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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#181

Post by sph »

dang wrote: post #166
sph wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been discouraging people from flagging ‘articles that they think don't belong on HN’, because you have disabled my ability to do so time and time again. In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines. So either I read your mind, or it is best not to fl…

> In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines. People love to make vague claims like this based on things we supposedly said. How about you quote what exactly what I literally said so readers can make up their own minds? Sorry if that is testy (well, it is…

Sure, quoting select passages over multiple emails with you personally.

> I'm afraid we took vouching privileges away from your account because you vouched for too many comments that were unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or otherwise broke the site guidelines

> If you want to build up a track record for a while of vouching for good comments only, and then email so we can look at the recent vouches

Wondering how does one tell what is ‘good’ in your mind:

> Btw if you're unsure about a case you can always check with us about it. I know the borderline cases are not always easy to call.

—-

In other words, do as dang himself would do, or get penalised. I am not in the business of mind reading.

This was years ago. I am pretty sure lately I have been flagging/vouching stuff I genuinely believe were OK, though you have all the data in front to smite me with “ah, but on this day you vouched this bad comment! Gotcha!” so in the end it’s always a losing battle.

In any case, my issue is with you saying, I quote, ”users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN”. Emphasis mine. No. It is more nuanced than that.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#182

Post by handfuloflight »

dang wrote: post #130
152334H wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lots of things happening in this post 1st: the presumption that AI generated text is actually unsuccessful, rather than proliferating broadly unchallenged today 2nd: the disposition that negative attitudes towards AI text are unjustified discrirmination, rather than working as a strong latent predictor of low-effort content 3rd: the assumption that human writing is reliably doled benefits, rather than some poor proxy…

Interesting points! though I don't follow them all. > 1st: the presumption that AI generated text is actually unsuccessful, rather than proliferating broadly unchallenged today I can only talk about HN. If you think this is proliferating broadly on HN itself, I'd like to see such links. Assuming it's "broadly", they should be easy to find. > 2nd: the disposition that negative attitudes towards AI text are unjustified…

What about people who genuinely write their own articles but due to their time spent with AI, they are sounding like AI? I know people like this. They really are writing like that now. Shouldn't there be fairness to them?

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#183

Post by DANmode »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #156
dang wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag art…

Generally speaking, HN seems to have more of a problem now of people just drive-by downvoting things because they don't like someone's opinion. I know you hate the supposedly "noob" comment, as you've put it over the years, and as it is written in the guidelines, that HN is or isn't turning into Reddit, but this aspect of HN makes it indistinguishable to me as a long-time reader here whether you accept it from your p…

It’s not necessarily that it isn’t true - the most common problem voters have is that it just isn’t interesting or unique.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#184

Post by causality0 »

dang wrote: post #149
bhaney wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I do think we'll (finally) add is a "please give a reason why you flagged this post" step, and "because I think it's genai" will be one choice among several Does that mean that an article being AI-generated is a flaggable offense? Should we be flagging suspected AI-generated articles already, or should we wait for the flagging system to support reasons first?

Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag art…

What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN

If this is true then this statement should be added to the guidelines. Many a time I've seen a submission and thought "My god, this is the most moronic thing I've ever read in my life, nearly every single factual claim in this is wrong" but I don't flag it because "don't post utter drivel" is not in the guidelines.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#185

Post by xeyownt »

I find the proposal ridicule.

Would you skip articles because it's written with a text processor? You need to have it written bit by bit by fusing it directly in memory?

AI / LLM is the new word editor. Get over it.

What I find really annoying is all the comments that pretend to see / detect AI slop... with lot of false positives.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#186

Post by WD-42 »

ryandrake wrote: post #65
jorvi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The times I've pointed point out pretty blatant AI comments, I get nuked with downvotes. So often that I've stopped pointing them out. Before you say I'm just falsely calling them out, it's typical ChatGPT style of either very amicable or Nobel Laureate tone, lots of formatting, with a couple of paragraphs and then a clever one-line punchline at the end. If you look at those commenters their history, it's all like th…

IMO posting "This article is AI" does not add anything to the conversation. The HN guidelines[1] include: Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. and Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. I'd argue pointing out that you thi…

But it is useful. I can deal with a broken scrollbar if the content is good, but if an article is AI written I don't want to read the content at all. That's a huge difference.

Nowadays I usually check the comments first for the "This is AI" comment, I've left a few of my own and gotten thank yous in reply.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#187

Post by bluefirebrand »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #156
dang wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag art…

Generally speaking, HN seems to have more of a problem now of people just drive-by downvoting things because they don't like someone's opinion. I know you hate the supposedly "noob" comment, as you've put it over the years, and as it is written in the guidelines, that HN is or isn't turning into Reddit, but this aspect of HN makes it indistinguishable to me as a long-time reader here whether you accept it from your p…

Don't you need a certain number of upvotes on your account before you can even use the downvote button? I seem to remember that being a thing, has it changed?

The fact you can't just make an account, log in and start downvoting is already a massive improvement over Reddit

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#188

Post by slg »

dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

>This is why we see so many "just show me the prompt" responses, along with others like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/genai-pushback.

This is totally tangential to your point, but what is that page? It's not your usual link to an algolia search. Is this already part of some sort of manual tagging system? Clicking on the first one, these comments don't seem to be moderated. Are you using these complaints to help detect AI generated content? I think the existence of that page just leaves me confused on whether you actually want people to comment like this or not.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#190

Post by asdff »

eclipticplane wrote: post #180
asdff wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be like driving a v12 down my driveway everytime I want to check the mailbox.

But what if your v12 was fueling an entire economy based on miles driven?

A real v12, vs hypothetical in my example, actually does in the form of gas consumed. Still, doesn't mean it is a good excuse to justify the waste in energy and materials, all to achieve what I already can do. It would be nice to throw that compute towards stuff like curing disease or towards something that might stave off climate change, instead of using it to turn bullet points into an article and me turning that article back into bullet points.
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