[ElProlactin]

Or you could engage with content critically, understanding that in this day and age, you can't be 100% sure of its provenance. Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance, not who you think produced it and how.

[yoz-y]

You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.

It is absolutely possible to produce an insightful article using AI. But it intakes skill and dedication few people have.

[ElProlactin]

> You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.

But AI is only the latest continuation of what you're describing. The internet has been full of slop (clickbait, SEO-bait, etc.) and propaganda/disinformation for many years before AI was even a thing. Social media gave every person on the planet with a heartbeat and internet connection a publishing platform over a decade ago.

The only realistic approach for dealing with this is to exercise critical thought when you consume content. And if the massive volume of content we're flooded with is problematic, narrow the sources from which you consume content and consume less of it. Get off social media. Disavow YouTube. Don't doom scroll the news. And so on.

[BrenBarn]

I don't see this article as inconsistent with exercising critical thought. In a sense, this policy the author is describing is itself an exercise of critical thought. And it's one way of narrowing the sources from which they consume content. Exercising critical thought involves noticing patterns and developing heuristics and rubrics to judge things. That's entirely compatible with what the article describes.

[ElProlactin]

Saying "if you use AI and don't tell me, you're a liar and if you use AI and tell me, I won't trust anything you write" is not critical thought. It's a sledgehammer filter and basically impossible to apply because there is virtually no way in 2026 to identify the provenance of any content you consume.

The likelihood that the author has consumed and trusted content that was produced using AI in some form, and not even realized it, is close to 100%. It's literally everywhere these days, and not everyone using it is using it to do all the work. But it leaves little hints that it was involved.

There are frequently posts that hit the front page of HN that have numerous AI fingerprints that produce discussion devoid of any comments questioning whether they were produced using AI. And HNers are probably one of the groups more likely than the general population to be able to identify AI content.

[fragmede]

Ugh that sounds like a lot of work. Are you sure we can't just throw shallow dismissals around and feel smug about it, rather than interacting with the contents of what something is saying?

[ElProlactin]

> Ugh that sounds like a lot of work.

Isn't that, ironically, exactly the sentiment that motivates people to use AI to produce content?

I think your comment hints at the reality: we're all just increasingly lazy. We want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to produce content, and at the same time we want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to engage with it.

It's a vicious cycle.

[Springtime]

> Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance

This is the part the original human poster is assumed to have screened as a first step, not the audience, particularly if the audience is unfamiliar with the subject (such as a guide, etc).

I literally came across a guide online from a user who wasn't a spammer, who disclaimed they haven't even read the very guide they posted as an article on their website, as it was LLM generated. At least that user put up a disclaimer but why would I trust such a guide, given my and others' extremely inconsistent experience with the veracity of LLM output and as someone coming to the guide to learn (ie: not a domain expert)? Overwhelmingly other users don't put up such disclaimers so we don't even get to know whether they've vetted anything.

Trust is the key thing. To continually erode reader trust means you're putting the burden at every step on the reader. Sure, one should always apply critical thinking to even human output but there is an implicit, baseline assumption that with human output they're at least familiar with what they've output (whether they're lying or telling the truth or ignorant but honest). LLMs meanwhile handle ground truths in a flaky way, such as when they'll hallucinate quotes from even articles they claim to have read and cited. And the most common models users are using are the cheapest/free ones anyway, only compounding the accuracy issues.

Imagine you went to a library assuming authors, publishers and library staff have done some minimum due diligence only to find the library is being replaced rapidly with books that no one in the chain has read.

No one can be a domain expert in every single thing they encounter, which is why we place trust in others to varying degrees to fill in the gaps based on their experience and knowledge, even if you're a dyed in the wool skeptic. When increasingly what we encounter isn't being vetted as a basic first step then it's a waste of time and rude to the audience, which only decreases peoples' tolerance for bullshit and increases cynicism (which we could use less of).