Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

news.ycombinator.com

431–440 of 500 posts

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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you wouldn't have called it "allergy" or a "status" problem when considering the audience's response to human written posts of a similar low quality level. It's always been the case that the HN audience has been "allergic" to low effort slop (including human generated). The OP (and my) point was trying to point out how the AI generated stuff might masquerade as something "interesting" if it had been human written…

You are heavily discounting the human side of the generation effort. The first output from an AI might be slop but once you start injecting your own ideas and desires it lands much further away from what any AI would output on its own. (Not that there's no zero-effort slop around - there's a lot).

Sorry if I made it seem I think the human side of AI-use is without effort, because it's not and can take a lot of time (and effort/energy).

It is, however, my experience that even the people who spend a lot of time and effort generating something with AI, tend to shrug when you ask a deeper question about the project, and often point to the AI generated documentation, which is, let me be subtle and say, "not really a joy to read", and especially pales in comparison to having a conversation with a human who spent their effort on learning how to do the thing it did, instead of prompting an AI.

I'm also not saying there aren't any exceptions to this. But I've found them rare.

Like I said, even if the human doesn't quite understand what they generated, even then it would be preferable to read a human written article about how it was generated, using what tools and harnesses, etc.

I come to this website to learn stuff and converse with other people, not just to go "ooh aah" at what somebody generated with AI (if that is all they can offer).

Hope that makes sense.

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

#432
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…

To add to this, it does make me think what the difference between down vote and flag is. I mean down vote is obviously the numerical opposite of upvote but why else would people downvote if it not be inappropriate for the forum? (Other than the obvious "I dont like this commenter/their opinion")

Just thinking out loud I suppose.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Most comments aren't interesting.

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

#434
post #370
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had plenty of disagreements with dang over my time on this site, yet I am the first to claim he has been instrumental in making HN as good as it is, notwithstanding the deluge of posts, bots, trolls, and other ungovernable people. I have a lot of respect for his work.

> I have had plenty of disagreements with dang over my time on this site To think that someone has multiple / repeated disagreements with Dang is wild to me. In my history on this site, I have not once seen Dang say or do anything that’s not in the best interest of the community. He’s possibly one of the least controversial moderators I have ever encountered online.

Well I mean for starters, one might disagree whether all members of "the community" should actually be part of it/be catered to.

I mean it's kinda hard to kick out the VC brainrot get-rich-quick sanity-is-tertiary scum when you're literally housed under a ycombinator subdomain, but that is technically also a choice that people might see as controversial.

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

#435
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely meta and possibly out-of-place, but this thread was I think my first encounter with dang (the human), and, based on it, I'm filled with respect for him. Good job being you. Please continue doing so.

As opposed to dang the robot? :)

As opposed to dang wearing the HN hat.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most comments aren't interesting.

Then you’re in the wrong place (community, thread, or what have you).

Said another way: I couldn’t disagree more.

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

#437
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…

Sensible policy. I think with mainstream news publications now obviously using LLMs in their day to day workflows, it's going to be hard to take a purist stance here. Some do this more responsibly than others. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if it is done responsibly. It's only a problem if it is done poorly. Poor writing is not a new thing, of course. Most of the moderation mechanisms that it uses wer…

> Poor writing is not a new thing, of course. Most of the moderation mechanisms that it uses were perfected a quarter century ago when sites like Slashdot were popular as a defense mechanism against bad user behavior. Bad user behavior impacts commenting, article submissions, and moderating itself. While bad users now have AI to abuse, the problem of a large volume of low quality content is is largely the same.

I respectfully disagree on almost all counts (beyond poor writing not being new, of course!).

Moderation mechanisms have not been perfected. They're certainly not perfect, and, given that, I don't know what would make one call them perfected. Humans have probably gotten more accustomed to being moderated, but it'd take a lot to convince me that we have even reached a decent place for moderation at moderate scale, let alone something that is good-to-perfect.

Most importantly, the problem of low quality content is now not the same. Magnitudes matter, and a difference in degree eventually becomes a difference in kind. LLMs have escalated the problem of garbage content beyond what would've previously been conceivable.

To illustrate: How do you dispose of several trash bags at once? Take them to the trash can. How do you dispose of several tens of trash bags at once? Need to rent a dumpster.

Or a classic: If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

Bringing it back to written content: doing human-driven moderation on hundreds of submissions a day is tractable with (idk) a couple of people. For thousands or tens of thousands? Intractable. And bear in mind that human-driven moderation is one of the things that keeps HN a better place on the net than many (most) others.

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

#438
post #271
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors want to see their investment grow. What is the conspiracy? HN also hosted a likely war criminal to talk about his experiencing killing children in gaza. You think these people have morals or ideals?

> HN also hosted a likely war criminal to talk about his experiencing killing children in gaza. WTF? What do you mean by "hosted"? I know it's the internet's happy place to blithely accuse others of monstrosity and then derive from that how nobody other then themselves has any "morals or ideals", but this one sticks in my craw.

There was a prominent AMA for an israeli soldier while stationed in Gaza oppressing brown minorities and blowing up their children. The world sees what Israel has done it's not an "online" thing there are real humanitarian orgs and the UN accusing Israel of genocide.

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

#439
post #169
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering YC invests in AI I doubt you’ll get anything of the sort. Conspiracy minded responses are low value, and yours is especially so considering HN bans AI comments.

Investors want to see their investment grow. What is the conspiracy? HN also hosted a likely war criminal to talk about his experiencing killing children in gaza. You think these people have morals or ideals?

[flagged]

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

#440
post #302
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"i'm 14 and this is deep" LLMs are mass theft of intellectual property. I didn't need them to "drive" this computer for the last ten years.

"intellectual property" never existed. there is only copyright (created to make sure book publishers pay authors), patents (encourage inventors to publish their research instead of keeping it secret) and trademarks (protect buyers and the factorys reputation from counterfeit goods). they are different systems created for completely different reasons. the idea of calling them all "property" came from lobbyists who wan…

It is theft.

"intellectual property does not exist" -> goes on to define various legal instruments for protecting intellectual property.

"you can't steal something if the original owner has it the whole time" Is this fifth grade? So if I go over to your house and trash it, it doesn't matter the house was under your possession the whole time.

No the rebalance is to sue these companies into the dirt.

Post reply on HN