Lazy, lazy tests

They are fast, easy, and non-invasive but they should never be solely relied upon

Once upon a time (about 30 years ago), I was going through various dating services trying to find a lifemate. (Found her at a mutual meeting on an outdoor walking excursion.) I decided to use a reasonably rated dating service in Seattle. I filled out, completely honestly and transparently, all about me and the most important things about the person I wanted to meet. It did not work out well.

I am short (shorter as I age) and a bit pudgy. I am also very well muscled. I used to be able to do leg presses of heavier weights than most of the people on my high school football team (I didn’t make the team — another story).

The erroneous world of BMI

My height and weight statistics were such that I had a BMI of 31.3 which is considered “obese”. My height and weight were almost exactly the same as the quarterback of the Denver Broncos. No, I won’t claim I was in as good of condition as the quarterback. As I said, I was pudgy. What I wasn’t was “obese”. But no woman in the dating records had any interest in dating an “obese” man. I offered to go into their office and show them. No go. They had their fast, easy tool that told them what they wanted to know and they didn’t care at all that it was totally inaccurate.

I was self-employed at the time and had my own health insurance. I was penalized for my muscle. The insurance agent SAID that he understood and sympathized but could do nothing about it. (The BMI is known to only be accurate for about 85% of the time — due to “abnormal” body composition of too much muscle or thick bones or other non-average aspects.) The company used the BMI as their Bible. There are other tests for better accuracy such as a water displacement test and a caliper test. There is even a pretty easy measurement test that is a lot more accurate. It includes the circumference of your waist and wrist in addition to height and weight. No go. Fast, easy, and wrong.

The autocratic world of Reddit

Once upon a time, when I was building my audience for my blog (https://technoglot.blogspot.com) I made use of some of the subreddits of Reddit. As you may know, each subreddit has its own owner, or owners. They control the topic as well as the rules for appropriate entries. They are the ruling folks. But, as the royalty, they have no obligation to follow their rules. The rules are there to meet the requirements of a subreddit. Following them is optional.

I never succeeded in staying on a subreddit long because they didn’t like a blog to occupy a place there (I did get quite a few views). None of the rules said no blogs but … I had one person who had written their own tool for spam detection. The tool detected duplicate base URLs! (So blog.com/X was spam of blog.com/Y because they both were based on blog.com.) An article from newsweek.com would have registered as spam because other articles would also exist within newsweek.com. But, their tool was fast and easy and they didn’t care that it was wrong (I have a Master’s degree in Computer Science). Not important.

The world of AI detection following the easy, quick incorrect path.

Now, we are entering the world of AI generating text and material. I am getting reports on the use of tools dictating what is AI and what is not. One of the rules is that of using the — (emdash). Apparently, AI detection tools have decided that only AI generated text makes use of the emdash. Balderdash. But, I am trying to wean myself away from using that indication of an extended pause because I would prefer to not be erroneously marked as AI. First BMI, now potentially AI. All out of laziness being more important than accuracy.

So, what other items is an AI detector likely to flag? Formal, academic style writing, simple and clear sentences. If it is clear, direct, easy to understand then you are likely to be in trouble. We will all need to write like Lewis Carroll in “Jabberwocky”. We all need to make our prose as unpredictable and erratic as possible. Oh, there are some understandable authors that have a “unique” voice who should be safe. Coming from a non-fiction, technical, background, I am probably going to be in deep doodoo.

Frankly (does anyone ever say “Georgely”?) I don’t think it can be done. So be prepared to be accused of being an AI if you love language and want to type it according to the rules of English. Oh, yes, ESL folks are also likely to be flagged because they are taught direct, straight-forward, sentence structure and “normal” writers don’t sound like that.

What’s going to happen?

I would like to say that all of these folks that are using these tools will sit up and say “my goodness, are the tools that bad? We should immediately stop relying on them so much”. But, people are people and most want to follow the quick, easy, cheap route. Plus, here in the US, we love those numerical scores. If a tool can give us a number as output, we can’t help but fall in love with it.

I’m “lucky”. I make almost no money from my books, blogs, and newsletters. So, it doesn’t matter if I am accused of being an AI. And I can find (and have found) other methods of distributing my blogs (and make use of SEO tools). And I am settled into a permanent “death do us part” relationship. So, as Bill Murray says so eloquently in “Meatballs” — “it just doesn’t matter”.

Sure, it doesn’t. Good luck to all of us.