A.I. content on the forum - discussion thread.

[exxos]

A.I. content on the forum

Weve been going back and forth on this in the moderator team for a while now and its about time we said something publicly rather than leaving everyone guessing. AI isnt going away, a fair few people here already use it in one form or another, myself included, so pretending otherwise would be daft.

The short version is that using AI isnt the problem. Posting things you cannot vouch for is. Everything below comes back to that.

No AI agent accounts.
Accounts being run by a bot rather than a person are not welcome here and will be banned. We have had auto reply bots on here before and its just pollution. People come to a forum for help from other people. If anyone wants to talk to an AI there are plenty of sites for that, it doesnt need to happen here.

Dont paste AI output as an answer.
Anyone can log into ChatGPT and ask a question, theres nothing clever about it and it doesnt help the person who asked. AI will happily tell you that a chip does something, or that a fault is caused by X, and it reads convincingly, but most of it is suggestions and theories that nobody has ever actually tested. Its usually very long and nobody else in the thread can check any of it either.

The reason we care is that it doesnt stop there. Somebody reads it, takes it as fact, repeats it somewhere else, and eventually it gets scraped back into training data and comes back round as "fact" later on. Weve all seen wrong information about the ST repeated for thirty years already without any help. This speeds that up enormously.

If you use AI to look something up, thats fine, thats what its there for. Read it, check it, then tell us in your own words. This is really just the Discussions rule further up the page, the forum isnt the place for guesswork, speculation or hearsay. AI is simply the newest source of it.

If you cannot vouch for it, dont post it as fact.
This is the actual test, rather than whether an AI was involved. If you post something as fact you should be able to stand behind it, same as we would expect of anybody quoting anything else.

That doesnt mean prove everything before you open your mouth, none of us could manage that. It means dont make something sound more solid than it is. If you tested it, say so. If you read it somewhere, say where. If AI suggested it and you havent checked it, say that too, and keep it to a line or two as a lead for somebody else to follow up. Thats genuinely useful. Ten paragraphs of untested AI theory presented as an answer is not.

AI as a tool is fine and doesnt need declaring.
Spell checking, grammar, translation, tidying up your own writing, code debugging. The knowledge is still yours, the AI just helped you get it out. Nobody needs to declare any of that.

Part of the reason is practical. If everybody who used AI to sort out their spelling had to stick a disclaimer on the top, half the forum would be carrying one, people would start skipping those posts, and the only people it would actually affect are the honest ones who bothered to say. It achieves nothing.

The other reason is that its not really as new as people make out. The argument goes that an LLM writes the code for you and other tools dont, but that was never true. BASIC is wrappers round assembly. C coders have never declared which prebuilt libraries they pulled in, and thats somebody elses work doing the heavy lifting just the same. Assembly, C, BASIC, LLM, its all the same ladder and weve just gone up another rung.

Remember Prehistorik? Everybody said it was brilliant, right up until word got round it was written in STOS, and then people turned their noses up at it. Same game, same code, nothing about it had actually changed. The only thing that changed was people finding out which tool made it. Its the same with soldering. Everything used to be done by hand, now its machine assembled, and nobody complains about that when they see what it did to the prices.

Worth being clear that this only stretches so far though. It works for code because code proves itself. It compiles or it doesnt, it runs on real hardware or it doesnt, and anyone who doubts it can go and test it themselves. A wall of AI text about how some chip works doesnt run and nobody can test a word of it. So this isnt a defence of slop and please dont try to use it as one.

We judge posts, not accounts.
Nobody here is getting moderated over how they write. Poor English, translated text, odd phrasing, long posts, tidy grammar, em dashes, none of that is evidence of anything.

Theres no reliable way to tell AI text from somebody using a translator, or somebody who just writes a bit oddly, or somebody who finds writing hard going. If we start guessing we will get it wrong, and we will end up accusing real members and losing them. That would do far more damage to this place than a bit of AI slop ever will.

For the record, what we do look at is behaviour rather than style. An account that only ever supplies answers and never once has a problem of its own that it needs help with. Strong opinions stated as fact from a brand new account with nothing personal in any of it. No interest in anybody elses reply, no shifting position, criticism never addressed. Even then thats a nudge to look closer, not proof of anything, and its our job rather than yours.

Report, dont accuse.
If a post concerns you, use the Report Post option and a moderator will look into it. Please dont call it out in the thread. This is the same as the existing reporting rule further up and its there for the same reason. Once threads start turning into arguments about who is or isnt a bot, the thread is finished and so is any chance of the original question getting answered.

