Comments
Hacker News
I think the problem is that pangram doesn't actually work on the whole document - it works on chunks of the document.
By analysing a specific piece of prose you probably arent using the same chunk as would otherwise be analysed and can end up with a different result.
by supermatt
> If I want to induce a false positive in TSA's airport scanner, I can put a gun-shaped object in my bag. If I want to induce a false positive in Waymo's stop sign detection system, I can paint my own sign and put it up on a pole.
Holy strawman-batman, not only does the founder of Pangram not have a proper response to the actual criticisms, he feels the need to completely make up very different situations to try to illustrate some completely different point... I guess good job of the founder to engage at all, as deBoer does bring up a lot of valid points and criticisms of why people really shouldn't rely on "tools" like Pangram, too bad the founder failed completely at addressing the more serious points, and instead just chose to say "Well, there will be false-positives, what can you do?".
Can something be broken that never actually worked?
by achileas
I'm not sure I'd use the term 'brittle' to describe snake oil.
by Catloafdev
This product does not even have a plausible theory of how it could work.
LLM-generated text does not carry a watermark or other identifying marks. The "theory" is that an LLM trained on human writing, to mimic human writing, can be distinguished from actual human writing in under 100 words.
Notably the first diagram on the research overview page (https://www.pangram.com/research/how-it-works) shows feedback for "misclassified human examples." This is a category error; Pangram will not find out when it has misclassified text in the wild, except in rare cases. Only the "licensed human-written text" in its training data can be used as feedback.
Scams like Pangram also cause real harms, mostly because laypeople do not understand that what is being offered is not possible. Pangram advertises 99.98% accuracy, and they pitch it as a tool for teachers and universities. Translated: if a college like University of Alabama rolled this out, you could expect ~40 students to have their lives upended by this snake oil, every year. (And how can one even prove that an allegation is false, that they did write a given text?) And this is the best case, using the number on Pangram's homepage.
by runako
It frustrates me that AI detection for student essays effectively works as a protection racket: if a student wants to write an essay without AI assistance and reliably get credit for doing so, they still need to pay a company like Pangram for an individual account to ensure their own work isn't accidentally flagged (especially if checking multiple drafts a day).
And even this isn't perfect, nor is it guaranteed that enterprise and individual accounts are tuned the same way. So students also need to proactively use audit/keystroke logging systems to protect themselves against accusations, which creates a type of "panopticon" on one's early/ephemeral drafts, including language of frustration (who among us hasn't typed curses into an unsaved draft at some point?), that can massively stifle creative thought. And if an institution provides such a tool, their centralized access simply worsens the "panopticon" characteristics.
There's no easy solution, here, sadly.
by btown
I recently tried Pangram, created an account, wrote a few lines about how my day went, and it was flagged as likely AI-assisted. It clearly doesn't work.
It's especially bad that they keep insisting that it works very well, because thousands of people will probably end up falsely accused of AI usage as a result.
by timpera
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- Hacker News
- I think the problem is that pangram doesn't actually work on the whole document - it works on chunks of the document.
By analysing a specific piece of prose you probably arent using the same chunk as would otherwise be analysed and can end up with a different result.
by supermatt - > If I want to induce a false positive in TSA's airport scanner, I can put a gun-shaped object in my bag. If I want to induce a false positive in Waymo's stop sign detection system, I can paint my own sign and put it up on a pole.
Holy strawman-batman, not only does the founder of Pangram not have a proper response to the actual criticisms, he feels the need to completely make up very different situations to try to illustrate some completely different point... I guess good job of the founder to engage at all, as deBoer does bring up a lot of valid points and criticisms of why people really shouldn't rely on "tools" like Pangram, too bad the founder failed completely at addressing the more serious points, and instead just chose to say "Well, there will be false-positives, what can you do?".
- Can something be broken that never actually worked?by achileas
- I'm not sure I'd use the term 'brittle' to describe snake oil.by Catloafdev
- This product does not even have a plausible theory of how it could work.
LLM-generated text does not carry a watermark or other identifying marks. The "theory" is that an LLM trained on human writing, to mimic human writing, can be distinguished from actual human writing in under 100 words.
Notably the first diagram on the research overview page (https://www.pangram.com/research/how-it-works) shows feedback for "misclassified human examples." This is a category error; Pangram will not find out when it has misclassified text in the wild, except in rare cases. Only the "licensed human-written text" in its training data can be used as feedback.
Scams like Pangram also cause real harms, mostly because laypeople do not understand that what is being offered is not possible. Pangram advertises 99.98% accuracy, and they pitch it as a tool for teachers and universities. Translated: if a college like University of Alabama rolled this out, you could expect ~40 students to have their lives upended by this snake oil, every year. (And how can one even prove that an allegation is false, that they did write a given text?) And this is the best case, using the number on Pangram's homepage.
by runako - It frustrates me that AI detection for student essays effectively works as a protection racket: if a student wants to write an essay without AI assistance and reliably get credit for doing so, they still need to pay a company like Pangram for an individual account to ensure their own work isn't accidentally flagged (especially if checking multiple drafts a day).
And even this isn't perfect, nor is it guaranteed that enterprise and individual accounts are tuned the same way. So students also need to proactively use audit/keystroke logging systems to protect themselves against accusations, which creates a type of "panopticon" on one's early/ephemeral drafts, including language of frustration (who among us hasn't typed curses into an unsaved draft at some point?), that can massively stifle creative thought. And if an institution provides such a tool, their centralized access simply worsens the "panopticon" characteristics.
There's no easy solution, here, sadly.
by btown - I recently tried Pangram, created an account, wrote a few lines about how my day went, and it was flagged as likely AI-assisted. It clearly doesn't work.
It's especially bad that they keep insisting that it works very well, because thousands of people will probably end up falsely accused of AI usage as a result.
by timpera