Peter Berger wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 12:23 pm
Ras wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 11:58 am
I'd like a discussion about whether the charter might need an update about AI generated posts. Let's start with two basic takes to encourage an open-ended discussion. Please note that I'm not writing this as moderator here, just as a regular member.
Pro AI ban: AI slop doesn't contribute and mostly creates noise. If someone wants to discuss a certain topic with an AI, they can do so directly instead of polluting the forum.
Contra AI ban: Not everyone is a native or even proficient English speaker. Using one's own thoughts, but getting AI help to express them properly can enable people to participate despite the language barrier.
I think it is probably enough if you add a rule that the use of AI in posts has to be properly attributed and is not encouraged and endorsed by the board in general - worded more nicely of course
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It is not practical to forbid it: if you had a rule against AI slop, people who'd try and use it to improve their status, would just learn to use it in a more skilful way.
Difficulty with a blanket ban is that sometimes, very occasionally, an AI summary or explanation of a complex topic that the experts here find hard to wrap their brains around is arguably justified.
Important to take into account is history and motivation. There’s a poster here who spams an awful lot of AI (much into the hidden AI forum) in much the same way the same poster spams YouTube videos and used to spam streams of emoticons and upper case and exclamation marks. It is status seeking, yes, as you point out, but also attention seeking and often diverting/derailing. And in marked contrast to the level of post same poster generates when (occasionally?) writing posts himself. I find it annoying, disruptive, demeaning, status-seeking rather than truth seeking and often insulting of intelligence that my own posts get mixed up with this kind of slop. Policy is to ignore and never respond, but this gets overruled, annoyingly, by the sheer volume of slop.
I also find it insulting to be referred to as part of a group that hates or dislikes AI. This was such a stupid comment and conflates AI chatbots with AI. I know such insults come from end users without foundation knowledge who just “use” chatbots to generate text that they cannot independently do, whilst chess engine programmers and some other experts here are generally “discussing” AI from a meta level and generally, by definition, “do” AI, some since 1980 or earlier. The worst of all possible worlds without any control is one in which anybody with a computer and zero expert knowledge related to the purpose of this forum are churning out AI slop which they don’t actually even understand and with whom engagement is both impossible and purposeless.
Nuanced moderation which recognises history and motivation, please.