AI-generated content policy banner in answers. Do we want them?

Question

There was a recent "poll" here on Meta.TeX.SE asking about the use of generative AI in answers. Read all about it here:

Should AI answers be banned?

The results from that discussion were mixed. However, current network policy is to disallow AI-generated answers. While there's no effective way of moderating this (as there's no guarantee of always getting true positive/negative evaluations from posts by heuristics), content moderation of such answers is allowed (see the discussion under the heading AI-generated posts in Moderation strike: Results of negotiations ; also the accepted answer here).

The consequence is a request from Stack Exchange to have a per-site discussion on whether or not to place a banner at the top of the answer box stating that AI-generated answers are not allowed. A pilot was recently graduated on SO; here is a visual of the banner:

The current proposal, if the community wants this banner, is to have one of the following options:

We will initially offer two banner text options that all sites in the Stack Exchange network can opt-in to. Those options are the following:

• Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed on TeX - LaTeX. Learn more

• Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools must be cited on TeX - LaTeX. Learn more

Both options have a "Learn more" link, which will point to a help center article, whose contents should also be a part of the community discussion - this article should explain what the site's policy on AI-generated content is (here's SO's article, as an example).

The banner will display once users select the answer field, removing the ability to show the "new contributor" banner. All users will see this banner when posting an answer with the option to dismiss. Once dismissed, logged-in users will not see this banner again.

For Action

• Participate by casting a vote to this question either in favour of such a banner (up-vote) or against it's display in the answer box (down-vote).

• If you'd like to add a general item of discussion on this topic or propose content related to a specific help center article, please post an answer below.

If there's no real success in this endeavour (minimal voting, a close-to-zero score with plenty of votes, or complete community disinterest with a large negative score, for example), the status quo will probably remain.

---

Update (Feb 10, 2024)

The response to this question has very low. A total of 17 votes (14 in favour and 3 against). That doesn't sound like sufficient evidence to make a decision either way.

Regardless, StackExchange has made the decision to roll out a network-wide Help Center article that will become available as of February 14th, 2024 (see Proposed changes to Help Center articles to include mention of AI-generated content policy). This article will contain the default messaging related to AI-generated content as mentioned in the Code of Conduct, which is that it should be cited (see Is uncited LLM usage considered a CoC violation under the Inauthentic Usage policy?). Sites can update the article to suit their individual needs/recommendations.

Debate around the activation of a banner is still open as "no site will have either banner on by default".

Answer 1

I voted down (no banner) the network policy of allowing each site to make its own policy, but only offering a choice of one of two fixed texts for the banner makes little sense.

There are many levels of AI use and it doesn't make sense to ban everything. Chatgpt for example is very good at English but not that good at TeX. If someone for whom English isn't a first language writes a good technical answer but then asks chatgpt to re-write the English prose should that be banned? Is it logically any different from writing the answer in French then getting google translate to write it in English?

The second banner intends I think that any such answer adds "written with the help of ..." although as @cfr commented, what it actually says doesn't make sense. So that would be more or less acceptable, but not reliably enforcable and serves no practical use. A bad answer is a bad answer whether or not AI was used to generate it, and similarly a good answer is a good answer. I can't see that it matters how the answer was constructed.

Answer 2

I think people are asking the wrong question. The question isn't whether to remind people of site policy on AI-generated content. It is whether to single this policy out for special treatment.

One way to convey the importance of a message is to repeat that message again and again. If a single message is repeated every time somebody writes an answer the implication is clear: this message is extremely important. If the message is repeated over and over to the exclusion of all others, it must be of overwhelming importance.

A better question might be: Is TeX SE's policy on AI-generated content one we want to draw particular attention to? It's not enough to think the policy matters. Do we want to give this degree of priority to this policy as opposed to any other?

I think the answer is no. I see no evidence that violations of TeX SE's policy on AI-generated content are causing problems which justify prioritising that policy, let alone doing so to the exclusion of all others.

Answer 3

I share the same opinion as @marjin in the comment replies to this post by David Carlisle on the current question.

Human-written bad answers have certain characteristics given below that are immediately obvious:

• Very short
• Out of context (if copied and pasted)
• Easy to judge the direction in which the person is going

If human content is any longer than a paragraph, it requires some effort to make it at least appear meaningful. This is not the case with AI-generated content, where:

• It is very easy to generate long answers
• The answers almost always seem relevant to the context at hand
• Even if no solution exists for the current "thing", AI can still generate a solution by taking components from other things and adapting them to the current context, making it difficult to determine if it will actually work or not

If an answerer is willing to put in the effort to write a good answer, per can certainly use AI for perself and use those hints to form per's own answer. In this case, having the citation guidelines (the second proposed option above) will help, requiring citation for:

• model* (e.g.: OpenChat Aura)
• client* (e.g.: https://chat.lmsys.org)
• prompt* (e.g.: "How to accomplish this using context typesetting?")
• parameters*:
  • temperature: (e.g.: 0.2)
  • top P: (e.g.: 0.2)

However, if there is no deterrent to AI answers, the positive use (the latter point) will be far outnumbered by poor quality, unverified mass AI postings.

Other factors that don't help in motivating quality AI answers include:

• SE (Stack Exchange) does not allow flagging answers based on whether they are correct or not, which doesn't help with this situation.
• Most popular LLMs (Large Language Models) do not provide options (temperature, top-p, etc.) to tune the generation, and many people don't know or use them either, resulting in more "creative" answers than "definitive" answers.
• Even if the generator is tuned to "definitive", the "mold other related things to the current one" aspect still applies.

---

Update: The comment from @cfr motivated a very nice summary:

The Problem is that the answers from AI can't be easily determined if they are problematic or not; and require good amount of effort.

The Enforcement is to eliminate direct AI answers, whether problematic or not.

The Idea is that the non-problematic AI answer is substantially vetted by the answerer perself before posting for fear that if done otherwise "guidelines explicitly warned", so "downvotes", "negative comments", and "mod actions" etc.

- cfr "If problem is "can't spot problematic answers", how's the rule¹ supposed to be enforced? Is the idea that [it₁] serves a purpose [regardless]?"