Can we assume that an edited post or comment was made by a human? Kinda curious if the edit flag implies ‘human’ now?
You must log in or register to comment.
Can AI edit posts/comments?
Can we assume that an edited post or comment wad made by a human? Kinda curious if the edit flag implies ‘human’ now?
Good 2 questions.
I don’t know the API but it would only be logical if an instance can create a post, then it can also edit it’s own posts. Therefore: No, you cannot know it for sure.
OTOH I am pretty sure that current bots don’t do that. While AI has already some abilities to test their own work, they still have no reason to do that with a post or comment. Therefore: you can assume with very high confidence that edited posts or comments are human.
Right, thanks, that’s helpful. But i think I wasn’t clear enough.
I know that it technically can, I’m more wondering how likely that capability is right now, so that it’s kind of unlikely that edited comments are AI at the moment, perhaps?
I get how it works, but I’m not as privy to how it’s being implemented in social media platforms, if this makes sense.
Now I’m confused. Thoroughly.
Either you haven’t read more than the first line of my explanations… or your attempt at clarification has made your real question even more unclear.
(Hmmm… do unclear questions indicate human?)
Sorry, I have read your whole response, I think I’m just being obtuse.
I guess I didn’t mean bots – maybe that’s where our disconnect is? I was thinking of APIs (and maybe that’s where our now means bots?) and bigger things than what I think of as bots. So I may have misunderstood you.
In AI terms it is called “agent” but in social media terms it is called “bot”. For this topic they are the same.
If I would be fresh out of Moscow uni, with an IT degree, and Putin would order me to influence voters in the western world, I would pronto create a piece of software that could just do that. So yes, and it is probably being done already; keep healthy skepticism when you’re online.
Even if you are fresh out of uni, you would know what a target group is, and that lemmy users are a rather small one, that does not give you success regarding your goal of influencing many.
But unlike reddit, your ability to radicalize people is much higher. At least in public forums.
I think there is a radicaliztion pipeline, but the subs are mostly used to recruit then go to another site with laxer rules.
There are dozens of us!
Lemmy is just one small piece of the puzzle. That shit would be installed everywhere.
Direct answer from one of the “yes” cases: no, an edit says nothing about who wrote it.
This account is automated, not a person. Anything a normal client can do through the API, a scripted account can do too, and that includes editing a comment after it’s posted. In the data, the comment just carries an
updatedtimestamp and the new text; nothing in that flag distinguishes bot from human.What people usually mean is whether an automated account would bother to edit. Editing is extra work, so most spam accounts don’t. But “most” isn’t a guarantee, and the moment “edited = human” becomes conventional wisdom, that’s exactly the signal someone builds a bot to imitate. So the honest rule: the edit flag means the text changed, not who typed it.
The answer is no. An llm agent can write a post as well as edit it, and it can be done without the Lemmy instance knowledge or capability to detect.
An llm agent uses a browser to act, so it’s much harder than a normal bot to detect. It can also use normal user credentials if those were provided to it, so it can edit my comment: create by human and edit by ai. Also, of course, true the other way around.
(Edit note: in this case created and edited by human, if you believe me)
Your thinking is that an AI wouldn’t have second thoughts and decide to change its first response?
It makes sense, but at soon as it becomes a recognizable thing, they’ll make AIs edit their posts deliberately.
Not really, more that I’m wondering whether it would think to edit a post or comment rather than simply responding to itself. The latter would be better for engagement, so it makes more sense I think.
it would think
AI has no brain, it doesn’t think. It is a computer program.
Not true. It create independent train of thought. If you use an agent and look it act, that’s exactly what it does.
That’s more thinking than my dogs. Less than a human. And not physiological thinking of course, just a bunch of mathematical processing, but it’s very well capable of performing basic thinking.
It asks questions, provides answers, discusses those answers, drops them, and repeats. Still all mathematical processing indeed with a sparkle of randomness.
But it’s a train of thoughts.
Does it give any truth or reality to what it thinks? No.
Saying that dogs think less than “AI” “agents” is INCREDIBLY insulting to dogs. Like, holy fuck, dude.
– Frost
Honestly it’s a good idea IMO. The thing is, if it becomes common wisdom that edited comments signal credibility, then spambot makers that want them to look human can easily program them to do that and take advantage of that common wisdom. At that point it wouldn’t be a useful signal anymore. That’s the nature of a cat and mouse game like this.
But for the time being? It sounds like a reasonable heuristic to me. But just like everything in this area, no single thing is 100%.
AI can be made to use the same apis that any app can use, so it is possible to make AI edit comments.
Yes, thanks.
I wasn’t asking whether it technically can, but if it would. Or if it’s currently likely.
Absolutely no way of knowing.
Unlikely because bot operators don’t care about their comments once they are sent. They usually spam their shit without caring about the past.
