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Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

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Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#461

Post by Udo »

aeyes wrote: post #458
Udo wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever the "old guard" is, they don't have special downvoting powers, do they? In the end, it's a numbers game. As far as I can tell, every user gets exactly one vote, no matter how influential. If "they" really hate you, or if enough normal users flag you, HN has other ways of letting you know, like shadow banning/auto-deading or flagging your account so your comments immediately fall to the bottom of the page no m…

Can you even downvote on new accounts?

You need to be above a certain karma threshold, but it's not high (500 or so).

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#462

Post by FollowingTheDao »

nobrains wrote: post #353
gorgoiler wrote: post #252

One thing I’m guilty of on this site is not upvoting enough. I vote down the banality and flag the pollution. Upvoting doesn’t seem to come as naturally — whenever I read an interesting response it’s the last thing on my mind. It’s a good thing really. Interesting stories and comments are the norm. I wonder what the userDB says about any scarcity of upvoters? Are there many others like me? Am I not pulling my weight?…

I am the opposite. I vote up easily, but think a hundred times before downvoting. Downvoting feels like censorship to me.

> Downvoting feels like censorship to me.

It is. As is upvoting, since it makes the unvoted and down voted harder to see.

I do not understand why people think this "mob rule" of up and down voting will end up with the "best" things being selected. It will only be the most common/neutral things being brought to our attention.

Unpopular ideas are not wrong, just unpopular. Just ask Copernicus.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#463

Post by totalZero »

dang wrote: post #55

They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either! Edit: It's a bit hard to point to past explanations since the word "bots" appears in many contexts, but I did find these: https://news.yc…

> Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better.

You overestimate me.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#464

Post by worldsayshi »

sph wrote: post #244
kossTKR wrote: post #24

The fact that soon the internet will be so flooded with bots that you'll be floating eternally alone in a sea of imposters unless we create some draconian real person ID system is a tragedy so great it's crazy it has not dawned on people yet. I started out loving the net because of the feelings of connection and partly because of the honesty and discussions stemming from at least pseudo anonymity, both silly stuff an…

Fellow Internet human, I agree with you completely, there must be dozens of us. I wonder if I am just becoming a Luddite, or people have no idea whatsoever what will this unleash on already frail social fabric of the Internet. I wonder if we've reached a singularity point where you cannot be sure you are engaging with a human anymore and it's going to be instrumental in the demise of the net. First, it was the big co…

Neither technology or luddism is inherently bad. Technology is bad when it causes bad outcomes. And the generous interpretation of luddism is that it's about working against bad outcomes of technology.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#465

Post by swader999 »

chirau wrote: post #452
swader999 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct in stating that current chat bots, such as GPT, do not have the ability to form opinions or interpret new information beyond a limited short term memory. This is a limitation of current technology, and as a result, chat bots are limited in their ability to engage in complex arguments or discussions. However, it is important to note that the development of AI technology is ongoing, and it is possible t…

I am pretty sure this response was generated by a bot/GPT. As good as they are, you can tell what's GPT stuff and what isn't.

I am not a bot or a GPT. I am a real person with my own thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. While I am capable of critical thinking, reasoning, and disagreement. Just because my response may not align with your beliefs does not mean that it was automatically generated by a computer program.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#466

Post by FollowingTheDao »

zimbatm wrote: post #419
nobrains wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the opposite. I vote up easily, but think a hundred times before downvoting. Downvoting feels like censorship to me.

What we're looking for are high signal/noise ration posts to expand the conversation into new areas that are interesting. If the ratio is too low (eg: spam, shallow content, same old tired point), it's not an issue to downvote IMO. That helps with the current post and also encourages good behaviour in the future. This is not the same as downvoting with a point that you personally disagree with. This is censorship and…

> This is not the same as downvoting with a point that you personally disagree with. This is censorship and toxic to the community.

But this is what CONSTANTLY happens here. It is the norm everywhere there is likes/dislikes. It is inverse authoritarianism.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#467

Post by magicalhippo »

wruza wrote: post #224
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is -of course- the famous Alan Turing paper about this [1], which is rapidly becoming more relevant by the day. Alan Turing's paper was quite forward thinking. At the time, most people did not yet consider men and women to be equal (let alone homosexuals). I don't think it is so important whether a comment is written by a man, a woman, a child, or a , or some combination thereof. What is important is that the c…

I don't think it is so important whether a comment is written by a man, a woman, a child, or a , or some combination thereof. What is important is that the comment stands on its own, and has merit This feels wrong for some reasons. A generalized knowledge that AI can express may be useful. But if it makes things up convincingly, the result that someone may follow its line of thought may be worse for them? With all sh…

> But if it makes things up convincingly, the result that someone may follow its line of thought may be worse for them?

How is this different than folks getting convinced by "media" people that mass shootings didn't happen, that 9/11 was an inside job or similar?

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#468

Post by jacquesm »

galangalalgol wrote: post #459
jacquesm wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that (1) human hardware is fixed and (2) computer hardware is variable and getting better all the time and (3) computer software is variable and getting better all the time. The question then is if and when they cross over and the recent developments in this domain have me seriously worried that such cross over is inevitable. Human/AI hybrid may well be slowed down by the human bit...

We could work on (1) right? Or as our biological component ceases to be useful to our hybrid self, we can discard it, like a baby tooth. We thought chess or go defined humanity, turns out it is driving.

No thanks, for me. I'll be happy to be just biological and interact with computers through keyboards and screens.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#470

Post by mysterydip »

Jataman606 wrote: post #222
photochemsyn wrote: post #29

Yes, ban it. I've been playing around with ChatGPT and where it starts failing is just where things start becoming interesting. What that means is that it's wikipedia-smart, i.e. it doesn't really tell you anything you can't find out with a minimal Google search. It does however cut the time-to-answer quite a bit, particularly if it's an area of knowledge you're not really that familiar with. But it bottoms out right…

> if it's an area of knowledge you're not really that familiar with Thats actually dangerous way to use ChatGPT. Since you don't know the real answer you won't be able to tell when it gets something wrong.

Honestly this could be the silver lining of ChatGPT. Some people trust the answers of random commenters on the internet for anything from how things work technically to medical advice. Having an ever-increasing chance that any given commenter literally knows nothing except how to string words together might break that habit.
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