Yesterday, I stumbled upon a post and long series of comments of the "older" users discussing the use of AI. There were a few things that I found interesting in their views on the HIVE chain and how everything should be. I will quote from two posts here, one from @acidyo ( Click here for the post ) and one from @josediccus (Click here for the post), both of which I enjoyed reading for the different perspectives they give (I hope you two don't mind me tagging you). Everyone, this is my newbie perspective on it, there might be flaws in it - feel free to point those out in the comments, I like to learn!
To summarize the two posts (please read them and comments!), I would say (that is my interpretation) that Acidyo wants to keep HIVE as clean as possible from any AI generated content and preserve the purity of the HIVE as a personal content creation platform. Meanwhile, Josediccus sees the inevitable capitalization:
The social front of Hive is a semi-marketplace, […]
And his suggestion is to act before it becomes another victim of AI-Content, which nobody with brain really wants to read, and offer solutions to those who already see it mainly as a place to sell themselves and earn money, instead of the hub of creativity that it’s intended to be. He also sees a possible social benefit from creating those solutions.
But... FREEDOM!
Both bring up Freedom as part of their arguments: the freedom to do whatever you want, both use AI as well as downvote the living hell out of someone for that. But neither of them mentions directly that freedom comes with responsibility. And no, that is not intrinsic, as the whole discussion is just about that: What is responsible usage of the HIVE platform? What is responsible usage of AI and of downvotes?
Directly connected to that, their discussion brings up the question of what they want HIVE to be:
You have to choose if the rewards are worth the time you're spending generating content, engaging with your readers and continuing to be you because you are the one being rewarded by stakeholders, autovotes, vote-trades or manual votes alike.
I know it’s not what acidyo meant in his paragraph, but there’s a different argument to be derived here. In one of my first posts, I can’t remember which, I described the inevitable strive towards mediocracy. If medium quality is rewarded the same way that high quality content is, why make high quality content? So everyone who does HQ content will just lower the quality a little bit. And a little more. And the bigger a society is, the less people notice. We can all see how things are going for humanity – it’s definitely not towards HQ, on any topic. Cheaper and more is always the risk for a content creation platform.
In order to keep quality of content creation up, quality of content consumption must also be kept up. There’s always two sides to it, there’s the sender and the receiver. If HIVE becomes a market, even a semi-market, it will strive towards mediocrity.
The question is – How can we prevent that?
Every idealistic platform starts great and first attracts all the right people. But then it starts attracting everyone, because it is a great platform. But the ideals will start to get watered down by the masses, greed and egos.
In one comment and his post, acidyo writes:
Why do you keep saying "unwritten rule" so often?
To me, that seems like there is a lack of communication happening, especially communicating the values that one attributes to HIVE. What are the values that represent HIVE, and how does each individual engaged and (hopefully) invested in the platform weigh them? Is freedom more important than creativity? Is money more important than quality? Is a cute little badge more important than being coherent?
There are only individual answers to that. I would love to tell you all how to do things, I could set up rules – but they wouldn’t work, because they’re mine, not yours. The thing about “unwritten rules” aka values is that some weigh them the same way you do, some don’t. That’s why communities like this one have written rules. And there’s nothing wrong about that. I’m a fan of rules, I wrote a whole article about how much I love them.
Should we be less idealistic, and more realistic?
So, an idea could be to write down the unwritten rules. Sacrifice a little of that freedom for a compromise. If HIVE is a platform for creative personal content, than AI has no place there, at all, nor has ghostwriting. As soon as those filter in, it will become Facebook et. al. :
This is your personal account we're talking about, personal. (acidyo)
If you need AI or a ghostwriter to be you, it's not you.
Or keep trying to level things out the same way and trust in the current system, self-regulation, that the values the bees share are enough to keep the parasites in check (KE was a step towards that, and a good example for it). Both ways have a form of policing, which is the same (downvotes etc.).
No matter what you decide for yourself within your liberty - communicate it!
I’ve read a lot of times about several people being hit by whale-downvotes without even knowing what they did wrong. Jose has a point when he writes:
When confronted with AI offenders, I believe the first course of action should be diplomacy, but attempting to use decentralization as a justification will only lead to further confusion and disagreement. Nonetheless, this is how we are. When we are clearly wrong, we have a natural tendency to argue. People sometimes choose argument over making necessary corrections in order to protect their ego.
If you hit somebody with a downvote, at least explain while. That time should be taken. If you care enough about it to downvote, why don't you take the time to see if someone is actually smart enough to see your point and accept it, and to do better? If they start to argue in bullshit-bingo-manner, you don't have to engage further.
Every colony of bees splits up eventually.
Or to use the communities. Some will allow AI content, some won’t. And then let evolution run its course – people like me will not read in AI-allowing communities anymore, but look for those where the content is both genuine and high quality. I know where you'll find me.
I'm a purist.
I use AI for translation and simple research, but not to create content. As soon as I do, it's not me in the content anymore (not even if I'd use AI to find better words), and I always try to make point of being authentic and coherent. If I can't defend an action morally against myself, I won't do it. It's a luxury, really. And I see that luxury mirrored by many creators here on HIVE, that I enjoy reading a lot, real, genuine creators that just love to think and write. Due to that, I do feel way more comfortable reading in communities that don't allow AI content. I don't like unwritten rules. I've seen too much greed and ego, too much humanity, to still believe that people aren't corrupted easily. And too much faking to believe that many share my values.