Posts written by Chat GPT and other AI

[CruCru]

I keep seeing posts written by Chat GPT on various threads. Sometimes the poster says something along the lines of “I got AI to summarise what I wanted to say and here it is” and sometimes they post with no reference to AI (but it is fairly obvious).

Please can this stop? This site will become unusable if the posts get written by robots. MN is populated by articulate, well educated women; we don’t need to use AI to communicate with each other. It isn’t allowed in school.

I suggest that obvious AI posts should be reported for deletion.

Of course it would make sense for MN to allow AI companies to use these forums for training LLMs. Its the perfect source of data and would be a huge source of revenue

That's not what I'm talking about
Mumsnet already took a stand against LLMs using mumsnet for training data (unsuccessfully I assume) but they are allowing people to post AI generated posts as if they are being written by real people. They need to develop a response to this.

Oh crumbs, I just found that thread. Jesus, it’s shocking.

I agree OP. When I see posts which are obviously written by AI I rarely even bother to read them. It's downright annoying.

I think some people just need to be more confident. I've seen AI posts where the OP has followed up with posts they've written themselves, and their language is just fine. Really bad English is very rare on Mumsnet.

Yes, true. But this is far less of an issue than people simply using AI to generate (fake) OPs or using it to generate a response to an OP - all you need to do is copy paste or screenshot the OP and ask AI to write a reply with zero actual human input. There is no way to know whether a poster has used AI to write a post from their own genuine input or if it's literally just an AI generated response which nobody needs or wants and will ruin the site if it goes unchecked.

The walls of LLM text, bullet points, unrhythmic emphasis and fawning style of AI is pretty much opposite to the informal and amusing style of discourse on MN, so sticks out like a sore thumb. Sooner or later MNHQ will have to ban it, as most people dislike it and will spend less time here when it proliferates. Those people who love it, love that it is programmed to be sycophantic, but its sycophancy doesn't work second-hand, so reading what someone else has prompted it to say on MN won't scratch their itch to be pandered to.

I love it for many things in my own life including coaching me around parenting and complex family issues but that's my own use and works for me. I am by no means anti AI. But the proliferation of AI posts on mumsnet will wreck it.

In the last week I've seen someone respond to an AI post with an AI post. I'm definitely using MN less as a result of this.
I use AI myself for targeted work purposes but not for information or entertainment. It recently told me that Lemsip was illegal, for example, so you can imagine the harm it could do if a pregnant poster asks whether something needs medical attention and thinks they have been answered by a person when it's an AI post.

Just to let you know, we’ve banned that poster as they were repeatedly derailing the thread. In the context of the discussion, their contributions were inappropriate and not helpful to the OP. Thanks to those who reported.

I read that too, and the op hasn't realised the tell tale long dashes that are clearly chatgpt, and I didn't want to tell her bc she was genuinely touched by the pp responses without recognising the AI. I really didn't know what to do, maybe I should have pointed it out but she has enough going on

That's helpful for that specific thread but the issue will keep coming up. It needs a coordinated response.

I’ve noticed a few friends on social media have started using AI for their posts, just normal posts not business ones. They sound so formal and it’s taken their personality away. One has stopped and sounds like herself again thankfully
I’m all for AI in other ways

Linkedin is basically chatgpt talking to chatgpt now.
We don't want mn to become that

It’s not just mumsnet, it’s every fucking where. It’s destroying the arts and craft spaces I attend, people using it to generate novels and then use amazon print on demand is making finding new books hard. I have one of these people in my family and they have never even attempted to learn to write fiction, they say themselves they don’t have the time and they just say chat gpt is a tool that’s unleashed their creativity.

The amount of ai generated political videos that are being shared and people who think they’re real is worrying,  every forum I use seems to have more and more posts that are very obviously more than someone using it a spell check etc, and as soon as I see “I asked chat gpt for you” I discount the answer that follows.  

People get very defensive if you ever complain about the amount of pure ai generated drivel, I have asd, adhd, dyslexia, dyscalculia along with hand mobility issues, I really can see how ai can be helpful as a tool, I know all to weep what it feels like to spend hours trying to engage in an online forum and get thoughts in order. I’ve had my spelling pounced on before and have been called thick. But it’s still a very valid point that posts that are entirely ai generated are sound the same as each other and lack personality.

One good thing, I’m spending much less time online as a result. The dead internet theory is becoming less of a theory. I’m doing art journaling and reading a lot more instead of mindless scrolling various platforms.

This, I don’t really mind when the OP uses it to better articulate themselves, it’s when someone replies having put the OP into ChatGPT and then posts a huge lengthy reply complete with AI style bold heading and emojis. It’s waste of the earth’s resources and the time of everyone scrolling past it. If the OP wanted an AI response they would’ve posted to ChatGPT and not Mumsnet. Even “have you though about asking ChatGPT” would be a meaningful and helpful response.

The copy and paste of dross that we can all generate ourselves infuriates me. Not least because it creates more AI based content online that AI is then scraping to draw from in future responses.

I’ve noticed a couple of threads where the Chat GPT posts have been deleted - mainly because they were derailing the thread. It may be that people who post using AI are often people who want to disrupt. When asked to stop posting using AI (and use their own words and thoughts instead), both became quite aggressive.

what is mumsnet guidelines on people using it ?

It's fine apparently

It’s the old ‘case-by-case basis’ position, last I looked.

I’m spending less and less time on MN, writing far fewer posts, and being more selective in terms of boards I’m on.

I’m also hiding/deleting a lot more threads immediately on reading their titles in ‘Active’ when they’re suggestive of being (a) AI slop, (b) about a person whose name has been misspelled with a fake human ditziness, (c) poorly written in the Facebook style, (d) political clickbait, and/or (e) a combination of any of the above.

Yes to using it as a tool to help you organise/coherently express your own thoughts; No to sitting back and just giving it free rein to say whatever it guesses you might want to say.

I never understand the people who say "Hi OP, I asked ChatGPT and it said this...". It's not like the OP couldn't have easily done that for themselves if they'd wanted to; but they specifically came on to a human site to interact with other humans. Sometimes you get responses where people say "You could have just Googled this for an answer" - but of course, the OP didn't just want a black and white factual bot response without any nuance, opinion or other human consideration involved, hence posting on MN!

There’s a thread that has been trending for some of today. I am pretty sure that the OP was written with the help of AI - and a bunch of the subsequent posts by the OP accuse those who don’t agree with them of being “ignorant” (those have now been deleted).

whats the thread please

It’s the one about not being jealous of influencers in Dubai.

much appricated