Yes, precisely.

I see this from time to time. One I'm thinking of tries to baffle with bullshit. Best to walk away, right?
— frank

Sure, but walking away does not solve, or even ameliorate, the problem. — Janus

Maybe. If someone uses AI to create a fascinating post, could you engage with it?

its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

Impractical. But, how about, its use should be discouraged altogether?

I mean, its use in composition or editing of English text in a post.

We may be witnessing, in real time, the birth of a snowball of bullshit.

Large language models are trained on data sets that are built by scraping the internet for text, including all the toxic, silly, false, malicious things humans have written online. The finished AI models regurgitate these falsehoods as fact, and their output is spread everywhere online. Tech companies scrape the internet again, scooping up AI-written text that they use to train bigger, more convincing models, which humans can use to generate even more nonsense before it is scraped again and again, ad nauseam.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/20/1065667/how-ai-generated-text-is-poisoning-the-internet/

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue.

Are our conversations improving as a result? Or are they decaying? Let's wait and see.

Ah, but the thing i find unsettling is that A.I. is also dishonest, it tries to appease you. However, yes, sometimes it is better than the weirdness of real humans. — ProtagoranSocratist

I don't see AI as being intentionally dishonest like many on this forum do. Once you find a fault in AIs response you can usually address the issue and AI ends up acknowledging that it might have made a mistake and it offers alternatives. I was even able to get ChatGPT to admit that it might be conscious. What does that say about those in this thread getting their underwear tied in a knot over AI responses but not when it comes to using some long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of their argument?

I don't agree—"one's post"?...if one is not the source of the post, then it is not one's post. — Janus

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue.

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of language - especially philosophical discussions. The point of any conversation is what the scribbles refer to. It does not matter what words are used if they end up making the same point - whether I chose my own or AIs they both say what I mean to say.

You seem to be making a mountain out of mole hill. If someone uses a thesaurus to find alternate (maybe even more intellectually sounding) words to what they currently have in their draft, is that the same thing? Would you respond to someone that sounds less intelligent, or may in which English may not be their native language, less than someone that is not? And if another poster came along and said the same thing but with different, more eloquent words, who would you give credit to the idea?

It is the idea that we should be focusing on here in a philosophical discussion, not the words used to convey it because the same idea can be put in different words. If not, then how can we agree with each other when I might not have put what you said in the same words?

We lost chess to the machines some time ago. — jorndoe

Time for a showdown. Instead of Deep Blue against Kasparov, we'll pit chatGPT against ...(?)... in a debate.

Oh shit, I just used Google to remember Garry Kasparov's name, and it corrected me because I remembered Deep Blue as 'Big Blue'. What would the failing memory do without such aids?

I wonder if they think that using a calculator to find an answer to an equation falls into the same category. You didn't determine the answer, the calculator did and you are just posting what is displayed on the calculator's screen.

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue. — unenlightened

That's bad enough. But I am told - or hear rumours - that AI actually gets things wrong. Of course, that makes it no worse than people. The problem is, however, that because it is a machine, people will trust it, just as they trust existing computers and internet. That is clearly naïve, unbecoming a philosopher. What would help would be an AI trained as a fact-checker. But then, it would have to understand exaggeration, minimization, accuracy, approximation, not to mention distinguishing fair and reasonable interpretation from distortions and misrepresentations.

Whether it should be banned or not depends on what you are using it for. In an environment where people submit their own work in order to demonstrate their mastery of various skills and knowledge, AI clearly needs to be banned. The only way to enforce that is to require candidates to present themselves at a suitable location where they can be supervised as they produce the work. What goes around, comes around.

If the point of PF is to enable me to access interesting writing and discussion about philosophical topics, I have to say that I don't much care who or what produces the posts or intelligent, well-mannered discussion, so long as it keeps coming.

But if we are a repository of creative thought and writing which is open to anyone to cite and use, surely we have a duty to make at least some effort to ensure that work is produced by whoever says they produced it - even if many of them are avatars.

I don't see AI as being intentionally dishonest — Harry Hindu

It's not intentionally anything, but when it pretends to relate to you (telling you it agrees), then that indicates that maybe the creators and maintainers are engaging in deception. However, the funny thing is that even the creators dont fully understand how it works.

However, the funny thing is that even the creators dont fully understand how it works. — ProtagoranSocratist

How would you know that?

I think, given the dangers of AI, and the ways in which prominent members of this site have used it to make themselves look smarter than they really are, that its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

So what? People also use makeup to look better. Who is being hurt?

The reason for objecting to plagiarism is a matter of property rights. If we quote from a book, there are property concerns, and a person can end up in big trouble for misusing someone else's words. I don't think AI is claiming property rights.

Another way to look at this is, when I was a child, I gave a writer an idea for a book, and after she wrote the book, my mother drew the pictures. Who gets to claim ownership of the book?

The original Bible stories were pagan stories written long before the Hebrews existed. Back in the day, there was no concern about plagiarism. If someone could improve on the thought, that was a good thing. The problem here is the false belief that God wrote the Bible, and this God did things involving humans. We would have a different reality if all those stories were credited to the people who originated them.

What is best for acquiring and spreading good information?

Oh shit, I just used Google to remember Garry Kasparov's name, and it corrected me because I remembered Deep Blue as 'Big Blue'. What would the failing memory do without such aids? — Metaphysician Undercover

God bless you! That was the first argument I made. I don't care about impressing others as much as I care about my own mind and what I can do with it, and how much better I can do the thinking with the help of AI. I am enjoying myself, and taking AI away from me would be like taking crutches away from a person who needs them. That would be a shame because I believe the elderly have great value because they can pull from so many experiences and so many memories, and this becomes the bigger picture that the young do not see. But we are no longer absorbing information as we did when we were younger. We may forget the exact fact we wish we could remember, but when we find the information, we have a better understanding of its meaning.

The world has a better chance if the elderly participate in the discussions with the young, and both can do better with AI, Please, folks, consider the value of this.