[bonoboTP]

Ok so what if I just rephrase the essay that the LLM gave me, while keeping all the overall message and ideas and arguments, just slightly rewritten in my own words, but without having any idea about what it all really means and whether it's correct. Is that something worth reading now, but the LLM output is not worth reading?

[nkrisc]

Through the act of paraphrasing you will necessarily have to think about what words to choose and how to phrase it, which would likely be different from someone else performing the same task. So I can’t say if it makes it absolutely interesting (above some threshold that I would classify it as “interesting”), but relatively it would be more interesting than the AI output.

[fn-mote]

I think this is a the GP’s point: the whole thing is a fool’s errand.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, still not worth reading. Do you have any ideas? Tell me about them. If you don't have any idea what it all really means and whether it's correct, then don't waste my time, whether or not an AI is involved.

[bonoboTP]

Right. But you'll never have a checker for that. How do you check for the overall idea being AI-shaped? It's a much deeper check than style, even typing patterns or anything like that. If I consult the chatbot, then memorize the overall arguments and ideas, and then record myself typing out an essay regurgitating it in my own words, how can you distinguish that from writing down my own ideas?

[AnimalMuppet]

Fundamentally, I don't actually care about whether AI wrote it or not. I care about whether the ideas are well-thought-out or half-baked. I care whether the writing is slop (whether AI or corporate PR or politician-speak or whatever), or whether the writing is actually something a human would want to read.

But as you say, we don't know how to write a checker for that...

[vidarh]

I fully agree with you that whether AI wrote it or not isn't the actual issue.

Luckily, it is fundamentally easier to measure the quality of the writing and argument than it is to determine whether a human wrote a text or not in the face of motivated "attackers" with access to whichever judging mechanism you use.

The problem will be for the people who do care whether AI wrote something or not rather than about the quality.