A Discussion on the Use and Regulation of AI in regards to Willard and Roleplay

[FungletheBungle]

With AI becoming more accessible and of a higher quality at a decent pace I believe that now is the correct time to be discussing the place of AI in regards to this community and roleplay as a whole, hopefully leading to the drafting of an AI policy in regards to any "Official" Willard Content and another honors policy for players to be expected to follow.

This is done recognizing that
-AI has potential uses as an assistive tool
-AI is not inherently damaging
-AI can assist in translating
-Some players use AI in varying capacities

But that's all you'll hear from me in the positives.

This is because I believe that the damage AI can do to the RP community is much much worse then the apparent benefits. To discuss this I hope that we can agree on the following point and take them as granted for the rest of discussion

-Willard is an artistic project with no financial incentives
-AI content can in cases be confused with human content
-People should have the right to know if they are talking in part or in whole to a human or an algorithm

The reason I bring this up now is I hold the opinion that the players should have the rights to the third point, you should know if they are talking in part or in whole to a human or an algorithm, or in this case consuming content that is AI generated. I am currently assisting with the writing of lore for V3, and another contributor who I will not mention by name (though they are welcome to join the conversation if they so wish and I encourage it), stated that

"I made this with some help from the AI"

and further

"Basically what some of us is doing so far is writing our pieces and then feeding the AI what we wrote and it fixes any spelling, grammar- or other mistakes and refines the text without changing the essence of what was written."

This concerned me but I hoped I was just overreacting and asked to see how much AI was used in the writing of the article for the Wiki. (It should be noted that he was an open book in regards to the inputs and outputs from the AI and for this I give them thanks.)


What I saw was not what I consider "help" from the AI but a totally AI generated Wiki page. Please look and judge for yourself.


This is just half of it, I have attached the full PDF into this post if you wish to further study the texts.
There are also other texts which are worse but may contain information that shows who I'm talking about

In my opinion, this is not refined text. Refined text is text which has had a word changed here or there, or a sentence shortened or lengthened for the sake of flow. This is entirely generated text. It has had the topic and information fed into it, and that text is human, but what it has produced is a new text, with a new style, prose and content. Yes it delivers the same information but this does not make it the same text.

This may be acceptable in other cases, I am not discussing that today. However Willard is a Role Play Community. More specifically a TEXT based Role Play Community. The whole "raison d'etre" is communicating a story in prose within the worlds we have chosen to engage with. I doubt it's described as it much, but Willard is at its very soul a collaborative art community. From the day it started art has been at the center. The writings of Marc Laidlaw, the concepts of Viktor Antonov and the artistic input of every sound designer, model maker and creative are what made half life 2 so beloved and are what made people come together in a community to experience it in whole new ways. These are human creations, no AI in history could ever make the world of half life as it is.

Now we can't regulate the players, AI usage can be hard to prove and we don't want any false positives. We can have an honors based system strictly imposed through the culture of the server and perhaps we can get something wrote up and agreed upon, however there is something we can do in regards to the Staff team.

I argue that every single piece of "Official" Willard content, this includes but is not limited to Events, Lore Documents, Wiki's, Forum Content, ect ect, should be totally AI Generation free.

This sets the example, without it there is no point in engaging with Willard at all. This shows people that genuine care and passion has gone into every single line of text, that when they choose to engage, they engage with content that has a human connected to it.

Art from a machine is worthless, every act of creation is a choice, a story. Some content is shit, don't get me wrong, but you couldn't walk when you were born. You struggled to learn and (hoping not to offend anyone who can't walk here, there'll be another good metaphor for you if that's the case) eventually achieved success, and it didn't stop there! From there you learned to run and jump, you used walking to go places to meet people. This skill opened up your life. Writing is the same. It's hard to learn, hard to get good at, sometimes it's just hard to do when you're not feeling it, but I promise you it's worth it. If you gave up learning to walk and let a machine do it you may never even have considered the joy of running, if you gave up talking and let a machine do it, you may have never had the chance to have tell someone you love them.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

---

Proudly written without any AI (Grammar and spelling mistakes are all mine)

 

[ZeroPants]

To the world, AI is becoming a tool akin to when Photoshop and other technologies first appeared- at first they were frowned upon and hated but are now widely used today because overtime, humanity naturally accepts it. And while maintaining an AI free lore is possible- for some they do choose to use it as a minor assistant.

---

Photoshop and AI are nothing alike. Photoshop takes skill to use.

If you only want to use AI for spell checking, just use Grammarly.

 

[Atom]

actually just shut this thread down this is genuinely a circlejerk and no sides is gonna budge

 

[FungletheBungle]

This would make sense had their not been an original piece provided TO the AI which the AI is following 1 for 1. Had this been entirely 100% AI generated with AI ideas, AI style and AI tone- your point would make sense- however falls flat the moment you account for the fact the original writing that the AI REWORDED this from is 110% human made and human written.

