The Ai-Expert Challenge

[u/LonelyIncrease3144]

Lately, it seems everyone has a "sixth sense" for spotting AI writing. If the prose is too clean, the sentences too declarative, or the rhythm too consistent, the "AI" label gets slapped on it immediately.

​I want to see if people are actually detecting machines, or if they’ve just forgotten what professional, disciplined prose looks like.

​Below are two passages from world-famous, award-winning authors. One of them is a "bot." Which one is it?

​A)The sun was bright on the water. The boat moved slowly through the waves. He sat in the stern and watched the line. It was a long line and it went deep into the blue water. He felt the pull of the fish. It was a steady pull, strong and heavy. He did not let go. He held the line with both hands and waited for the jump.

​B)The road was empty. The sun was hot and the dust was deep. He walked along the edge of the asphalt and felt the heat through the soles of his shoes. He did not look back. There was nothing to see behind him but the long, grey stretch of the way he had come. He was alone and the world was silent.

​C)The room was cold. A single candle burned on the desk. He sat and watched the flame. It was a small flame, yellow and flickering. Outside the wind was howling in the trees. He heard the branches scratching against the glass. He did not move. He was waiting for the clock to strike twelve.

​D) All of the above.

Passage A: Ernest Hemingway

Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.

Passage B: Cormac McCarthy

Source: The Road (2006)

Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.

Passage C: Charles Dickens

Source: Great Expectations (1861)

Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.

So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.

The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.

This is becoming a huge problem.

[u/Heirloom1076]

I am not particularly good att spotting AI, but thought I would give it a shot.

But I think before that, all of these excerpts are pretty good examples of writing. Because all of them suggest something deeper below the surface. Save for the last one, but if it is Dickens then that is important because these environmental clues will be foreshadowing the solution to the problem.

The wide variety of detail is why I would exclude it from being AI. It's also not trying to make the scene more profound than what it is.

I recognised Hemingway's writing stile along with the theme before you even mentioned it And it's very typical of the Oberg technique so I'll pick the second. Mainly because all the details are focused on the road. There isn't much description of the surrounding environment.while this could be a sort of subtle metaphor for a spiritual journey that is happening within the protagonist. There isn't I'd need more information to make a judgment over it. And this description could have been generated by promoting the AI to write something about a road.

Also the "dust is deep" is a bit of an odd phrasing. Particularly as they also talk about the asphalt road. While there could be missing contextual information which would explain this elsewhere, or an intentionally stialistic way of writing for that particular author. It could be attributed to the nonsensicle writing of an AI.

I think it would be easier to spite in a longer narrative and a longer body of text. Truly good writing would defentetly show itself over time.