this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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[–] joe@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, people in general prefer bland and easy to follow stories. I would bet the majority of participants in the study don't normally read short stories since moat people don't read for enjoyment.

When confronted with data that people preferred AI writing to human writing, your reaction is to make something up about the participants? Wild.

Even if I accept that people just want to read garbage and they wouldn't know "good" writing if they saw it, so what? How does that affect anything we're discussing?

[–] XLE@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

When confronted with data that people preferred AI writing to human writing, your reaction is to make something up about the participants?

There is nothing wrong with their guess. The paper you linked says nearly the same thing:

One possibility (explored in more detail in Porter and Machery) is that AI-generated work is seen as easier to interpret—people generally like these works better because they feel as though they are easier to read or understand.

[–] joe@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago

Being easier to read and understand is a sign of good writing, and being easy to follow and read does not mean something is "bland".

The fact of the matter is that we have evidence that AI can write in such a way that the writing is judged better than human writing, as judged by humans. Dismissing the study by "betting" that the study participants didn't like to read is unscientific nonsense, in no way comparable to what you quoted. That's a person being confronted with facts that contradict their current beliefs and rejecting facts to maintain those beliefs.

Personally, I don't even understand the point in refusing to believe that AI can be better at humans at some tasks. What is gained by maintaining that belief?