Thread

Uproar in France over award-winning author accused of using AI

36 points · 87 comments · harscoat

jalev · 1790334566 · focus · HN ↗
This isn't the first high profile case of a black person being reported with accusations of using AI this year[^1][^2]. Once or twice, sure, whatever. But a third time now? It's hard to think this isn't anything but targeted, especially given this particular case the group making the "claims" are entirely anonymous.
Anyway, here's the thread from twitter if people are interested: <a href="https://x.com/Pangramed/status/2102383484027171306?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/Pangramed/status/2102383484027171306?s=20
[^1]: <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/jerry-falade-book-deal-ai-racism-b3050738.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/featu...
[^2]: <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/jason-arday-resignation-letter-ai-generated-ztdxbqhc9" rel="nofollow">https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/jason-arday-re...
1. Pragmata · 1790334939 · focus · HN ↗
  Are the accusations untrue? The evidence that i have seen seems pretty compelling.
2. throwaway112332 · 1790334980 · focus · HN ↗
  Is it that, or is it because marketing "content" by a minority author with an "interesting life story" is an industry not an art, and they're less likely to care how the "content" was produced?
3. cubefox · 1790335052 · focus · HN ↗
  Pangram is making the "claims", not some group. It is known to have a very low false positive rate, especially on long texts. And there is now also evidence of plagiarism, rather than just AI writing, in his other work (see down thread).
  1. brookst · 1790336215 · focus · HN ↗
    What’s the false positive rate multiplied by number of books in print? This seems like a fraught use of odds / stakes.
    cubefox · 1790337321 · focus · HN ↗
    The longer a text, the more entropy, the easier it is to classify. Novels are pretty long. So I suspect the false positive rate for books is far lower than for articles. And, as I said, we also have corroborating evidence now in form of cases of plagiarism discovered in his past work. Someone who has no qualms about committing plagiarism is more likely to also not have inhibitions about using LLMs to write books.
    kuerbel · 1790340156 · focus · HN ↗
    They tested passages. It is absolutely trivial to find passages that pangram classifies as 100% ai gen even if it's not the case.
    cubefox · 1790341875 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think it's trivial. I'm also pretty sure many people have tested the whole book.
    kuerbel · 1790355024 · focus · HN ↗
    Where? Can you post a link?
    cubefox · 1790409312 · focus · HN ↗
    This story is international news. It is extremely likely that many people have checked the full book using Pangram. I need not post a link for that.
    owebmaster · 1790411307 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not extremely likely, you definitely need a link to back this claim.
4. NotGMan · 1790335167 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. brookst · 1790336408 · focus · HN ↗
    “It was just a coincidence that most American slaves were black”
    I don’t think anyone is saying skin color conveys immunity from accusation. But I hope you can see that the odds that a dramatically higher per capita rate of accusations against people with a particular skin color should at least give pause.
5. Micrococonut · 1790335458 · focus · HN ↗
  Three black people in a year across the literal entire planet’s population and you are convinced it’s a racist conspiracy?
6. toasty228 · 1790335530 · focus · HN ↗
  How many non black people have been accused though?
  Why would they target these specific 3 black authors? I assume there are hundreds/thousands of successful black authors, 3 "this year" seems very small to call it a targeted attack
  1. vages · 1790337635 · focus · HN ↗
    Depends on how you define «they», but the public discourse in Norway the past two weeks have been defined by the Norwegian news outlet Manifest Media publishing a series of articles about AI “meat proxying”, starting whith an analysis of commentators employed by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). The one found guilty was a white woman, and among the four non-guilty was one non-white man: <a href="https://www.manifestmedia.no/artikler/slik-testet-vi-nrk-for-ai-infeksjon" rel="nofollow">https://www.manifestmedia.no/artikler/slik-testet-vi-nrk-for... A follow-up article targetting (white male) professor Asle Toje found that he had probably used AI to write a much-discussed opinion piece: <a href="https://www.manifestmedia.no/artikler/pangram-tojes-omstridte-kronikk-er-trolig-skrevet-med-ai" rel="nofollow">https://www.manifestmedia.no/artikler/pangram-tojes-omstridt...
    Race has not been a part of the public conversation. Not sure if it would have been that way if the guilty person was non-white (but I'm slightly optimistic, given that the first person found guilty was a woman and gender was not part of the discussion).
    toasty228 · 1790356892 · focus · HN ↗
    And in france "they" just accused a high level right wing newspaper employee of using chatgpt to write his articles: <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/ia-jules-torres-chef-du-service-politique-au-jdd-redige-t-il-ses-articles-avec-chatgpt-20260925_X4YVW3OK6ZD75LBEK62UY5JJOQ/" rel="nofollow">https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/ia-jules-torres-chef-du-...
7. amelius · 1790335595 · focus · HN ↗
  Maybe the AI companies used human feedback from Haiti people to train their models?
  1. deakmmbg · 1790340571 · focus · HN ↗
    bro just won hn like it was nothing im in awe
  2. suttontom · 1790352904 · focus · HN ↗
    Remember <a href="https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-like-chatgpt" rel="nofollow">https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...?
8. bsoqk · 1790336167 · focus · HN ↗
  It's 2026. This defence is not working anymore.
9. dfxm12 · 1790336193 · focus · HN ↗
  It's hard to think this isn't anything but targeted
  By whom?
  A simpler (and easy to think of) explanation is normal systemic racism. Black writers are likely underrepresented in the training data begin with, so the models assume Black writing can't be real.
  1. suddenlybananas · 1790336489 · focus · HN ↗
    How would the model know the author is black? People have also looked at pangram at other Haitian authors in French and it doesn't give them high AI scores.
10. DavCreator · 1790336491 · focus · HN ↗
  XXCancel: <a href="https://xxcancel.com/Pangramed" rel="nofollow">https://xxcancel.com/Pangramed and <a href="https://xxcancel.com/Pangramed/status/2102383484027171306?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://xxcancel.com/Pangramed/status/2102383484027171306?s=...
11. breuleux · 1790338517 · focus · HN ↗
  It is possible that the works of black people are tested more, possibly by racist people systemically putting them through Pangram in hope of getting a hit.
  If that's the case, unfortunately, they're bound to find legitimate fraud eventually. Given the subsequent hard evidence of plagiarism, it seems like this is one such case, and we can't exactly ignore it.

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