Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

authory.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 171 posts

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#91

Post by __loam »

notShabu wrote: post #79

"better calculators will destroy humanity" seems like a ridiculous statement but that's what new AI tools that can create good art/music/writing does. They boil down and automate the middle process of calculation. what was previously "creative" is revealed as calculation from the God/Universe pov and as the range of calculable things grows, the island of im-a-real-human-bc-creativity gets smaller and smaller defined…

What a bleak way to think about creative work. AI is just brute forcing it by looking at millions of training examples. Talking about it like it knows some fundamental truth about creativity misunderstands what it does. At best it's an approximation and at worst it removes what was special from the inputs.

> creativity ends up including some interesting domains like capital allocation and hedge fund management.

I hate this website sometimes.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#92

Post by Habgdnv »

Professional writers might get wrongly flagged by AI detectors because these AIs are trained on well-written articles. So, if an AI and a professional writer both write about something like SpaceX, they could end up sounding very similar. That's just because the AI learned from articles like what the professional would write. If someone like me writes the article, it will probably be marked as human-written. But that's not because it's more 'human-like,' it's just because it's not as polished as what professionals write. The AI detector under the hood may look if the article is "pro" or "hobby" written and spit the number.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#93

Post by testfoobar »

AI generated text is ever-present in low-stakes writing assignments. How do we detect every AI submission? High School student taking AP Literature and tasked to write a 200-word essay on the key ideas in Shakespeare's King Lear. It is 2am.

You want to go to sleep.

Google Bard to the rescue, Prompt: "Write a 200 word essay on the key ideas in Shakespeare's King Lear". The result isn't great. But it might pass an English teacher reading it quickly.

Can these be detected?

Bard: "Key Ideas in Shakespeare's King Lear

William Shakespeare's King Lear is a complex and powerful tragedy that explores a number of key ideas, including the nature of authority, the importance of family relationships, and the fragility of human sanity.

Authority and Order

King Lear is a play about the disintegration of authority and order. Lear's decision to divide his kingdom among his daughters based on their professions of love leads to chaos and bloodshed. Lear himself is stripped of his power and authority, and he descends into madness. The play also explores the corrupting influence of power, as seen in the characters of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund.

Family Relationships

King Lear is also a play about the importance of family relationships. Lear's rejection of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, who is the only one who truly loves him, is a central tragedy in the play. The play also explores the complex relationships between fathers and children, and between siblings.

Fragility of Human Sanity

King Lear is a play about the fragility of human sanity. Lear's descent into madness is one of the most moving and disturbing aspects of the play. The play also explores the relationship between madness and wisdom, as seen in the character of the Fool.

Other Key Ideas

Other key ideas in King Lear include:

Nihilism: The play presents a bleak vision of a world without meaning or justice. Self-knowledge: Lear's journey to self-knowledge is a central theme in the play. Old age: The play explores the challenges of old age and the loss of power and authority. Fooling and madness: The Fool and Edgar's disguise as Poor Tom provide comic relief in the play, but they also serve to highlight the madness and chaos of the world around them. Conclusion

King Lear is a complex and challenging play that explores a number of key ideas about the human condition. It is a tragedy that has resonated with audiences for centuries.

In addition to the key ideas discussed above, King Lear also explores a number of other themes, such as the nature of love, the importance of loyalty, and the power of forgiveness. The play is a rich and complex tapestry that continues to be studied and debated by scholars and audiences alike."

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#94

Post by bee_rider »

__loam wrote: post #82
bee_rider wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students are in a weird case. Currently instructors aren’t experts in AI tools because, well, they didn’t exist 10 years ago when even the young professors were learning how to do things. The best that can be done at the moment is to teach the old way. The current students are the ones who will need to make the AI based workflows. But obviating intro assignments by having the AI do them doesn’t benefit anybody.

If students what to deprive themselves of the opportunity to learn then that's their perogative.

Universities need to produce competent graduates at a good rate to maintain their reputation.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#95

Post by notfed »

gunshai wrote: post #84

Pretty sure we are going to see a rise in the use of Oral Exams. The teachers that don't want to use them will continue to churn out students that score high and don't know how to articulate a damn thing. Which may have been the status quo anyway. Edit: I didn't like my original post

Or just on-site exams? Isn't that the norm anyway?

