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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

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

#401
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…

I think classifying it as an allergy or a status thing is a little too glib. I’ve read and reviewed, conservatively, hundreds of AI generated documents for work, and “written”/commissioned a bunch too. My biggest issue is that it’s impossible to engage with and give feedback on an AI written document, because it’s impossible to know whether misconceptions or gaps are because the author doesn’t understand the material…

>My biggest issue is that it’s impossible to engage with and give feedback on an AI written document

Thanks for giving shape to a general annoyance, in my case with code, that I only recently started noticing.

When discussing code with my colleagues, especially with those that I do not know particularly well, I often relied on the quality of the code they produced to modulate how technical the conversation ought to be be.

Now, instead, I often see very complex code from people that I know wouldn't have been able to produce it themselves, and I have no clue how to engage with it, how to review it with them, how detailed can my comments be etc.

It's pretty annoying.

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

#402
post #125
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put it this way, if the ai article is indeed so good, why store the article in a dusty long form output mode from a soon to be obsolete model? Just give us the prompt, and in 6 months with some newer, bigger, better model, we can feed that prompt and get an even better article out of it.

to play devils advocate - i doubt the articles that end up on the front page are one shotted (theres probably a sequence of back and forward refinement). and in any case, i feel the avg reader would actually not prefer to read the prompt, which would be very information dense having said that, i'd still much prefer a norm of including prompt history with the article, or the codebase for that matter, so people can cho…

Interestingly, the average reader wasn’t that annoyed by the magnitudes higher information density of 2 decades ago.

Also, the information density plummeted because of ads, not because it was demanded by readers.

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

#403

Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. Communities can flag posts as AI generated based on speculation and telltales but it won’t be 100% and will take extra work. I think the era of the blog is simply dead now and that’s mostly ok. Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago even before AI was a thing. The real question is what replaces it. Oh and of cou…

> if an AI generated article is indistinguishable from a human written article and it is accurate and interesting, do you care who wrote it?

Well, yes, because of that "accurate" part. Humans, in general, actually attempt to validate what they publish. I don't feel the need to treat literally everything as a possible hallucination when I read an article published by a human. Less cognitive overhead makes for a more pleasant reading experience. In other words, I trust a human to be accurate most of the time, and I trust an AI to be accurate only some of the time, so there's much more to verify.

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

#404
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…

Some of us use genAI as an accessibility tool. It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Some people already dismiss genuinely useful content solely based on the use of AI to assist in writing it - i am not sure what flagging would do other than to reinforce that prejudice. I posted a couple of my articles here, and the one that got traction was generally well received (and also recei…

> It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Why is that a good thing? If you aren't going to bother to write something, other people shouldn't have to bother to read it, so please don't put it in the world at all.

Gatekeeping based on skill and motivation is good!

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us use genAI as an accessibility tool. It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Some people already dismiss genuinely useful content solely based on the use of AI to assist in writing it - i am not sure what flagging would do other than to reinforce that prejudice. I posted a couple of my articles here, and the one that got traction was generally well received (and also recei…

> It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Why is that a good thing? If you aren't going to bother to write something, other people shouldn't have to bother to read it, so please don't put it in the world at all. Gatekeeping based on skill and motivation is good!

This is the exactly the ableist mentality i mention.

You are gatekeeping based on the medium, not the skill or motivation.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Why is that a good thing? If you aren't going to bother to write something, other people shouldn't have to bother to read it, so please don't put it in the world at all. Gatekeeping based on skill and motivation is good!

This is the exactly the ableist mentality i mention. You are gatekeeping based on the medium, not the skill or motivation.

Well yeah, if people are unable to write, then I don't want to read their writing. That sounds harsh but it's the unfortunate reality. I also don't want to look at paintings made by people who can't paint, or listen to music made by people who are tone-deaf.

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

#408
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…

The quality of HN articles has degraded rapidly in the last year. It seems a meaningful fraction of articles posted here, especially most blog posts, are now AI generated. (Of course, this is the case for the rest of the internet too, but HN has always been a haven from the rest of the internet.)

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exactly the ableist mentality i mention. You are gatekeeping based on the medium, not the skill or motivation.

Well yeah, if people are unable to write, then I don't want to read their writing. That sounds harsh but it's the unfortunate reality. I also don't want to look at paintings made by people who can't paint, or listen to music made by people who are tone-deaf.

[flagged]

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

#410
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my work be classified as "slop" because a few months ago I subscribed to and started using Claude Wait I'm not sure I understand the cause and consequence here if you're saying you use an LLM but your articles aren't slop (note that those are rough synonyms). Do you mention in your submissions you subscribed to or used Claude? The mere existence of the subscription and using it for unrelated things won't be why peo…

> you're saying you use an LLM but your articles aren't slop Not a single word of my articles was written by LLMs. I used them for proofreading and critique. Writing articles by hand is useful for me since it allows me to crystallize my knowledge. Writing it down for my own future reference essentially prevents me from forgetting in the first place. LLMs accelerated me so much I'm actually trying to slow down so I ca…

Thanks for the reply and clarifications. Don't have much to say further besides agreeing with the sentiment
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