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Comment by jlev1 | Hacker News Reader

The phrasing “bias against AI” seems to beg the question here. The article takes it for granted that people are wrong to say they’re more interested in stories written by people than by AI, because they can’t tell the difference if they’re misled.

Compare with a hypothetical study saying: people say they prefer true inspirational personal stories to fake inspirational personal stories. But if you lie to them, they think the fake ones are just as good!

Obviously, this would not prove that they are “wrong” or “biased”. The whole point of stories written by people is that a _person_ wrote it, based on their actual human thoughts and experiences.

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All the study objectively shows is people prefer stories they believe are written by humans.

You might find a similar effect with attractive authors vs ugly authors. If you show people the photos they probably prefer stories they believe are written by attractive authors.

If we call that bias in the second case, why not call it bias in the first case?

This isn't a study, it doesn't "objectively show" anything. It's an unreviewed discussion paper with questionable methodology.

The conclusion could just as easily be that an AI is better at writing engaging short-stories than the single author they chose.

> The whole point of stories written by people is that a _person_ wrote it, based on their actual human thoughts and experiences.

I thought the whole point of stories was that they were entertaining or had some pertinent message. Truth doesn't have to come from someone's thoughts or experiences. Would you reject a math proof if it was generated by an AI?

I imagine at the time of the printing press, someone argued "The whole point of stories is that a person wrote it"

I think there's a fundamental difference between a story and a math proof. A math proof is mostly there to give you new knowledge.

While a story definitely can do that, for many people, they're also about human connection. Even if the story isn't true, you feel like you're getting a look inside the author's brain by discovering how they weave storylines together. All the life experience they've head that lead them to write this story.

If I was instead told the story was written by AI, I would be far less interested in what data it was trained on to be able to produce this story, because I cannot relate to an AI having any "experience" whatsoever.

Depends on what kind of story is the one we are talking about. Fictional stories just have to be entertaining as you say it. Non-fictional stories have to be entertaining, but also true.

Nobody complains if it turns out that the poor moisture farmer boy from the edge of the galaxy didn't really actually blow up the space station of the evil space empire. It is not that kind of story.

But other types of stories purport to tell about something which really happened. There just being merely entertaining is not enough.

> I thought the whole point of stories was that they were entertaining or had some pertinent message.

I guess it depends on what you as a reader value. The thing that makes any art valuable to me is that it is a human communication. Art made by a machine is far less valuable because, by definition, it isn't a human communication.

Others can value art differently, and they aren't wrong for doing so. That's part of what makes art special, that different people value aspects of it differently.

> Would you reject a math proof if it was generated by an AI?

That's an entirely different thing. A math proof isn't art, nor is it intended to be.

> The thing that makes any art valuable to me is that it is a human communication. Art made by a machine is far less valuable because, by definition, it isn't a human communication.

What is "human communication"? To me that is something that communicates a concept that resonates to a human. It doesn't mean that a human had to create it. For instance, an elaborate bird nest could be art because it communicates things like beauty, symmetry, function, etc.

To me, it means communication from a human to a human. Something like an elaborate bird's nest can be beautiful, but it cannot be art.

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