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DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

ericmitchell.ai

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#31

> For example, students may use LLMs to complete written assignments, leaving instructors unable to accurately assess student learning. I'm one student using GPT to write my written assignments, and I cannot understand what is the issue with that. Even though it enhances the quality of my text, I cannot just copy, paste, submit and profit. I still have to understand what is being written. My workflow is normally the…

The problem is that people aren't doing what you're doing, and ARE just copy/pasting whatever gets spit out. Using it to enhance your wording + thoughts is absolutely the way to make use of these tools.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#32
post #25

I can't judge the capabilities of this tool, but I can't help but be skeptical on the mid-long term prospects. The fakes (text, audio, video) will improve to the point of being virtually unrecognizable from real material, no matter how good your fake detection is.

Can some chess players detect when an opponent is using stockfish? Yes, if they’re Magnus Carlsen and memorized a particular line of play. This is a bit like that. But yes, I suppose when these tools become so fluent that they basically never need to use the same pattern twice, we’re toast.

AFAIK top chess players can recognize they're playing against an engine relatively easily. The engines are so far ahead that they often play moves which are "surprising" even for Carlsen, i.e. lines which may seem suboptimal or just unknown - this would normally indicate a weak player, but engines then crush even Carlsen with ease.

But these engines are optimized to win, not to mimic humans, so it's a different story from ChatGPT.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is valuable for SPAM filters, and other fraudulent activity. If you get an e-mail from someone you know and it says "I need itunes gift cards right away!" most people know that is a scam. But if you get an e-mail that appears to be following up on a previous conversation, you are much more likely to click on a link in that e-mail.

I doubt spammers will be the only ones leveraging AI generated text. I'm sure legit marketing people and even administrators and support staff will benefit from using AI written responses. So you're going to filter out valuable emails as well.

There are no valuable emails from 'legit marketing people', especially so if they're using AI-generated messages to hit you with a firehose.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#34
post #25

I can't judge the capabilities of this tool, but I can't help but be skeptical on the mid-long term prospects. The fakes (text, audio, video) will improve to the point of being virtually unrecognizable from real material, no matter how good your fake detection is.

Can some chess players detect when an opponent is using stockfish? Yes, if they’re Magnus Carlsen and memorized a particular line of play. This is a bit like that. But yes, I suppose when these tools become so fluent that they basically never need to use the same pattern twice, we’re toast.

It’s typically not the moves alone that indicate engine use to the other player. The timing is also incredibly important. If it takes you 5 seconds to recapture a piece, where that’s the only viable move, but it also takes you 5 seconds to come up with an insane brilliancy that’s the result of a deeply calculated line, cheating is a likely explanation.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#35
I had a go at using ChatGPT to write some (not very good) fiction. I give it my story idea, and it gives me a few paragraphs. I edit its output, keeping the stuff I like, deleting things I don't, rewording some things, adding a few sentences of my own. Then I say "Now write a new paragraph about how ". I read what it says and then I say "Change what you just said so that...". Then I paste that new paragraph into my document at the appropriate point. So the text I'm constructing is neither purely ChatGPT nor purely me, it is a mix of my ideas and its ideas, my words and its words. I wonder if this tool would detect such a text as ChatGPT-generated or not?

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#36

Is there really something of value to be had by fighting a war against the coming tide of AI that can spit out whatever you ask for? To me it looks like old world professors calling the council because the abacus is under threat by the calculator, and we need to ensure the students are absolutely not using the calculator for their abacus studies. This all being despite the fact that society at large is moving as fast…

Typically, outside experts are useful for out of distribution inference about a particular situation. Fine-tuned generative AI is self evidently not good at generalizing outside the scope of its training data, and becoming reliant on it for this task is foolish. Signed, AI researcher.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#37

Is there really something of value to be had by fighting a war against the coming tide of AI that can spit out whatever you ask for? To me it looks like old world professors calling the council because the abacus is under threat by the calculator, and we need to ensure the students are absolutely not using the calculator for their abacus studies. This all being despite the fact that society at large is moving as fast…

these kind of comments “I will hire an AI instead of a human” are all quite ironic.

the only things you will find out from asking an AI consultant is what occurred to _you_ to ask it.

Interacting with a human will always give you more ideas, opinions and .. more questions.

And you both can use the AI consultant, and get that important thing done.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#38
I found a great way to fool these detectors: piping output through multiple generative models.

1. Generate text by promoting ChatGPT.

2. Rewrite / copyedit with Wordtune [1], InstaText [2] or Jasper.

This fools GPTZero [4] consistently.

Of course soon these emotive, genre or communication style specialisations will be promptable too by a single model too. Detectors will be integrated as adversarial agents in training. There is no stopping generative text tooling, better adopt and integrated it fully into education and work. Resistance is futile.

1. https://www.wordtune.com/

2. https://instatext.io/

3. https://www.jasper.ai/

4. https://gptzero.me/

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#39
Back in the day I made my money cleaning up software projects where outsourcing to India, Romania and Brazil had gone horribly wrong and burned through piles of cash with very poor results to show for it.

I suspect the incoming software development youth will be able to make their early money cleaning up the mess of AI application to software development.

Re: DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection

#40

Is there really something of value to be had by fighting a war against the coming tide of AI that can spit out whatever you ask for? To me it looks like old world professors calling the council because the abacus is under threat by the calculator, and we need to ensure the students are absolutely not using the calculator for their abacus studies. This all being despite the fact that society at large is moving as fast…

> I'm still gonna chose my AI consultant over you in 5-10 years. AI will never replace experts. Someone still has to curate the firehose of information returned. What's the point then? AI can only interpolate a response from internet sources, and claims of plagiarism are already coming hard. The internet was never a good source of expertise.

If an AI can be trained on the internet, it can be trained on a textbook or lecture notes. I think it’s shortsighted to insist that AI won’t replace experts based on the training sets that AIs are currently being trained on.
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