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I notice that @Vincent Wong's account has been suspended, and his recent answer deleted. This is disturbing since I found the answer useful and referenced it in my own answer in that thread. I see he was accused of using an AI to generate his post, and he responded that he in did use one to check his grammar and spelling, since he is not a native English speaker.

Is this the reason his post was deleted and his account suspended? I often find Vincent's posts useful, if not entirely orthodox. But the site is supposed to welcome all perspectives that take the text seriously. It may be argued that Vincent did not do that adequately or that he should not use an AI to help his language deficiency... but that is hardly a reason to suspend his account -- which also resulted in his reputation plunging to zero.

I'm I missing something? Why was Vincent Wong's Account Suspended? And why was this particular post deleted?

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    Please be assured that the defence you have noted was considered and accounted for in this decision. Vincent has received our comments on this matter and why this defense was deemed insufficient in this case. Anybody is welcome to appeal to the CM team via the Contact form if there are any concerns. The reputation change that happens during a suspension is only temporary for the duration of the suspension. Commented May 10, 2023 at 8:02
  • Thanks for your assurance, which I trust. I note that the suspension is a short one, about a week. I presumed it was longer, as with a previous one that I recall. I must say that I think Vincent has been valuable contributor to the group, and that goes for the deleted post as well, bot-generated or no. Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:13
  • Here are some good tools to provide some insight when in doubt about AI-generated content: 1) sapling.ai/ai-content-detector 2) copyleaks.com/ai-content-detector 3) x.writefull.com/gpt-detector Good question! Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:26
  • Thanks. I bookmarked the copyleaks tool and used it. But I also pasted in Vincent's answer that was supposedly an AI creation. The verdict was thumbs up -- "THIS IS A HUMAN TEXT." 89.1 percent probability. Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:29
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    sapling.ai declared it FAKE with 100 percent certainty. x.writefull gave it a very high probability of being legit, with only a 10 percent chance of being FAKE. I think we have some pretty solid evidence that these A.I. checkers are unreliable. Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:36

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If anyone is just using tools to help them proofread their posts (whether ChatGPT or something like Grammarly) we would neither care not even be able to tell.

What will get someone suspended is using an AI tool to generate the content of their posts. No one who asks a question on this site wants AI generated answers. They come here to get the insights of experts in the Biblical texts. AI tools like ChatGPT do not understand anything about the Bible. All they can do is produce a statistical response to an input. They frequently make up nonsense which can be hard to identify if you aren't already a subject matter expert. That's why it's important that people generate the content of posts on this site.

In addition, AI answers are functionally plagiarising, which is unethical, and they rarely produce citations (and if they do, their citations may not actually exist), which would be grounds for deletion even if the post had been written by a human.

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  • Thanks for this. I'll use the term "copy-editing" rather than mere proof-reading since Vincent claimed he needed help with language, which gives more leeway to the person assisting him. In any case I suppose there is a third possibility between mere copy-editing and plagiarizing. As a former professional copy editor myself, I know that I often added whole sentences to improve an article, in addition to correcting spelling and grammar. But I'm basically ignorant as to who AI's work in the context were are speaking of. Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:20
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You can't differentiate if it was just one answer from gpt or if they were not so off. It was purely a bot, not even a human copy pasting gpt answers. There are free ai search engines for users, like deepai and you dot com, if anyone wants to improve their research on minor questions.

I expect that such bots or users get permanently deleted. There have been some who used various fake profiles to bulk up their points for narcissistic pleasure, and succeeded for a long time, such people. They may be even the same person who earlier used a group of many fake accounts or perhaps a new one, who is just playing games trying to turn SE into twitter by throwing bots to bulk up points for this bot account or whatever. This site will need stricter screening for new accounts who may seem suspicious otherwise it will turn worse if undetected bots take over.

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  • The account in question is over a year old and has written more than 200 answers. While we do delete accounts, this one is definitely not a bot. Commented May 11, 2023 at 22:28
  • purely a bot, not this user. But, you adequately express the concern in general. I agree with you that we certainly don't want the site headed in this direction. Decisions we make as moderators are intended to prevent that. It's not this bad or specific to this user. After all, many posts were not deleted. Still, your concern is healthy and we indeed need to take this general matter seriously—all of us. Commented May 12, 2023 at 0:23
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    My bad. I was thinking about Jason Ellison hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/81468/… Commented May 12, 2023 at 2:36

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