Currently, when I see something that reads as AI written that's a pretty strong signal that the nominal author doesn't fully stand behind the post.  I really hate it when I engage deeply with the arguments in a post and write a carefully reply, only to learn that the author wasn't really trying to say that and didn't review the output of their AI carefully enough.

I'm comfortable with something around 30% which is aroundabout where I feel people's distinctive voice begins to fade

I do understand the arguments of the "100%ers" AI can reduce the friction and time to post, can help English second language speakers and can help people express themselves better.

But with AI in between the writer and the reader we lose part of the soul and even beauty in communication. I want to talk with you. I want to hear your voice. Are those your words? Did they come from directly from your mind? Ideas and structure is important, but the words themselves matter at least as much to me - an expression of ourselves and the people we are. What are we without our own words?

If we're happy with discourse without our own words, where does that leave us? Someone's AI bot writes a post, my AI bot replies, then maybe we read it later? This kind communication is less real, and quickly fades into irrelevance. 

I'm happy to pay the time and friction costs to keep our communication pretty close to human-to-human. Its already hard enough to have good discourse on the internet without speaking face-to-face.

I agree 100% that there should be places where AI written discourse is welcomed, personally I would rather that wasn't this forum. 

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

The main benefits I have in mind from allowing an AI to write ~the whole post (over just helping in other ways):

1. Someone who isn't confident in their (English) writing ability.
2. Saving time or reducing other opportunity costs for the author.
3. If for whatever reason they wouldn't post it, or not without substantial delay. This is usually because of 1 or 2, but maybe there'd be other reasons.

These are all context- and author-specific considerations. I can imagine preferring a post be AI-written than some possible counterfactuals: not posted at all, posted at much larger opportunity cost to the author, posted but worse to read than what an AI could have done. These point me towards permissibility and letting each author decide.

I think the author or another human should generally look over the post before the author posts it. I don't think it's necessary for them to insert their own voice.

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

Currently, I think AI writing isn't good enough to be better than good human users of the Forum, but I think this will quickly change, and I want to prioritise ideas and impact over who wrote the final words. I expect it will be longer before AIs are at the frontier of doing EA research and cuase-prioritization, so I think posts with only AI ideas will be bad for a longer time to come. But posts with human ideas written up well by an AI I could well imagine being better quality than most Forum writer's posts within a year or two.
I feel differently if someone is writing something to me personally, if someone writes me a poem or a birthday card or something that has sentimental value, then AI writing reduces that. But the Forum I see as primarily content-value rather than sentimental value.

At least until people accept that "oh the AI wrote that bit, I don't exactly mean that" is unacceptable. If you post it, you should stand behind every word.

Nuance, I’d be happy for an AI to write a draft, but (at this time) I will never publish something without a thorough review and strong work to put it in my own voice. I will never let a single AI-written word go unreviewed. (This is the same for ghostwritten posts made on my behalf, I don’t think AI changes much here).

Our authorial voice and trust that people put in our words is one of the few things we really have left that makes us human. When I catch it, I find reading AI-written (or ghostwritten) content gross and disturbing, because it signals to me that the author has no respect for my time, or their own humanity. I know that’s an extreme position but I find it hard to take any other one.

I would definitely want a human reviewing and possibly iterating, but if that is happening and the AI is drafting, that's fine. 

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

I have a particular writing style that I consider my "voice", and I fundamentally take pride in my writing skill and see writing as a craft and art form, so I refuse to use AI to write a single word of what I would publish to the world.

To me, using AI for writing is equivalent to having someone else write it for you.

I started off at 100% but, having reflected on this for a few days, I’m now unsure. I stand by the point I alluded to elsewhere on the forum - that language has been used as a class gatekeeping tool since forever, AI levels the field, and this is good - but on the other hand, the slop is out of control. 

You can’t get a read of the writer’s personality if AI is used (that might be beneficial in some cases, but I believe it's worse overall); it represents the next level of performative twoddle that I’ve decided I do not like (even if I engage in it myself sometimes), and we don’t need another way to distance ourselves from being seen by one another. 
 

So, @NickLaing changed my mind.

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

I will never let AI write a single sentence! I resent reading AI-generated writing passed off as written by a human, and I would never inflict this upon my readers.