We may see a rise of on-site homework.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#96

Post by gavinhoward »

Loughla wrote: post #88
gunshai wrote: post #84

Pretty sure we are going to see a rise in the use of Oral Exams. The teachers that don't want to use them will continue to churn out students that score high and don't know how to articulate a damn thing. Which may have been the status quo anyway. Edit: I didn't like my original post

I was one of the students who could nail the exams and assignments I turned in, but then I BOMBED oral exams. Because of crippling anxiety. So how do you account for that? Or autism? Or any other sort of neurological disability?

I'm on the spectrum.

If I were a professor though, I would use a baseline for every student.

At the beginning of the semester, have an oral exam for a difficult topic that the students are expected to already know. Material from a prerequisite class would be good.

I would always give 100% for that oral exam if the student showed up. And that exam would become that student's baseline; their future oral exams would be judged based on that.

They'll probably be more nervous in front of the professor the first time than the last, so it would actually give them an advantage in later exams.

Probably still problems with that though.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#97

Post by alpinisme »

__loam wrote: post #82
bee_rider wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students are in a weird case. Currently instructors aren’t experts in AI tools because, well, they didn’t exist 10 years ago when even the young professors were learning how to do things. The best that can be done at the moment is to teach the old way. The current students are the ones who will need to make the AI based workflows. But obviating intro assignments by having the AI do them doesn’t benefit anybody.

If students what to deprive themselves of the opportunity to learn then that's their perogative.

Yes but this only further waters down the already watered down legitimacy of a degree. I know a lot of people think students should be building things independently of classes but that kind of misses the point of dedicating a full time investment in guided learning at the hands of an expert instructor. If instructors graded rigorously and had a magic cheating detection too (where cheating is defined overly capaciously so that students really and unambiguously have to get creative in their work), then the degree might mean something

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#98

Post by ghaff »

hotnfresh wrote: post #66
mezentius wrote: post #56

"This absolute horror scenario is what happened to writer Michael Berben (not his real name)." Absolutely didn't happen. You might occasionally credit a story in the NYT or WSJ using an anonymous source—but when one appears in a blog by a "serial entrepreneur active in the content industry," flogging a subscription product aimed at exactly the sort of marginally-employed writer targeted by the story, I would expect t…

I feel the same. I'm not sure there are many organizations out there applying AI detectors to writers they've had an existing, extensive relationship with, and then also giving a fuck if it pops up as a hit but they have no other complaints about the writing. My wife's fairly connected to the writing world and I've not heard of this being a thing at all . Doesn't mean it's not anywhere, but if it were widespread I th…

My experience is that I have to write some things that often have parts that are, for lack of a better word, somewhat boilerplate, e.g. preamble/background/explain some technical term I used/etc. Necessary but not core technical or otherwise differentiated content.

I've used LLMs for this as a sort of first draft. I edit the output but it's a perfectly serviceable way to get some words down and save me an hour or two.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#99

Post by usrbinbash »

vijayr02 wrote: post #42
Buttons840 wrote: post #9

I want to see an "AI detector" that just marks everything as being not AI generated. Then, whenever someone is accused of using an AI by some nameless website, they can present their own website that shows they didn't use AI. Professor: "The website said you used an AI." Student: "Well, here's a website claiming I didn't use an AI." Professor: "I don't know if I believe that website, let's look into the merits of how…

Surely this is trivial to refute? The professor just needs to have his own text that he generated using AI. When your website says it's not AI... then it's curtains I guess?

It would be, if the professors website wouldn't suffer from false negatives as well. Which it most certainly will.

Re: The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers

#100

Post by testfoobar »

thrill wrote: post #83
ekms wrote: post #62

AI writing tends to be bland and repetitive. So if this encourages people to not write like an AI then that's a win

AI writing is like a 12 year old using Cliff Notes for a last-minute book report.

Exactly how it is used by students now.
Post reply on HN