AI content detector: why does China dismiss it as ‘superstition tech’?

With the graduation season approaching, many Chinese universities have introduced regulations setting clear requirements for the proportion of artificial intelligence-generated content – or the “AI rate”, as it is called – in theses.

Some universities have used the AI rate as a deciding factor in whether a thesis is approved.

The rule is intended to prevent academic misconduct, as educators have become increasingly concerned about the unregulated use of AI in producing scholarly literature, including data falsification and content fabrication, since the public debut of generative AI models such as ChatGPT.

However, an official publication of the Ministry of Science and Technology has warned that using AI content detectors to identify AI writing is essentially a form of “technological superstition” that could cause many unintended side effects.

AI detection tools could produce false results, the Science and Technology Daily said in an editorial last Tuesday, adding that some graduates had complained that content clearly written by them was labelled as AI-generated.

Even a very famous Chinese essay written 100 years ago was evaluated as more than 60 per cent AI-generated, when analysed by these tools, the article said.