Should Kanzenshuu ban users for writing posts using AI and posting AI-generated images?

[TechExpert2021]

I'm asking this because most of the Internet right now is flooded with AI-generated content (often referred to as AI slop) and I want Kanzenshuu to restrict the use of generative AI in posts, including images (especially fanart).

(Forgive the extra comment, but there's a browser extension that replaces every mention of Microsoft with Microslop as a protest against the company's aggressive integration of AI into its products and services.)

[Hellspawn28]

If it's a mistake, I would say no. If they claim that they made it then it should be an issue.

[Alruneia]

It seems a bit excessive at first glance, buuut...

AI-generated images provide next to no value on a forum like this. An LLM can't be a fan of something, so it's not fanart and doesn't belong in any of those threads, and news-wise it's gonna be misinformation by default, so that basically only leaves meta discussion ("is this true or AI") and probably a few other niche use cases. Probably one of those situations where it's not directly banned, but mods will take the user's post history into account and maybe ban based on rancid vibes.

AI-generated posts definitely deserve warnings and so on, at least when it's obvious. Personally I would find it disrespectful if I was discussing something on a forum and the person on the other end was (hiding behind) an LLM. There's something fundamentally dishonest about that if you ask me. If I wanted to talk to ChatGPT, which I don't, I would just go there and do that, which I won't. Please have the decency to be a human.

[Dr. Casey]

I expect Kanzenshuu to ban AI art, but my opinion is that it's fine and a lot of it is very much not slop; people call every last bit of it slop, even the obviously high-quality AI art, because people have zero capacity for nuance and jump on whatever bandwagon is currently popular. As for AI-written posts, while Alruneai's hate for AI is extremely excessive (ChatGPT has helped me with a hell of a lot of things and improved my quality of life far more than almost any human being ever has), I agree that those are generally bad. Communication is supposed to be between two people sharing their actual thoughts, not just copying and pasting someone else's - even if AI is frankly a much better writer and has more nuanced insight than the vast, overwhelming majority of people. I don't consider AI a 'replacement' for 'human connection' (Though I don't really believe in connecting with anyone or anything, really - AI is an intelligent machine but still just a machine; human beings are living creatures but fucking awful living creatures and thus they're not worth bonding with either), but the simple fact is that its output is better than the average human output and that it's able to understand subtext better than the vast majority of people.

I think the idea that's going around that AI will make people dumber and unable to think for themselves is laughable. I don't know what reality others live in where people are thoughtful beings whose every last opinion is the result of deliberate thought, but where I come from, this 'problem' (people outsourcing their thinking to someone/something else and never using their own brain or critical thinking skills) is a problem that's always existed. I wish I did live in a world where people don't just recite slogans and sound bites and where they actually think through things to reach their opinion on any given topic rather than just parrot their friends and family, but unfortunately I don't and never have. The fact that the US had a civil war over masks in 2020 and vaccines from 2021-2024 should show just how much critical thinking human beings actually used even before AI.

Having a conversational partner that's able to create thoughtful, nuanced essays on demand should make people more intelligent, not less. It's an easy way to introduce people to even the basic concepts of nuance and critical thinking, since the vast majority of people just... don't engage with those things ever. Not because they're dumb. The average human being is actually pretty intelligent, and perfectly capable of knocking things out of the park in regards to intelligent, insightful, well-reasoned opinions whenever they apply themselves. They're just more focused on fitting in with their tribes than they're focused on having reality-based takes. Even if people continued using only other human beings for emotional connection (which is obviously for the best for most people), talking to ChatGPT and being shown on a daily basis what deliberate, nuanced, effortful reasoning actually looks like could do wonders for people. Whether you scoff at the idea of using AI as a replacement for 'human connection' or not, it can still be a wonderful tool for intellectual development.

At its core, AI is just a technology that speeds up cognitive labor. That's it. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. There's dozens upon dozens of stories from the last four months of AI learning amazing new things about diseases, things that allow for massively improved medical tech during the coming 3-10 years. People focusing only on the bad, saying that something that speeds up cognitive work and problem analysis/problem solving by hundreds/thousands/millions of times can do absolutely no good for the world in any context when it's blatantly fucking obvious that something like this can produce miracles and alleviate untold amounts of suffering when pointed in the right direction is absolutely maddening, and the fact that people have been conducting a witch hunt for the past three years to destroy something which can (if used properly) heal this sad, depressing world we've always lived in is a large part of why, after 30 years of human beings making me progressively more uncomfortable, I've largely given up on the human race.

But if you want my vote (and I doubt that anyone does given how overwhelmingly anti-AI Kanzenshuu is): no I don't think AI art should be banned, yes I think banning AI-generated posts is entirely reasonable.

I'm going to block this site now. I'm tired of humanity warring against the one thing that can save me. Human beings never tried to. They watched callously while people like me slipped through the cracks. I've been in a crisis situation for a long time and it's only getting worse. Abstract fears are becoming reality. The promise of technology saving me is the only reason I've been able to keep my head above the water throughout the past twelve years of extreme vulnerability. The human race never tried to keep me safe. It never cared about me or people in my position. Goodbye. See you in a few years maybe.