I have found that the most common explanation for why people using AI for writing is a lack of self-confidence. I keep encouraging people to write in their own words and use their own voice because all the flaws of unpolished human writing are vastly preferable to chatbot writing.

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

The only parts I'd let AI write are those where I'm unsure if my phrasing is really natural in English and I ask for a better one.

If I'm not the one writing the post, I don't see why anyone should bother reading it.

AI writing seems to be pretty poor so far, and I keep trying to use it for things. But it recently did play a role in helping me turn my jumbled bullet points into better writing. 

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

One day the AIs can be much better at writing but that day is not today

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

AI sucks at writing and doesn’t get my style at all. If it did, I’d let it write the whole thing. (Yudkowsky predicts we have about 2 more years until AI learns to write.)

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

Good for brainstorming first drafts, but I'm not comfortable having it write everything, even if the content is right and coherent. 

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

80% roughly, AI can write every word. I use voice-to-text and Claude daily and always note the methodology. Two things matter: Ownership (you clicked publish, you own every word, no "the AI wrote that" excuses) and Transparency (state how it was created, let the reader decide). If both are met, it's just an efficiency tool. The ideas and positions are yours, the words are the delivery mechanism. 

(This comment was drafted via voice-to-text and Claude ^^)

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

I think what matters is the content. So I am in principle comfortable with AI writing all of the words of posts. However, in practice, AI has written basically no words of my posts.

There's some ambiguity as to whether this is a personal preference question (I.e., I would never post something drafted by an AI, but don't have a problem if you do) or a normative question (I. E., I would never post something drafted by an AI and neither should you. 

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

Seconding what @huw wrote: I’d be happy for an AI to write a draft, but (at this time) I will never publish something without a thorough review and strong work to put it in my own voice. I will never let a single AI-written word go unreviewed.

Also I usually also ask humans to review my drafts even after I have a first/final pass, and the ideas that I input into the prompt are mine, not just something I asked AI to create. Also, my AI tools know my voice quite well at this point and I'm constantly tweaking the instructions. 

I don't really see why anyone would use AI other than maybe translate phrases if one does not know English (or the language they are writing) well.

Language models add unnecessary fluff to the text that takes space away from actual content. I'd ask the following question: is the text written by the AI longer than the prompt? If the answer is yes, then please do not use that AI text. All extra text written by the model is fluff and meaningless.

Language models are also really bad at writing. They tend to overuse stylistic devices to the point that the text is heavy and difficult to read. They split the text into unnatural chapters, tend to add more subheadings than necessary, overuse tables and lists, and in general write horribly. Some people claim that AI helps people who are bad at writing to be able to take part in discussions, and that argument really makes no sense since AI cannot write either and I'd rather read bad English than fluff. The only exception to this is using AI for translation, since that is obviously a real blocker.

Lastly, there is the question of effort. To put an effort into writing is a proof that someone cares about this enough to write it down, so I should also care about reading it. If I recognize that a text is AI written, my motivation to go through it drops immediately. In a world of constant spam and sensory – and literary – overload, my time is valuable, and effort is the currency that gets me to read your text.

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

As a reader, each whiff of LLM usage is a red flag. If the writer used it, it's highly probable that I should use another LLM to summarize it.

And if the final copy used it, surely previous stages used it even more, with all that implies. (I assume it's not the moment to go into that)

As a writer, it's symmetric. Why should I expect readers to spend effort that I didn't? Even if they do, how can I be sure that there wasn't a drift from my original intended meaning?

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

I'm pretty comfortable with AI taking rough ideas / bullet points and turning them into paragraphs, from which the author can then edit and refine.

I consider myself a good writer, in the sense that I can express my thoughts clearly, but I find that's different from being able write them down if I have a mental block.

Some people are proficient at dashing down their thoughts without resistance to getting started. I'm not one of those people and I'm sure there are many like me.

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?

Some posts are meant for literary beauty and some are meant for ideas. Writing ideas well takes effort, and writing ideas with AI takes basically zero effort. If your post is mainly about ideas, and the fact that it is written by an AI doesn't make it annoying to read, I really just don't see why you wouldn't write basically entirely with AI.