting insights. I certainly wouldn’t want them wasting their time looking for AI generated posts.
If someone is using AI to generate post I would assume that the answer is to simply have them state that and give the name of the AI. You may actually get some benefit by using AI before you make a post because it gives you a good idea of consensus. It would tell you if your thoughts are original or common place.
Most science forums I have participated in frown on speculation. I have never understood that either. You can tell pretty quickly if the speculation is rooted in anything solid or not. Wild speculation is essentially spam. Users can easily move those to their mental trash folder.
I don’t know, I have never been a moderator so I don’t know what the issues are. I suppose everyone wants to maintain high standards. I generally do not apply that to people. I will talk to anyone and sometimes you are surprised what you learn. I was talking to homeless person the other day who was obviously suffering from some mental disorder. On the other hand it was amazing what he knew about the goings on of the city. He lives on the streets that we only cross. He has nothing better to do that take it all in. He may have the context wrong but as best I could tell the events he records are accurate. The only people that I block on social media are the ones that are stirring the pot, trying to get your goat. Others I may just ignore because time is precious.
After reading this I suppose some users may put me in the ignore box. 
Not me. I am very impressed with the responses to well-defined questions.
I have quoted Bing Copilot I twice , but I have also indicated it was originated by Copilot
I have already suggested to mods, that as with all quotations, all AI quotes be so identified. It’s just an honest thing to do , IMO.
The most common is people who argue without that argument going anywhere. They claim something, then evade requests for evidence, even if it’s bad evidence, at least then there’s something to grapple with. Instead, they start attacking others, saying they are narrow minded, or THEIR sources are bad, or they generally have a bad POV, or worse.
Also, people who give the same answer to every topic. Something like, “that’s because you’re a socialist.” These can be much more sophisticated and come with tons of sources that are credible. It can require hours of reading or watching to figure out they have no idea what they are talking about, or their sorces are isolated and only in the early stages of development. In these archives, there was a guy who kept talking about how “god = knowledge”. This went on for years until I read Sapiens and I realized he had twisted the human story of self domestication.
This is the post that looked like AI to me. It was flagged by our system because it was pasted in.
I see no problem with it accept attribution.
There is no such thing as a reliable news source, never has been in my rather long life. Everything you read has to be “fact” checked by you. It is tedious and annoying but I will say when I ask AI a question I generally think the answer is better than what you get from most of the people I see posting on social media. Computers have an advantage they don’t care. And yes I understand garbage in garbage out but why limit that to computers?
My “problem” is, it adds nothing. It’s like this thread was fed in, and we got a summary back. There is a rule against bots, so, yeah, attribution is everything.
Yes I forgot about that bot thing.
Everybody is worried about “deep fakes” I just haven’t given it much thought.
What I have given some thought to is that we have a bigger problem. In ten years I see AI replacing half the white collar workers. They will join the ranks of the discontented created by exporting pollution and slave labor to China. It could be a very rough ride ahead. As a forum administrator I see you having to use bots to detect bots. A kind of arms race of sorts. There is no way to stop what is coming as far as I can tell unless you just want to be passed by, including transhumanism.