It's quite fascinating the speed of evolution of AI the past year, it's something quite frightening to many but others are quite happy with the assistance it'll bring in their daily "digital" lives. I submitted a couple paragraphs on one of my posts the other day to chatgpt, bear in mind this is the free one of which I'm sure there's way better ones already in existence and available for a price, but the results were quite astounding as you can see for yourself:
Now I've never really been a great author nor advertises myself as such, lucky for me Hive doesn't just curate those neither as long as there's effort behind the posts it tends to be quite welcoming to just about anyone from anywhere which brings me to my main point of this post I've been asked by quite a few people to get out there to make certain things clear.
Effort.
When it comes to curation, both from my side but also my curation project's part, effort is quite up there in requirements to receive curation. It's something I've said many times in the past and it's something that still stands true to this day; most of us aren't really that amazing at creating content. Most of the content on Hive could easily be replaced by similar content by just about most other literate people out there so I've never really looked at the content itself as the determining factor behind if it gets curated and how much. Sure it matters and it's part of the process but it's not everything.
Aside from attempting to give the content we "regular Joe's" here produce some extra value through programs such as POSH, there are also things such as social activity we like to look at. For instance if there's a great author writing content and another similarly great author writing similar content, if the first one never engages with his audience or engages outside of his own posts compared to the second one doing so, we're more likely to ignore the former more often and upvote the latter similarly more often because effort. This isn't just due to Hive's L1 being a social media platform but it also brings another underlying value behind the rewards these authors receive. Someone who just posts or maybe even cross-posts content and doesn't do much else around the ecosystem may feel these rewards are "easy" and thus not value them as much as someone who's a lot more active and brings value to the ecosystem in other ways on top of content creation.
Before I sidetrack too much, let's discuss what this means in regard to AI.
It's quite easy really, if you're using AI to generate content, than similarly how I mentioned above that most of the content here "doesn't really have a lot of value if it can easily be replaced", that's exactly what you're doing. You're creating content that's replaceable, if AI can create it then close to anyone else can these days. On top of it you're generating content you may not know anything about just as a "filler" to get that post out that day and rake in those votes you may have gotten accustomed to and don't want to miss out on. This means that when/if someone consumed your content and asks something about it, you're not going to be the best person to answer this consumer, continue the discussion, delve deeper on it, etc. Because the content you had AI generate is something you have close to no idea about. Even if you have it generate content you know a lot about and may have written about in the past, chances are you're just rewording things and it developing into a farmy habit of just posting for the rewards. This part also removes the whole "effort" effect, you're now basically earning post rewards without having put any effort or thought behind the content, and no, proofreading what the AI generated and doing a little edits here and there isn't enough compared to others generating their own content.
Keep in mind that we all share the same reward pool, and while it's not completely fair or utopia and most likely never will get there, if you're "cheating" your way into earning rewards for close to no effort it just means you're taking rewards away from everyone else.
Alright so now that we know when and how not to use AI, although I'm sure there's a lot more to be said about it maybe you got the gist of it, let's talk when it is okay to.
Many keep saying they use AI to "enhance" and "improve" their writing. As the screenshot shown above it's quite effective at that and I don't personally have anything against people doing so. Especially those working on certain projects wanting their updates looking more professional to avoid hiring a writer. The thing that does annoy me a little bit, though, is that close to none of them mention they used AI. I get that no one mentions when they use Grammarly, but before they also started AI'ing their tools I don't believe that a tool that fixed your grammar risked your content looking like AI had generated all of it. Maybe it's the rise and popularity of AI and it becoming a household name close to everywhere these days, but it could mean that we'd have to start mentioning when we use it and for what, similar to how we source when we use other people's images to give them the credit or avoid getting lawsuits due to the monetization aspect of Hive. You could compare that to mentioning that you used AI to improve the reading experience of your text to avoid getting downvoted by projects or stakeholders thinking you've been using it to generate the full text.
Naturally, there's a lot of gray areas here and leeway for abuse as well, I've seen it happen from both sides: Both from authors saying they used AI just to enhance the text when in reality it may have generated all or a majority of it, and both from projects downvoting the post when it was quite clear that AI couldn't have generated the whole text since it was something quite specific to a certain project for it to know about. I guess this is where common sense, thoroughness and benefit of the doubt become important. It's not going to be easy to determine if what the author is saying is the truth and it's also going to be difficult to prove if he is.
That is something that we at Hive aren't facing alone, though. This early in the technology and evolution of AI it's normal to assume a lot of people are using it for the wrong things rather than being true to themselves and the ecosystem and shareholders here. It's a bit similar to accounts that use or have used sockpuppets to "cheat" their way into more rewards which some of you oldtimers may remember how the community dealt with. The reputation you have on Hive may get you a lot farther if you don't ruin it over time, the currency is built to be inflationary so it's in everyone's best interest to make sure you don't get caught lying or cheating because you may risk never earning post rewards under that account again. Some may think it's an easy thing to do and some may get away with it or it may take a long time for them to get caught but one mistake and it can become very costly for your long term value.
So yeah, not really sure what more could be said about it at this point in time. Aside from myself and my own curation project I do wish more stakeholders would take into account some aspects behind "effort" and the value behind it when curating. Autovotes of course being one of the main proponents to a declining effort behind authors and entitlement to the daily rewards. I think it's safe to say that those authors may have a greater risk of facing downvotes than those who don't always earn the same rewards from the same accounts and similarly I think those staying true to themselves about their effort involved and being open about when they use AI and for what may also have lower risk of facing downvotes.
At the end of the day, while it does "hurt" in a way knowing how the AI managed to rewrite my paragraphs so much better after the years of writing and learning English behind me; I think there's some value behind originality both in content and grammar from specific authors you've followed and read from for a while and it may be something your readers would prefer to not have it any other way.
Anyway, maybe you learned something new about curation and our focus in this post and have some thoughts about it or what you think about the rise of AI and how it may have affected you, let me know in the comments in that case.
