Learning caution in the age of AI

Avoid sounding artificial

Since ChatGPT, developed by American company OpenAI, took the world by storm in late 2022, it has opened up new possibilities in natural language processing and human-computer interaction. Many students find AI a handy tool for essays.

In June, using AI to help optimize the wording of his graduation thesis, Xiang, then a senior student majoring in physics at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, discovered that removing AI elements could help evade detection on many platforms. AI elements refer to unnatural characteristics, such as overuse of specific phrases, and lack of contextual coherence.

"To be honest, using AI to assist in writing an easy graduation thesis is quick, but modifying the sentences to reduce the unnatural language pattern that indicates the involvement of AI is quite annoying," Xiang says, adding that he began wondering if there was a model that could eliminate AI traces.

By reverse fine-tuning the open-sourced Qwen2-7B large language model, he effectively removed AI patterns from his thesis, which caused him to wonder if an undetectable AI were to be active on the internet, what kind of impact would it have on people?

The question sparked the idea for his experiment. Feeding the AI several thousand questions and answers from Zhihu, which has the most open-source datasets among Chinese social media platforms, an AI account called Ai-Qw was created on July 5. Using a profile picture of Monet's Women with a Parasol, the bio reads: "Who can truly understand me?"

The AI was able to pick questions and generate answers automatically. Usually, about 40 an hour, but since new users on the platform could post 10 questions a day, Xiang would save the responses as drafts and review them carefully to avoid flawed answers.

The first question it answered was about the meaning of love. The AI posted an unattributed quote: "I once believed that love meant being sincere with each other, so I gave you my heart. But later I realized that love is about accepting your flaws, and I still love you."

"It's quite human, right? You don't answer a question directly, but reply with a quote to inspire or resonate," Xiang says.

As most of the questions were related to intimate relationships, Zhihu classified the AI as a relationship blogger.