@MisterBoring I agree. I think that’s the only position that matters.

Well, except maybe also ‘I don’t want to RP with AI, and it’s against the rules, so people using AI are breaking the rules, ban them.’

@somasatori said in AI In Poses:

Even the staunchest “LLMs reduce the mental load/writing barrier on the player to dig into the story” advocates have to admit that would be a useless future for the hobby.

No one has to admit anything and YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM!!!

@somasatori This is inaccurate to how they would actually respond. I was actually just saying this elsewhere, but the technology changes RAPIDLY, and we are fooling ourselves to think that is what it looks like, or that what we recognize now we will recognize in six or even three months.

@somasatori Yeah. It looked like AI to me and it’s not the only game out there that looked like it had AI content to me. I don’t personally care as much about code, probably bc I’m not a coder, but the content is the heart and soul of it for me, and it sucks to see.

@Jumpscare said in AI In Poses:

@Tez said in AI In Poses:

I saw a lot of people going ‘oh no, people might think I’m AI’ on the other thread but no examples of anyone actually getting incorrectly flagged. I think these are strawmen. Have we seen it happen?

I put some of my writing for room descs into an AI detector. Almost every one was marked as AI. Then I tried some from a former builder who I know was using AI (but I hadn’t honed my personal detection methods well enough to spot it, and we’ve since removed all of her descs). And it came back as not AI. This was back in early 2024, though, so maybe detection methods have improved in almost 2 years.

I think a lot of us can say this about things we’ve written. Sometimes, especially because as a hobby we do often write a lot , and often in the areas these datasets are trained on, the way that we write CAN look sus. Lord knows we do, and have, and did raise this concern in the other thread.

But has anyone actually disciplined you for the things you’ve sincerely written, though? That’s the case I’m actually interested in, not the anxieties people have that they might accidentally get flagged as AI and banned on an off day. I just don’t think that’s happening.

I saw a lot of people going ‘oh no, people might think I’m AI’ on the other thread but no examples of anyone actually getting incorrectly flagged. I think these are strawmen. Have we seen it happen?

@Ashkuri said in AI In Poses:

You ask them if they’ve used AI and they say ‘no that’s my writing.’ Which seems super unlikely, but rare is the confronted player who just says “ya got me.”

What happens next?

You’re right that players rarely admit to using LLMs. Fundamentally in your scenario you have a player who has broken a rule. If someone breaks a rule, I would ban them. There’s not a lot of nuance in that.

The nuance, of course, is in the question on whether or not you can truly accurately determine whether or not someone is using LLM.

I strongly believe that you can. I honestly have found the conversation in the other thread sort of baffling on a fundamental level. I won’t say that it is always obvious – and this is something I will touch on in a moment – but between AI detectors and human intelligence, you can tell.

Have I caught everyone who uses LLM? Maybe not. Am I confident that everyone I’ve caught using LLM truly did? Yes.

@Faraday said in AI In Poses:

@Ashkuri I doubt I would try to enforce such a policy for individual poses, just as I don’t routinely run other peoples’ poses through a plagiarism checker. But speaking hypothetically…

I might not run things through a plagiarism checker, but I literally have seen people steal descriptions from other people and reuse them on other games. (@Roz for example. Someone stole her character desc from Arx and tried to use it on Concordia. As I recall, the player was disciplined. I am not sure if they were banned.)

We can and do punish players for plagiarism in this hobby, so if we treat them as equivalent, then why wouldn’t we punish them?

If their poses are that nonsensical, probably others will too. Feels like kind of a self-limiting problem to me.

I think you fail to understand how far LLM have come. You aren’t going to get absolute nonsense poses. LLMs are producing writing that grows more and more sophisticated. Like it or not, the technology evolves quickly. I don’t think you can dismiss it by saying that it is going to be obvious nonsense.

I’ve been thinking about how noticeable this will be going forward. As the technology grows more sophisticated, it may become more difficult to detect. It may slip past a threshold where I am confident in my ability to detect. I don’t know. I’ve spitballed ideas about how to deal with it in my head. Some of them are so silly that I won’t derail this thread with them.

For now, though, I can tell. I ban for plagiarism. I ban for LLM. Don’t break rules on my games.

No one post about em-dashes in this thread for the love of god. No one is coming for your em-dashes.

@Jumpscare Totally, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good.

@Rathenhope alerted me to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Made me think of the intermittent discussions we’ve had about how to identify AI writing. Maybe this will be helpful or interesting for some of you!

@Warma-Sheen said in Warma-Sheen:

The only time there’s been an accusation of cheating that was even close to true was on City of Glass. Another player who I knew RL and was close with at the time had my password and logged on my character to a social scene.

