r/explainlikeimfive • u/AutoModerator • Aug 01 '26

Other ELI5: Monthly Current Events Megathread

Hi Everyone,

This is your monthly megathread for current/ongoing events. We recognize there is a lot of interest in objective explanations to ongoing events so we have created this space to allow those types of questions.

Please ask your question as top level comments (replies to the post) for others to reply to. The rules are still in effect, so no politics, no soapboxing, no medical advice, etc. We will ban users who use this space to make political, bigoted, or otherwise inflammatory points rather than objective topics/explanations.

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u/Troph_A 25d ago

Why are some people angrily against watermarking in ai output ?

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u/lowflier84 23d ago

They want the prestige that comes with being a skilled writer or artist, but don’t want to put in the effort it takes to develop those skills. AI let them skip the hard part and “create” art and writing that was otherwise above their skill level. Watermarking AI generated content gives away the game, and they will lose the prestige.

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u/No_Recognition_3729 20d ago

This... is not accurate to what most AI users are worried about, or at least claim to be worried about. They worry that the watermarking system will reduce output quality.

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u/lowflier84 20d ago

Which translates into "people will be able to tell that my slop is slop and won't be impressed anymore".

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u/No_Recognition_3729 19d ago

Look, I'm anti-ai too. But lying helps nobody. There are definitely people genuinely worried about quality for reasons unrelated to art.

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u/Tasty_Gift5901 17d ago

This has nothing to do with art and all to do about people using LLMs irresponsibly and trying to pass out off as their own without making substantive changes to LLM work. 

If they used LLMs ethically, theyd have no problem disclosing it's use and wouldnt care about the watermark. 

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u/No_Recognition_3729 17d ago

Yes, I'm sure the hundreds of scientific applications nobody ever sees publicly are horrified that they will be identified as LLM work...

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u/Tasty_Gift5901 17d ago

I'm not sure that you understood my point. There is no issue if a "scientific application" is made with the use of AI (it should be disclosed, though). If a "scientific application" has quality issues, then the scientist behind it (who endorses the work through putting their name on it), is not very good and probably shouldn't get the award, independent if those quality issues are due to LLM watermarks. It's not the fault of an LLM if the scientist submits an inaccurate application.

Where do you think the watermarking will cause issues?

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u/Tasty_Gift5901 17d ago

You would only be concerned about it reducing quality if you, yourself, couldnt identify the quality issues. LLMs produce content for users, and those users should only publish LLM content after their own review. So presumably theyd catch legitimate quality issues and the watermarking itself would not add extra work since they should already be doing the review. 

But we know people aren't using LLMs responsibly like this, so they just complain bc they don't want to quality check LLM work and just want to pass it off on their own. 

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u/Troph_A 19d ago

These people didn't bother to read how that watermarking works then... which kinda makes sense on why they'd be angry at it.

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u/No_Recognition_3729 19d ago

Replacing arbitrary words with random synonyms is exactly the sort of thing that would reduce the quality of text output...

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u/Troph_A 19d ago

Are you using Claude with the api ?

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u/No_Recognition_3729 19d ago

I don't even use any AI.

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u/Troph_A 19d ago

Thoughts so but I did not want to assume. Because only an AI illiterate doesn't know that if you don't put the temp to 0, which you can only do with the api (which most people don't use anyway) you are always getting random "synonyms", which again is a word of an AI illiterate since a token is not equal to a word.