I have been a fan of the Green brothers since I was a young teenager, reading John Green’s YA books and always relying on Crash Course when I didn’t fully understand something in school. I would frequent their shop, and was always amazed they donate 100% of profits. That’s why when I was told by my roommate that Hank Green was being cancelled for AI usage, I was confused and more than a little upset.
What Happened
Hank Green uploaded a video in late July on the Complexly channel, his company that he co-owns with John, and viewers quickly pointed out that the language he was using in his “fact checks” sounded like the speech style most commonly associated with generative AI usage. Hank then responded with the following, now-deleted, message on X.
Now, this frustrated a lot of people, myself included. Hank has a multitude of videos on his channel discussing his AI-related fears, and for him to be using AI generated content for research without properly disclosing it feels like a betrayal; especially for those who align themselves with Hank’s previously-said fears about AI.
After his admittance to using the tool, he got (quite understandably in my opinion) serious backlash. In response to this backlash, he posted on reddit, and made a youtube video addressing this, and came up with the following policy for AI usage in his videos.
- No portion of any script will be written, edited, or outlined by an LLM.
- The thesis of a video will always originate with a human.
- No image or music in a video will be generated by AI. If something is accidentally included, best efforts will be made to remove it.
- LLM outputs will never be trusted as a source.
A little later, I will go into what exactly about this wording irritates me, but first, I want to talk about Hank’s personal response, outside of his policy changes. In the same reddit post, Hank apologizes, but then states that “I think I understand how that happened.”
Throughout his post however, he doubles down on his AI use, saying that he has been using it solely for research, not for ideas. He emphasizes throughout his post that he has been pushed to using LLM’s so frequently due to stress and that he’s going to take a step away from posting content to further assess the way he is producing content.
Why I am Frustrated Still
Internet backlash has died down for Hank, but still, I find myself being frustrated at the events. In terms of “celebrities”, Hank is clearly on the good side and has done a vast amount of good for the world that most of us, myself included, will likely never achieve within our lifetime. However, I think that this is a topic still important to discuss as AI usage becomes extremely more prevalent and unavoidable in day-to-day life.
- Sneakiness
Hank’s original X post, which casually admitted to using Chat GPT for research in a way that seems as if this has been ongoing for a long time, is so abrupt because he was not directly citing AI usage in an easily accessible way. Complexly’s AI policy includes permitted usage for brainstorming, and although this policy is available, Hank nor Complexly cite AI in descriptions of videos, leading watchers to assume that all content is human-produced.
Though this may be a naive assumption in the world of AI, a channel that depends heavily on education and human-based interaction should cite clearly if AI is used and where. Hank, possibly not intentionally, was sneaky about the way he was using LLM’s in his work for months, possibly years.
- His Current AI Policy
Though Hank’s new AI policy addresses a lot of concerns with LLM research, it fails to bring up an important aspect of the research process: brainstorming. It is becoming more common for AI to write preliminary ideas for content and to give the “real thinking” to the person behind the production.
However, are ideas generated from AI really human? I personally think that there is something to be said about this, even if Hank’s thesis’ of his videos are human-originated. Even so, if Hank chooses to use generative AI to produce ideas, I think it is frustrating and unacceptable that he would choose not to explicitly cite this.
My Large Takeaway
Though I have just spent many sentences expressing my frustration at Hank, I still appreciate his content and values. Throughout this, I find myself faced with the fact that no one can achieve perfection and to stop assuming this out of celebrities. If anything, Hank’s controversy has put an emphasis on why personal values are the most important. I can only control myself.