Just like every other piece of information fed into the LLM prior to your information, you're information is just the second to last on this abominable human centipede of AI

Who wrote the original: A Human
Who set the tone/style?: A Human
Who wrote all the text?: A Human

1. True
2. True
3. Wrong (unless you're revisiting point 1 for the sake of a trio)

Who reworded it without changing much of the original apart from literally rephasing everything while keeping the OG ideas, intent and tone intact?: The AI.

IT CHANGED EVERYTHING, NOTHING OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT SURVIVED.

Who will end up being the one to finish the final product? A Human.

If a robot makes every part of a car but the human polishes it, a handmade car it is not.

If you are trying to discredit work simply because an AI waltzed in and had basically reformatted and reworded that of what the literal Original Writer wrote without inserting anything outside of what it was provided nor part of the original human text, which is then to later be edited again by a human. Than that is nothing short of being short-sighted and puts this more into the realm of a ideologically, emotional and culturally motivated take against AI usage.

This offends, because the AI "waltzed in" and wrote a whole new text. Use the words reformatted and reworded all you want, that is a whole ass new text. It is Shit. Polishing shit does not make it gold, it makes it polished shit.

I get your concerns but this point primarily makes sense in the context of AI slop generated where no human has really had any involvement nor input.

Name a case where someone has less input please. I guarantee that it is barely different from your process

But in this case- a human provided a lore piece of their own design and making- all their idea. The AI was given that and made its modifications without changing, removing or adding any new not planned for per the original text. It took what was written already- modified its format, wording and structure and was placed into a draft for the writer to resume their work and finalize it in the vision they intend it to.

It's not MODIFICATION. MODIFICATION requires some of the original text survives. To compare it to a ship, you showed a ship to a LLM, and it made an entirely new ship that looks vaguely like the one you showed it, but none of the first ship exists within it.

Sorry to be blunt, but that clear dismissal of the original writers work does actually tick me off very much, as it spits in the face of the writer and basically invalidates their work simply because an AI had touched it when the idea, style and everything about it outside of its AI-reformat is still the writers own work. It would be like a publisher modifying a entire page for you and then claiming its theirs when in reality its still the authors work. Its not the editors work, though they get credit, its not the publishers work and its not anyone elses work- purely the OG authors.

Sorry to be blunt, but that is a clear dismissal of the human spirit. I love that someone wrote the original text, I love it for it's flaws. I may disagree with the lore within it, but I can engage with it on a level of human dignity, I respect it because someone put in effort to write it and part of them can be seen within it. Parents love macaroni art from their kids not because it is good, but because they put care, effort an attention into it. If the school sent them an image saying "here's an LLM generated image of something your kid described" it would be worth infinitely less.

To cut this at the stem, what has been done to that example piece is not reformatting, touched, reworded, edited, improved, or any other stupid euphemism.

IT IS AI GENERATED AND I NEVER WANT TO ENGAGE WITH IT

 

[M!NT]

Not going to respond to your last post given how aggressively you responded as there is far better ways to come reply rather than swinging straight in.

But anyway, I am trying to make the point that the original text is human > its been edited by AI > to then be later be modified by a human editor/writer again who further cleans it up and actually makes it closer to the original text/vision while preserving the cleaniness of text the AI brought in.

I want a response. I'm upset that people in positions of power are filling this server's lore full of AI slop. Of course I'm aggressive, I want answers not more of this "It's okay sometimes maybe but only if I think so". I don't want anything to do with HL2RP V3 if that will be the case.

I believe I deserve a straight answer here. Is it really okay to fill the Wiki >80% full of AI slop?

 

[FungletheBungle]

actually just shut this thread down this is genuinely a circlejerk and no sides is gonna budge

Contribute or shove off

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

Thread's being locked. An argument like this that could have been avoided and resolved within an internalised matter. Now it's just an oil spill. I'm usually having my eyes focused elsewhere rather than seeing what is fully being written up due to availability issues (or rather too stretched thin). There's times where even my own preferences come to choose to use it and when it comes not to use it, however I have not personally used any AI unit to do any form of writing for me - so that's my disclaimer.

Y'all gotta learn to have civil discourse. Consider the complaint officially acknowledged, I'll investigate its extent and see what people can be scraped up that are good writers because generally those with articulate writing styles other than myself (who I am having less and less time to do so) and various individuals of talent that are also limited in the same availability are likely the one and sole reason the approach was deemed prominent.

I'll make an informed decision later down the chain of time, given after I've done an extensive evaluation of the currents and what possible future instalments were there.

Be nice to each other, it's all I ask.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

Epilogue - The quick decision I've made is: No. We'll not use it. People should feel proud for what they've written if it leaves a lasting mark and impression.

What I'd say that might be the limit (if I'm generous) is summarising very long elements of text into a very short compendium if you want a TL;DR - but then I'd say you'd just be missing out on the larger element in full. And that would be an argument people would have made but I'm not here to appease people. So there's the result, the answer is No.