Chris Best recently posted Against Claudefishing on The Substack Post.
It’s getting harder to tell what’s real on the internet.
This is less true on Substack, and we aim to keep it that way. As a first step, we’re launching a feature with Pangram in the Substack app today. Going forward, you’ll be able to scan text to see how much of it was likely written by hand or with AI assistance. More on that in a moment, but first let me explain why this matters.
One commenter, The Daily RE-Wire’s Monica Hebert, posted:
Oh look. Another purity test.
In eighteen months of publishing on Substack, not one reader has ever accused me of producing AI slop or suggested there was no human being behind my writing.
I use AI. I also bring the stories, memories, opinions, arguments, humor, lived experience, and final judgment. My readers seem perfectly capable of recognizing that a real woman is present.
A detection score may tell you that a tool was involved. It cannot tell you who had the original thought, who shaped the argument, who rejected the bad language, who supplied the life, or who stands behind every word.
Transparency is one thing. Turning authorship into a purity test is another.
The presence of AI does not prove the absence of a human.
This had me thinking that the narrative of a purity test around the use of AI. It isn’t so much of is this person pure, but that the work is uncontaminated with AI.
Agreed, Monica. There are a cohorts of people who are looking for human-only end-to-end creativity chains (HOETECC). No AI in the process. As pure humanity as possible.
It’s no different than people wanting to hear musicians playing without effects or the assistance from computers.
Purity tests are not inherently a bad thing. We want pureness in many systems.
I prefer to look at this question as not a purity test, but a contamination test.
Is the art I am engaging with contaminated with AI?
Nothing wrong with principles and preferences.
