Ask HN: Do you read differently now that anything could be AI generated?

For AI written content I have a very low tolerance. I bounce right away when I notice I'm reading generated content, especially if it tries to be an essay or anything else than direct answer to my question at hand.

When it comes to books, I avoid anything written by an author debuting after 2022 unless there is a strong recommendation by someone close.

As for genres, it has made me read less purely technical books. My assumption is that I can learn enough of the subject as I go by chatting with a model.

I have come to rely entirely on human curation for the media I consume, because AI keeps putting me in the same cohort as millions of other users, and makes it really hard to discover anything new. AI recommendations feel less personal than if they just let me configure what I want to see.

I do not read AI-generated content, period. I do not follow people who think it's okay to publish it. AI-generated pictures make me question if a website is worth using or an article is worth reading. AI is an anti-feature on any product I buy.

But reading? Largely the same. I queue up articles on Instapaper and read them on my otherwise offline iPad Mini with my morning coffee. I often carry a paperback book when I leave the house.

Fundamentally, if it comes from AI, I'm not interested. I would not rely on AI summaries, and certainly nothing identified as AI produced. AI is not creative in the human sense. I would never knowingly waste time reading something produced by a room full of monkeys banging on a keyboard. The same is true of AI produced code. LLMs are a malignancy that needs to be excised from society.

As soon as I realize that it was AI generated, I stop reading. If I am on social media, I also unfollow the account that posted it. There is also a great blog post on this. [1] There is also one other point. To me, everything that comes from an AI needs verification. It goes to a grey area in my mind. It is neither true nor false which makes it very hard for me to learn from AI as well.

[1] https://raymyers.org/post/dont-make-me-talk-to-your-chatbot/

It's made me very skeptical of new sources and sites I don't have any prior experience with. If I don't know the author has been writing for a while now, then I'll probably take their work with a grain of salt until I identify how reliable they are. If I then find they've been using AI in any form, that's probably the last time I'll ever read their work at all.

It's not just about text either. I'm deeply skeptical of new artists, musicians, video creators, etc for much the same reason. Generally I'll try and weigh up evidence for their legitimacy vs evidence of AI (how often they post vs how much 'effort' that work would require, whether they have a community or notable social presence, whether there's evidence of them being human and appearing on camera at some point, etc) and mostly support creators that use communities I'm already a part of (which ban AI generated content and monitor people's works for it).

Yes, and the main change is i now weight specificity much more heavily.

The things that still feel trustworthy are very specific details, opinions that could get someone in trouble, and writing that has a clear point of view. Generic correctness is cheap now, so it doesn't carry the same weight it used to.

It's getting to the point where simply saying something is AI-free starts to feel like an added value. It's becoming absurd

I believe our focus is on knowledge itself, rather than on where it originates.

I skip if I realise or come to know it's an AI-generated text or image. Especially images.

So, I typically follow blogs from people I already knew (online) pre 2022. In that regard, I'm sure about the quality of such places.

I don't have social media accounts (HN counts as one?) so whatever happens in IG, YT, Twitter or facebook: i simply don't give a fuck

I don't really follow more of the internet tbh: dont use reddit, or read the news... I don't even have an adblocker (which reveals that I get bothered very little by ads on the sites I frequently use)

I read a bunch of ebooks, though (but again they all are pre 2022... there's so much to read out there).

Less is more!

I feel I have a much more adversarial relationship with articles, comments and blogs online. I've been seeing old colleagues or acquaintances that I used to admire start to publish clearly AI generated blogs and I've noticed that my respect for them has taken a nosedive.

The online world feels much less useful now and I've been trying to read more physical books and to generally spend less time online (unfortunately one can't escape slop, as I've already seen clearly generated illustrations and photographs in billboards and subway adverts).

It depends, case by case.

Reading a book, I do for fun. to get the stress away. Reading a novel is a whole new experience. To feel the story, imagine the characters, imagine how they feel, how they think. To really hate the bad guy....

AI can't replace that!

Stopped reading books. I just ask for summaries of what I am interested in and then deep dive. Then I make notes of the whole session. Review it everyday and keep shrinking it down as much as possible. That file I preload as memory for next session.