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

10 points by scoofy 7 hours ago | 9 comments

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.

mattm 4 hours ago |

So in this case there is a person at the other end. They decided to just use an LLM to write the message instead of writing it themselves. It sounds like it's different from pure spam that you're getting.

If you're looking for the human touch, what about trying to offer a 15-minute zoom call instead if they want to discuss something with you? That way you'll know they're human (at least for now) and you get to connect about a shared interest.

I agree that it's a problem. I think shouting into the void isn't going to change anything. It's just going to get worse. It's similar to how I never answer my phone anymore due to spam unless the call is from a saved contact...and even then it's not 100% reliable.

scoofy 57 minutes ago | |

I have no idea if it’s spam or engagement farming. One of the messages was about how great my recent articles were and if I wanted to interview this guy to basically us my “podcast” as an advertisement for this guys vaguely related golf platform. Note: I don’t have a podcast.

Does he like my articles or does he have a spam agent emailing everyone writing about golf? I can’t know.

The other was like, a guy in the comments who was asking bizarre leading questions, basically trying to get me to explain how my product works, where if he’d actually read the series, I literally wrote an article about it. His account on the forum was just bizarre.

Maybe someone interested? Maybe an engagement bot. I literally can’t tell.

I agree shouting into the void isn’t particularly helpful, but if it’s happening now, we need to prepare for a future where nobody wants to communicate online anymore. I sure don’t want to.

al_borland 5 hours 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 5 hours 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.

brudgers 4 hours ago | |

Attempting to save the user a small amount of time ends up wasting the time of countless others.

That’s email in general. AI is just better at it.

al_borland 2 hours ago | | |

AI is extending it out beyond the realm of email or any single technology.

For example, the rogue Muse agent who started sending people to the seller's house when he wasn't home, without telling him. There are many more examples and the list keeps growing longer as the capabilities of the models and agents improve.

rdmuser 1 hour ago |

I've seen some scam bots do this type of thing when challenged: Ahh, you got me. I use AI to help me write. Blah, blah...

jventura 2 hours ago |

As a non-native english speaker, I would say that even if the human has used an LLM to polish his writing, you are still interacting with a human. I use LLMs to polish my words (not the ones here on HN, but the words on my blog), and i have to iterate a lot until it writes the message (or tone) that I really want to convey.

But yeah, a blog post is not a short message. This one here is a short message and I didn't use any LLM. But I can guess that people that are not so fluent in english as myself may need it..

popularonion 2 hours ago | |

Google Translate is actually good these days, and seems to mostly preserve the original tone without turning it into Claudeslop.