Declaring AI generated work, a guideline rather than a rule

If you release a project which used AI generated artwork, music or similar, please say so. "I used AI to generate this artwork" rather than "I made this artwork". "AI and I wrote this program" rather than "I wrote this program".

Its basic common courtesy, and without it the forum starts looking like its full of expert artists and coders when it isnt, which isnt fair on the people who genuinely can do it.

Its not a rule because we cannot enforce it, and theres a worse problem with making it one. Anybody who doesnt care simply wouldnt declare anything, so the only people it would ever land on are the honest ones who did. Thats the wrong way round. So it stays a guideline and comes down to your own conscience about claiming work you didnt physically do.

What we are not going to do

• Ask everybody to declare all AI use, for the reasons above.
• Declare the forum an AI free zone. Id be breaking it myself the same day with the server write ups and code debugging, and Im not having a rule Im exempt from.
• Add more hoops to signup. Tickboxes, questionnaires, puzzles. None of it stops anybody who was going to lie anyway, and the cost always lands on real people trying to join. Weve all seen forums get so locked down that the genuine members cant get in either.
• Run posts through an LLM to score how likely they are to be AI. It will tell you a post is 95% AI with total confidence when it isnt, and we would have no way to check. Using the thing everyone is complaining about to make decisions about real people isnt a good look.
• Treat punctuation or writing style as evidence of anything.

Whats still not sorted

Being honest about the bits we havent got an answer to, because this isnt finished and Id rather say so than pretend its watertight.

• Enforcement. We can write "can you vouch for it" down but we cannot actually prove anybody didnt verify something. Realistically its something we lean on when a post is obviously a paste job, not something we can police properly.
• Where a project counts as leaning heavily on AI. Artwork and music are easy enough, code is murkier. If somebody AI generates an entire game, does that need declaring? Code proves itself by running so we lean towards no, but its not clear cut.
• Somebody using AI for their entire side of a conversation is misrepresentation, but theres no way of spotting it that doesnt turn into judging people on how they write, which is exactly what we said we wouldnt do. No answer to that one yet.
• Consistency between moderators. If three of us have different ideas about what counts as slop then youll get inconsistent moderation and rightly complain about it. Something we need to work out between us.
• People who object to AI on principle. For some its the ethical, social and environmental side rather than anything to do with accuracy. For others its about craft and process rather than just output, and no interest in something knocked out by somebody who doesnt know or care how the hardware works. Neither of those is a complaint about content, so no content rule fixes either of them. Whatever we settle on, some people wont be happy with it, and theres no version of this that keeps everybody. What we can do is not rub anybodys nose in it and make sure this place doesnt turn into wall to wall AI chat, so those members still have a reason to be here.
• The bigger picture. None of this stops forums generally filling up with AI conversation over the years. Rules help at the edges. The wider problem isnt something we can fix at forum level.

All of the above applies to everybody equally, me included. A rule I was exempt from would be worthless.

Nothing here is set in stone either. If you think something is wrong or missing, say so in the thread.

[exxos]

The rules

Splitting these out into their own post so they're easy to find, as they were getting lost in the wall of text above.

The post above explains how each of these came about and why they're worded the way they are, in the same order, so if you want the reasoning behind any single rule then just read that section of it. It also covers the parts we still haven't got an answer to.

1. No AI agent accounts. Accounts being run by a bot rather than a person will be banned.
2. Don't paste AI output as an answer. Read it, check it, then tell us in your own words.
3. If you cannot vouch for it, don't post it as fact. Say where it came from and how sure you are. "AI suggested this and I haven't tested it" is fine. Ten paragraphs of untested AI theory is not.
4. AI as a tool is fine and doesn't need declaring. Spell checking, grammar, translation, tidying up your own writing, code debugging.
5. If you release a project using AI generated artwork, music or similar, please say so. This one is a guideline rather than a rule, and comes down to your own conscience.
6. Report, don't accuse. If a post concerns you, use the Report Post option rather than calling it out in the thread. We judge posts, not accounts, and nobody gets moderated over spelling, grammar or writing style.

That applies to everybody equally, me included. A rule I was exempt from would be worthless.

Nothing here is set in stone. If you think something is wrong or missing, say so.

