cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1311057/people-prefer-stories-written-by-ai-especially-when-told-theyre-written-by-a-human
People gave the highest ratings to stories generated by AI that they were told had been written by a human, and were unable to tell the difference between human- and AI-created stories, according to new research published by Cambridge University Press.
Is there a place where we can do that test? The article links to a download, but it tells you which is which.
“public assumptions about the capabilities of AI are increasingly out of date”
writing stories is another to add to the list of things AI does better than humans
I agree that the anti AI crowd is consistently out of date or misinformed about AI. It’s an echo chamber which makes them believe AI is less capable than it it and the anti AI crowd should work on that. More of the real arguments and less of the “AI bad at tasks”.
People are dumb and often do things that harm themselves and the world as a whole. That’s the reason AI is bad - not because we don’t like it, but because we shouldn’t like it, it makes us dumber, and is terrible for the planet on top of it all.
It’s like if I lit a bunch of tires on fire, bottled the smoke to smell as perfume, and justified it all by saying I found someone who liked the smell. It’s irrelevant, and doesn’t justify my actions at all.
As someone who reached early adulthood, before internet became mainstream, I have to say that everyone took a collective dive in the deep end of the stupid pool after social media was born.
AI will make us more stupid and intellectually lazy.
That’s like saying people prefer lots of highly processed food with heaps of sugar and no nutrients. It’s definitely true in some ways, but not a good thing to organise your life or society around
Why? What harms come from the AI generated stories to their readers?
Did you read the stories?
Considering you immediately down voted my comment, I think it’s fair to ask: is that a genuinely curious question?
The #1 thing I can think of is plagiarism.
AI stories are quite literally unoriginal works generated from original mediums and it’s harmful to all authors worldwide.
AI-giarism is still plagiarism.
https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/online-archive/plagiarism-copyright-and-ai
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/08/ai-companies-buying-used-books-for-data/688167/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1096751625000806
That’s a great analogy!
Someday is now today.
“If you lie, people won’t notice”.
Quite the lesson to learn.
that’s a lot of psychology experiments right?
you make them do this and then watch that
you misinform them and see what they do with that information
The milgram experiment wouldn’t work if they told people that they’re not really killing someone or without “lying” they would have really needed to kill someone which is worse.
There’s also ethics involved like a debriefing after the experiment and the lying or deceptions can’t cause damage etc.
I’ve played around with perchance.org story generator enough to be legitimately impressed with it. I do think you need a human to direct the story and correct issues but it writes better than I do, it just isn’t as good at coming up with ideas and it frequently makes obvious mistakes.
