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You're saving one minute and now I can't know if I'm talking a human

6•scoofy•2h ago
I write a golf blog. Recently, it's been getting a nontrivial amount of attention from a very niche section of the nerd-golf community.

I've been getting a small number of emails and message from people because of this. This is how it has been going:

Me: Oh, this is a nice email. Wait, something seems off. Let me check this in Pangram... Oh, 100% AI predicted.

I respond: Hey, thanks for the note. Just FYI, Pangram doesn't really like your writing style.

Them: Ahh, you got me. I use AI to help me write. Blah, blah...

---

I really don't know what to do here. I still don't know if I'm talking to a human. If you are messaging me because you like my writing and you're using AI to write these short messages for you, I don't know what to tell you. Please stop. It takes two minutes to write a quick message... I really don't care if there are typos or it's a bit awkward. But if you're using AI to facilitate this I'm not going to know if I'm ever talking to a person! And, there is a nontrivial chance I'm going to report your account for spam, which I really don't want to do if you're a human and a fan of my writing.

Using AI for these kinds of short messages is poisoning the well in ways that many people don't seem to understand.

It's the strangest feeling... getting a flattering note, and ending up not even knowing if anyone actually read my blog in the first place.

Comments

al_borland•58m ago
This seems to be a trend with a lot of AI usage, which will be accelerated with consumer-facing agents. Attempting to save the user a small amount of time ends up wasting the time of countless others. The erosion of social trust you bring up compounds the damage significantly.
scoofy•54m ago
I suspect there are just nontrivial amounts of people out there that do not consider the second-order effects of their actions.

I'm not even and LLM hater. I just really think that the interconnectedness of the internet has caused the death of etiquette, simply because there is no culture when every culture in the world is all participating all the time. Etiquette is useful, even when it's effectively arbitrary.

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