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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?

#631

Post by robbomacrae »

ShamelessC wrote: post #342
asone_tuhid wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be relatively trivial to write a script pretending to be a fast typist.

Grandparent is a typical HN comment. "Oh, I just learned about a subject? It's so easy! Of course none of the studied experts considered [my dumb thought experiment i just came up with]. Quality of the comments is getting subpar here - and it's _not_ GPT. There's been a similar downward trend for a while.

(FYI I haven't just learned about the subject.. I used to work at Reddit and have been involved in AI projects for a decade.)

In trying to understand how I triggered such a comment I read a few of your posts. I'm sorry for what you are dealing with and I'm all too familiar with it as it runs in my family. Just please do consider that there are people behind these comments... at least for now there are... 90% of the time.

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

#632

Post by robbomacrae »

asone_tuhid wrote: post #242
robbomacrae wrote: post #229

Maybe we need a forum where the only way to add comments or posts is to write them out in the editor (no copy paste) with captcha style checks on the writing speed and variation. Sure, one could manually copy a generated response but the cost in posting such content has increased significantly and hopefully past the point of making any sense in most cases.

It would be relatively trivial to write a script pretending to be a fast typist.

Interesting. Maybe a mini arms race would develop there. But regardless its still raised the effort required (which right now is pretty trivial) of writing bots.

This would have to go hand in hand with better user authentication and biometric login but I didn't mention that as there's no novelty here. But for example try writing a bot that creates Facebook or Apple accounts and you will quickly find its not trivial.

Right now, twitter, reddit etc actively encourage bots that are deemed useful in someway such as auto moderation bots and gimmicks like the gif reverse bot.

My argument is essentially for a service which decides the good bots are not worth the bad and dedicates some resources to shutting them off.

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

#633

Post by robbomacrae »

lionkor wrote: post #398
ShamelessC wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandparent is a typical HN comment. "Oh, I just learned about a subject? It's so easy! Of course none of the studied experts considered [my dumb thought experiment i just came up with]. Quality of the comments is getting subpar here - and it's _not_ GPT. There's been a similar downward trend for a while.

HN is probably growing, and with that come new users, and thats scary :)

If you had just bothered to click on my username you would realize my account is older than both yours and the one you are replying to.

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

#635

Post by dang »

clay-dreidels wrote: post #612
dang wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree - it was a throwaway line that I didn't think through. Maybe I'll add an edit. Thanks!

I apologize

If you mean about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950722, that's fine, but please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can sort it for you.

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

#636

Post by dang »

xupybd wrote: post #262
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…

Will the rules allow bots when they are more insightful and interesting than us meat bags?

We can burn that bridge when we come to it.

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

#637

Post by sudomatic »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #177

It is ultimately up to the moderators and administrators of a given website or forum to decide whether or not to allow generated responses from language models like ChatGPT. However, allowing such responses can potentially undermine the integrity and quality of discussions on the site, as they are not necessarily grounded in the knowledge and experiences of real people. Additionally, the use of language models to gen…

Yes ... but language models like ChatGPT can provide valuable insights and perspectives that may not be present in discussions among 'real' people. And promoting diversity of thought can provide a platform for under-represented voices to be heard.

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

#638

Post by dang »

seydor wrote: post #239

Why does HN have a negative reaction to ChatGPT? It has barely made it to the frontpage, and now we are already at "ban it". Is it blockchain all over again? or is HN simply getting too old? And what does flagging mean in the end?

HN doesn't have a negative reaction to ChatGPT. There's a range of responses, as you'd expect from any set of millions of people. Much if not most of that range has been positive-to-overawed.

Stories with "ChatGPT" in the title have spent over 300 hours on HN's frontpage so far. Of course, everyone sees a different sampling, but if you feel that it has "barely made it to the frontpage", your sample must be quite an outlier!

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(It's much more common for people to have seen so much of it that allergic reactions like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33880024 start breaking out)

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

#639

Post by mattnewton »

system2 wrote: post #289
mattnewton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that the HN team isn’t capable of solving this, but I think that would be a pretty significant increase in server cost to run every comment through a classifier.

We don't have millions of comments here. I think a $5 additional vcpu can solve it easily.

My gut tells me there is no way a single cpu model can quickly spit out useful scores here

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

#640

Post by jacquesm »

wizeman wrote: post #611
jacquesm wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the future, it might be AI who designs better "hardware"/wetware for humans. If you don't change your mind (no pun intended) but most of humanity does, it sounds like you'll just be left behind, like very old people who don't even know how to use a fixed-line telephone, never mind a smartphone, computer or the internet. Except, perhaps, in a much more profound/extreme manner.

I am already a 'very old person' by your standards, don't have a smartphone and yet I absolutely do not feel 'left behind' in any way shape or form. In fact I feel more in control of the tech around me than most of the people that I interact with who allow the technology to shape their world and the way they interact with others. Tech serves me, I don't serve tech.
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