The Voynich Manuscript: Understanding the Untranslatable with Lisa Fagin Davis

[Koen G]

People need to catch up with the fact that it is now a commonly used tool in virtually all fields of writing -- as common as spell checkers, if not more.

A habit being common does not mean that it's good. Not so long ago, smoking was as common as spell checkers are now. As late as the 80's, early 90s, manufacturers were even consciously aiming for the underage market (with cartoonish mascots etc.) in an attempt to further boost sales. Everybody's doing it, might as well light up, kid.

As you tell us to get with the times and accept that AI written texts are part of everyday life now, I encounter more and more comments by people complaining that they "couldn't get through an AI-written article" with its weird language and inconsistencies. And I've been noticing that more and more VM-related searches lead to AI-written slop. We see a slop-ridden future manifest in front of our eyes.

If you say AI has its place, I hear you. I would not want to stand in the way of genuine advancements AI could offer in certain fields. But you must also hear people when they complain about AI in places where it is - apparently - not appreciated. Let those places be those where we expect human redaction, like news broadcasts, books and research articles. Or where we go in search of human interaction: Facebook, Reddit, forums... These are the places where AI is violently forcing its way in, and where you see the most backlash.

We want your bad English, we want your repetitive phrasing, we want your imperfections, because we want to talk to you as a human being. That's what places like these are for. If someone comes here with robotic takedowns of targeted individuals, that simply feels wrong, even when the arguments are logically valid. You see the reality: when AI-Torsten posts something, people complain about the style and we've all forgotten what the point was he's trying to make.

Be real. We know this is an international forum, and we appreciate regional differences in the mastery of the lingua franca. Write in your own words in your own language and have AI translate it instead of "enhance" it, because the enhancements are nauseating to those of us who are fed up with having to figure out whether we're responding to an actual human being or not.