Ad-hominem (literally: "to the person") requires a person on the other side of t...

samrus · 2026-03-16T13:08:06 1773666486

Thats a bit pedantic. Youre still arguing against an entity rather than addressing the argument.

If you prompted an LLM to make a PSA that people should brush their teeth, is it a fair to argue that brushing your teeth is bad because an LLM made the argument?

egberts1 · 2026-03-16T14:18:16 1773670696

Let's call it "Ad machinam".

A literal form of "to the machine”: none of the rights that a person has.

Example usage:

“That’s not a rebuttal; it’s an argumentum ad machinam -- you’re rejecting it just because AI wrote it.”

normalaccess · 2026-03-16T15:48:49 1773676129

And really when you think about it, all AI is is just the a statical recombination of (almost) everything that (almost) everyone has written.

So it's a kind of mechanical recombination of ideas.

egberts1 · 2026-03-16T19:51:23 1773690683

Almost like reject the argument because the logical reasoning was supplied emotionally.

grumpymuppet · 2026-03-16T11:21:25 1773660085

Presumably why the person you are responding to called it a modified ad hominem.

tmaly · 2026-03-16T14:28:02 1773671282

Maybe we need a phrase like ad-machinam to attack LLMs.