#megabytereflection — Public Fediverse posts

Does it Matter Who did the Typing?

Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?

As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.

Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…

Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?

Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.

If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?

Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?

Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.

Does it Matter Who did the Typing?

Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?

As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.

Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…

Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?

Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.

If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?

Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?

Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.

Does it Matter Who did the Typing?

Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?

As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.

Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…

Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?

Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.

If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?

Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?

Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.

Does it Matter Who did the Typing?

Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?

As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.

Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…

Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?

Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.

If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?

Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?

Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.

Does it Matter Who did the Typing?

Recently, LinkedIn has introduced a ”Seems like AI slop” action that lets you mark posts as… written with the help of AI, I guess?… Many people are openly complaining that AI content is so fake, easy to spot and ”horrible” to witness. But is it really?

As with everything in life, there is no black and white answer or stance on AI ghostwriting.

Let’s start with what we might think is an obvious candidate for 100% AI ”fake: content written by AI agents in response to events or other content they encounter. With no human intervention other than ”write a comment on each new post” or ”write a response in the form of an article to each piece of news on website XYZ”, it would seem obvious to mark this content as ”AI slop”. But why are we so sure we are entitled to do so? Is AI writing some generic answer really that different from a human being reading content and reacting with a basic cliché? Not by much…

Then there is content that AI drafts based on an idea or an outline that you give it. Should that also be marked as AI-generated if the idea was yours? What about if you outline all paragraphs and detail all points you want made? Then AI would just execute. Whose content is it then?

Ghostwriting has been a thing for longer than we might think. From being out in the open, for example in the case of celebrities who ”write” books about their lives, to being hidden in plain sight, in the case of authors who have produced a huge number of novels compared to the average and even down to IT books co-authored by programmers who aren’t even named on the back cover.

If we have historically accepted that authorship doesn’t necessarily mean physically typing every sentence, why have we suddenly decided that a human typing is the benchmark now?

Why are we so quick to join a camp and be with it or against it? Things are moving fast, yes, but does it actually mean we should be just as quick to judge?

Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether AI was involved. Maybe it should be whether there was a human thought worth expressing in the first place.