The Professor Who Thought Bold Text Was a Robot

Someone accused me of using AI to write my Reddit comments a while back. Not because of what I said. Because of how I presented it. I'd used bold text. And italics. To make the argument easier to follow. This, apparently, was suspicious. The person making the accusation teaches at a university. I'll let that sit for a moment. I formatted my replies carefully because I was trying to construct a clear argument and I had the basic courtesy to make it readable. This is, or was, when I attended school, considered a virtue. Something you aimed for. Something teachers encouraged. Now it's evidence of cheating. The thread was about AI detectors, specifically about whether they work. My position, supported by running Charles Dickens through five of them and watching him score 95% AI, was that they don't. The professor's position was that they do, and that my well-formatted counter-argument proved it. There's a word for this. Circular isn't quite right. Deranged is closer. While that exchange…