[exxos]

As there hasn't been any feedback yet and i wanted to wrap this up, i've created the new rules which can be read here app.php/rules#AI


A.I. and why the rules are worded the way they are

I also see this is being discussed on AF a lot, and a thread on stardot about AI usage was linked from there. I don't think we should endlessly debate this, because in my opinion it's the same recycled arguments that have been going round for years. But the AI section has gone into the forum rules now, so it seemed only right to set out the thinking behind it rather than just dropping rules on people with no explanation.

Nobody is going to win this argument

We've had this exact argument before, several times over, just about something different each time.

People used to etch their own boards at the kitchen table with ferric chloride, and when boards started getting fabbed properly there were plenty who reckoned that wasn't really making it yourself anymore. Everything used to be hand soldered and now it's machine assembled, and nobody complains about that when they see what it did to the prices. Assembly coders looked down on C. C coders looked down on BASIC. Remember Prehistorik? Everybody said it was brilliant, right up until word got round it was written in STOS, and then people turned their noses up at it. Same game, same code, nothing about it had actually changed. The only thing that changed was people finding out which tool made it.

AI is just the newest one on that list and it won't be the last. Whatever we settle on here, somebody will be unhappy with it. Go one way and we annoy people using it perfectly sensibly, go the other and we annoy people who can't stand the sight of it. There's no version of this that keeps everybody happy, so I've stopped trying to find one.

"You didn't write it yourself" doesn't really hold up

The main complaint is that AI writes the code for you and other tools don't. I don't think that survives much poking.

C coders have been pulling in libraries somebody else wrote since forever. Nobody declares which ones they used, nobody lists them, and nobody has ever suggested that using a library means you didn't write your own program. BASIC is wrappers round assembly that somebody else wrote as well. We have all been standing on other people's work the entire time and it has never once been controversial. So if an AI writes what amounts to a library for you, what is actually different about it? Either way the code came from somewhere other than your own head.

The only honest answer I can come up with is that a human didn't write it, and I think that's worth pulling apart, because that's where the real objection actually lives. When you use somebody's library, they chose to publish it, their name is on it, and if you want to ask them something they're there to be asked. None of that is true of AI output. Nobody chose, nobody gets credited, and there's nobody to ask.

That's a perfectly fair thing to be unhappy about. But it isn't a complaint about the code, and it isn't a complaint about how much of your own program you wrote. It's a complaint about where the training data came from and who is making money out of it. That's a reasonable position to hold and I'm not going to talk anybody out of it. It's just a different argument, and it would be far better made as that one, because "you didn't really write it" falls over the moment you point at any C project ever written.

Where I do think this one is different

Everything above says the tool doesn't matter, and logically I stand by all of it. But there is one part that doesn't come out in the wash quite so easily, and I'd rather say it than pretend I don't think it.

None of the older arguments involved this kind of speed. Somebody can spend years learning how to do something properly, then spend more years actually writing the thing, and AI can turn out something comparable in a few hours. I do find that a bit disrespectful towards the people who put the time in and got good at it the hard way. That's not a logical argument and it doesn't sit neatly with the section above, and I know it. It's just how it strikes me.

So when people say this one stings more than surface mount ever did, I know what they mean and I'm not going to tell them they're being daft about it.

But for the Atari scene specifically, I think it does more good than harm

Compare how much software exists for the ST against just about any other platform, then look at how many people are still actually writing any. It isn't many, and it hasn't been for a very long time. That's the position we are in and it isn't going to fix itself.

Anyone who has been around a while has watched me ask for help with all sorts over the years. Most of the time it ends in silence, and the project goes on the shelf with all the others. A fair few of those have come back to life recently and people are actually using them now. That isn't a theory, it's just what's happened.

There has never been a shortage of ideas in this scene. What there's a shortage of is people with the skill and the time to build them, and that's been true for years. AI puts those two things a lot closer together. Somebody who has had an idea rattling around for a decade with no way of writing it can now have a proper go at it. In a community this small I struggle to see the harm in that. It might even be the injection of productivity we badly need, and it might pull a few people back to the machines while it's at it.

Which is why I've asked people to declare it

Not as policing, and not because anybody owes anyone an explanation. It's basic courtesy towards the people here who can genuinely do the work themselves.

There's nothing shameful in it either. Plenty of things on this forum have had more than one pair of hands on them, mine included, and in all that time nobody has ever asked for a breakdown of who did which bit, or refused to use something because the person had help with it. Sharing the work out has always been normal round here. "AI and I wrote this" is the same sort of statement, not a confession.