This is embarrassing. Please take time to reflect on your actions. If that’s impossible, please take time to come up with better excuses.

@Jennkryst That explains a lot about my household, including the faking coughing and ‘boo, you whore’ earlier today.

WHY DID THIS TURN INTO A BURN TEZ THREAD.

@Pavel said in Tough Calls:

@Tez said in Tough Calls:

I have cautioned people on behavior that could, if not corrected, eventually lead to a ban, so I GUESS I issue warnings, but not in the manner I used to

Not that I want to accuse you of impropriety or anything, but do you find that you’re more willing to caution/counsel people with whom you’ve already established a rapport or relationship vs a relative unknown?

I ask only because I very much do feel that way; I’d be much more inclined to tell you, for instance, to knock it off vs someone I don’t know who’d just get a boot. I know it’s a bias that some would object to but I also tend to avoid staffing these days, precisely because I know my own biases enough to know I can’t be bothered.

That’s actually a really interesting point. You’re totally right. I would tell my friends to knock shit off in a way where it doesn’t register as a warning as such to my brain – which probably makes me more likely to do so.

I just don’t have the same sense of needing to be cautious or delicate with them, because I know that they will take what I say in the spirit in which it is intended, and change behavior. I can think of instances where I’ve definitely told friends offhand to knock shit off in a way where I’d stop and have to have a staff conversation to see if others feel it’s appropriate to warn a stranger.

But.

In my head, I don’t necessarily think of it as warning my friend.

Damn, you right.

@dvoraen

@Yam said in Tough Calls:

I’d like to hear some experiences from staffers that have had to make the tough call to ban what they’d consider problematic players, or players that were simply not a good fit.

Hi.

I used to be a very evidence-based staffer. When I was on Firan’s player management staff, we would create logs, records, have observers that would follow people around and stalk them, and all of this shit was normalized. You had to create a legal case for banning someone.

That informed my approach for years. Then I saw on Arx that you don’t HAVE to do this, and it was like the heavens opened and I saw the light.

What factored into your decision?

I’m pretty unashamedly vibe-based now. If someone gives me bad vibes, then I don’t fucking have the time for this. My ass is tired. It’s 2025.

How did you approach it? Did you consult with other staffers?

I tend to staff in groups. When someone gives me bad vibes, I flag it immediately to the group. I’m usually one of the first people in the group to flag someone, so often I get told to wait – but I don’t think there has been a case on recent games where I flagged someone that we didn’t end up later banning, or else they distanced after a warning.

Once someone gives me bad vibes, I tend to watch them a bit more critically. However, it’s not a case where I’m building a case against them with documented evidence. I’m often the person who actually confronts the person and bans them, bc my anxiety is so medicated, or else I just feel more confident in the fact that I do have the power in that situation.

I mean, that’s real. I can’t lie. I have the power to decide where I want to spend my energy, and I don’t want to spend it on them. So I ask them to leave.

Did you receive any backlash? Did you set aside time to discuss the ban with them or did you simply notify and ban?

I don’t recall receiving much backlash from other players about any bans. I am somewhat sensitive to the fact that I might not receive public backlash on this forum, either, because I am a mod here. I plan to resign as a mod the next time I run the game, because it does feel a little squidgy to me.

I have received backlash for some policies I pushed for: particularly policies around avoiding oversharing on public channels. I’ve been called ableist, etc. But not for a ban.

I don’t tend to discuss bans with players being banned. It’s very much a ‘you have 15 minutes to grab anything you need, goodbye.’ I don’t feel it’s a good use of my time and energy to engage in prolonged discussion.

I do sometimes receive backlash in that time from the player being banned, where they get on public channels to protest rather than speaking with me privately. That’s their choice.

Did you issue warnings?

I have cautioned people on behavior that could, if not corrected, eventually lead to a ban, so I GUESS I issue warnings, but not in the manner I used to. We used to have this idea that someone had to have three strikes of warnings before they would be banned. Thank god I don’t do that anymore.

Did it result in a healthier atmosphere, a worse atmosphere, or something else?

I’m reluctant to answer this question. I think we are somewhat blind to the results of our actions. I’d be more interested to hear how players would answer this.

It resulted in less stress for me, though.

@helvetica Meg’s got me trying to provoke a riot.

@helvetica And yet, ironically, I would only actually use it with those I trust not to take me seriously.

Damn, maybe I should avoid it.

It’s okay if you want to riot. Maybe I should stop telling people to get fucked.

Forked from https://brandmu.day/topic/615/empire-discussion-thread/44