The problem with making it a rule

I can't enforce it and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Anybody who doesn't care simply won't say anything, so the only people a hard rule would ever land on are the honest ones who did say. That's completely backwards. It would mean the people doing the right thing end up being the only ones who ever catch any grief for it, while everybody else carries on quietly.

So it stays a guideline and comes down to your own conscience.

There's a flip side to that which matters just as much. If somebody says AI helped with their project and gets sniped at for it, then everyone watching learns to keep quiet, and the guideline is dead the moment it's written. So if we would rather people were upfront about this, and I think most of us would, then being upfront has to be safe. That's exactly why there's a rule about not dragging the AI argument into other people's threads. It cuts both ways and it's there to protect both sides of it.

Posting AI text on the forum

The rule about not pasting AI output into threads is the one I think will need the most explaining, so here goes.

The principle is that what gets posted here should be your own knowledge and your own work, and something you can stand behind. Not because there's anything wrong with AI writing as such, but because when somebody reads a post here they should be reading something you actually know, rather than something you've never checked yourself. The exceptions are already in the rules, spell checking, grammar, translation and tidying up your own wording, all of which I use myself.

While we're on it I should be straight about something. My server update threads are largely AI written, and have been for a while. What sits behind each one is hours of work that I did, with a hand in every single step of it. All the AI is doing is taking what actually happened and laying it out in a logical order, better formatted and with a lot fewer typos than if I'd bashed it out myself at the end of a long day. I could write every one of them longhand and they would say exactly the same things, just worse.

The reason I'm comfortable with that is that I can vouch for every line, because I did the work. That's the whole test, and it's the difference between writing up something you did and asking a chatbot a question then pasting four pages of the answer into a support thread without checking any of it. Those two things can look similar on the screen and they have nothing in common.

I'll also say plainly that I have RSI, and using AI day to day is a large part of how I still get anything done at all. I'm not after an exemption, and the rules are written so that what I do has to pass the same test as everybody else's. I just want the distinction understood before somebody points at my server threads and says I'm not following my own rules.

For anyone who wants nothing to do with AI at all

Full disclosure, in case it isn't obvious by now. AI has been fixing things on this forum, on the server, on the wiki and across all sorts of software here for around two years. Plenty of it is glued together with AI fixes at this point, and I'll say plainly that the server would not still be online without it.

So if somebody genuinely wants nothing to do with anything AI has been near, that position doesn't stop at skipping the odd release thread. It means logging out and not using anything hosted here at all, because there isn't a corner of it that hasn't had AI involved somewhere along the line. I'm not saying that to be awkward. I'm saying it because it's true, and people should know what they're actually signing up to when they take that line.

I'm one person and the workload here is frankly insane. AI gives me the help I never had, and it's the reason there's still something here to have an opinion about. If that rattles people then I understand it, but it isn't going to change.

Anyone who does feel that strongly, that's your choice and fair enough, nobody is going to give you grief for it. All I'd ask is that people who make that choice own it, rather than making it and then complaining afterwards about how quiet everything has got.

Finally

Nobody has to agree with any of this. What I've tried to do is explain why everything is worded the way it is rather than handing down a list and leaving people to guess at the reasoning. Disagree away.

If somebody puts up a well argued case for changing something then I'll change it, and that's a genuine offer rather than a polite noise. I'd expect the rules to shift a fair bit over the next year or two anyway once we see how they hold up in practice, because some of them will turn out to be wrong.

What I'm not going to do is let this run and run the way it has on other forums, because I can't see what it solves. There will always be two crowds on this, the ones who are fine with AI and the ones who aren't, and wherever you draw the line one lot or the other is going to be unhappy about where you drew it. You can watch people trying to word their way round that with fair usage type wording, and I don't think it works, because the moment you put "reasonable" in a rule everybody has a different idea of what reasonable means.

I don't have all the answers here and I'm not pretending to. The number of scenarios that could come up is endless and there's no chance of covering them all up front. All the rules are trying to do is keep most people happy most of the time, and give the moderators something sensible to point at when they need it.

Argue the general case in here all you like. Just not in somebody's release thread.

[sporniket]

Seems quite balanced.

At home i have minimal use of AI. Mostly a question here and there. E.g. i asked about how to write a C++26 module recently. Otherwise for coding, i'm a cheapstake, i did experiment but i don't really want to pay, so I accept being slow, and I embrace being a training data creator.

At work, it's another story, and we are given the opportunity to learn using it, so i slowly get my toes wet.