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Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

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Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#191

Post by wcfrobert »

_heimdall wrote: post #141
TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are we going through this encoding-decoding process? I think succinctness and low-noise writing will be treasured in the age of AI. I hope so, because I hope this will lead to making it OK to skip the manual encoding process. After all, AI isn't doing anything new here - it's automating the customary need for communication to be in wordy prose paying right respects to right people. Maybe people will finally see…

It's never been my read on people that wordy prose like this is done as a formality. If a lawyer or am academic wrote it, it most often comes off as overly complex wording to prove a point of intellect or superiority. For basically anyone else, when I see prose like that it most often reads like (a) they either don't understand the topic well or (b) they don't need to write it at all other than to stay busy and/or ap…

A well-written, well-formatted email does convey some level of professionalism right? Even if it is a little wordy. Maybe this is no longer true with AI.

I went to a career fair recently and a new grad sent me an email afterwards. His three-paragraph email can basically be reduced to "I want to work for this company. I am qualified. Please hire me". But I don't know how I would feel about that if someone actually sent me an email like this.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#192

Post by wcfrobert »

friendzis wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are we going through this encoding-decoding process? I think succinctness and low-noise writing will be treasured in the age of AI. I hope so, because I hope this will lead to making it OK to skip the manual encoding process. After all, AI isn't doing anything new here - it's automating the customary need for communication to be in wordy prose paying right respects to right people. Maybe people will finally see…

I don't see this happening. People learn wordy prose in education: an assignment requires certain amount of words, but the student is either unwilling or unable to come up with information-packed content and resort to padding with fluff. Some become copywriters, some middle managers, some HR. Eliminating fluffery makes these positions, built around wrangling as much written word as possible, suddenly obsolete and con…

Information-dense written words are beneficial in the corporate setting too. We just call them "executive summaries".

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#193

Post by wcfrobert »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118
wcfrobert wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that comment is describing is already here. A colleague sent an email that was obviously AI-generated (bloated, repetitive, low signal-to-noise ratio). I guess he's quite new to the team and it's a sign of formality, but I really don't mind if you send me just the bullet-point notes... Why are we going through this encoding-decoding process? I think succinctness and low-noise writing will be treasured in the age…

> Why are we going through this encoding-decoding process? I think succinctness and low-noise writing will be treasured in the age of AI. I hope so, because I hope this will lead to making it OK to skip the manual encoding process. After all, AI isn't doing anything new here - it's automating the customary need for communication to be in wordy prose paying right respects to right people. Maybe people will finally see…

Bullet point lists aren't always the most optimal. Anything longer than 6 bullet points actually reads worse.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#194

Post by TeMPOraL »

softwreoutthere wrote: post #149
TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are we going through this encoding-decoding process? I think succinctness and low-noise writing will be treasured in the age of AI. I hope so, because I hope this will lead to making it OK to skip the manual encoding process. After all, AI isn't doing anything new here - it's automating the customary need for communication to be in wordy prose paying right respects to right people. Maybe people will finally see…

Writing is an art, and some enjoy producing or consuming verbose prose. I hope AI doesn't change this. Personally, I don't appreciate verbosity while reading blog or news articles. However, I don't think its bullshit. If a author is sharing, they likely are doing so in a manner that they find enjoyable. The way I see it, you don't need to read communications like this if you don't enjoy it. Much of what gets said rep…

- Correct re. writing as art - but context here is stuff like work e-mails.

- Such e-mails are in many ways similar to a comment thread like this -> my reply is a valid example of my point.

- I wrote the comment the way I actually think about this topic. Would it be better if expanded to full-blown prose?

- Alas, this doesn't fly at work (and rarely on Internet).

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#195

Post by canadianfella »

plasticeagle wrote: post #124
josephg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll check it out. I’ve just been asking chatgpt for recipes lately and it’s doing a great job. The other night I made béchamel sauce for the first time (cooking for 6 dinner guests!). ChatGPT nailed it. I’m 2% sad for all the recipe websites it’s ripping content from. But then I remember what utter Adsense cancer they all are. “My mum made this recipe! You’ll never guess step 6!” While being plastered with 8 auto pl…

I mean, that's fair to some extent. But on the other hand you could have just purchased any cookbook that covers the basics, instead of taking all this web-scaped content without attribution or compensation. I mean, look, I totally get it and I'm certainly guilty of this too - but let's not pretend that we're not basically stealing other people's content here. Much of the time those people running those recipe websit…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#196

Post by _heimdall »

wcfrobert wrote: post #191
_heimdall wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been my read on people that wordy prose like this is done as a formality. If a lawyer or am academic wrote it, it most often comes off as overly complex wording to prove a point of intellect or superiority. For basically anyone else, when I see prose like that it most often reads like (a) they either don't understand the topic well or (b) they don't need to write it at all other than to stay busy and/or ap…

A well-written, well-formatted email does convey some level of professionalism right? Even if it is a little wordy. Maybe this is no longer true with AI. I went to a career fair recently and a new grad sent me an email afterwards. His three-paragraph email can basically be reduced to "I want to work for this company. I am qualified. Please hire me". But I don't know how I would feel about that if someone actually sen…

That's totally fair, there's a balance. Maybe a better argument I could make is that I find people often lean too far to the end of being verbose without any real reason to it. You may not want to be blunt or rude either, the balance is in the middle.

For the career fair grad you mentioned, a couple paragraphs would have been my expectation - three paragraphs isn't off base. If I were them I'd want to say I want to work for you, but I'd also want to at least mention why I want to work there and why you'd want me there. To me that extra context is a better email than just saying "hire me" in one or two sentences.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#197

Post by vidarh »

_heimdall wrote: post #167
vidarh wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both income and expenditure-based GDP calculations income or consumption by households are part of the calculation (which means the calculations will not give the same result). You can make an argument that if the hypothetical workers are salaried they're not technically paid for any given task, while I'd argue that there was an opportunity cost (they could have done other work than digging/filling it in), so ther…

Sounds like you prefer expenditure or income calculations over production. That makes sense and I think I'd agree. I'm not sold on tying it back to opportunity cost though. That may require knowing the potential value of work that could have been done instead. It also means that we could view GDP as the potential economic value if everything is optimized, regardless of what is actually produced. That feels wrong to m…

Production will only change things there if both tasks are carried out as part of the same service, charged as one. Otherwise, there will still be two outputs that nullify each other but both cause GDP to increase. But even then, if you charge someone for a service to dig and fill in holes, that there is no tangible product at the end does not mean there isn't an output that has a price, and that so increases GDP, just the same as, say, performing a dance does not leave a tangible product at the end, but the service still has a price and a value, and paying for it still increases GDP.

With respect to the opportunity cost, the point is not being able to quantity it, but that whether or not the task is productive, because it takes time, it has a cost.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#198

Post by josephg »

_heimdall wrote: post #166
josephg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no attribution or financial contributions to the original creator This is an interesting idea, but I don't think it makes much sense to apply that logic to classic kitchen recipes. Who, exactly, is the original creator here? The common recipes I'm asking chatgpt about - crepes, homemade pasta or bechamel sauce - are hundreds of years old. We could extend your metaphor to say that the bechamel sauce recipe has been…

I think the underlying question there, and one I don't have a solid answer for, is whether ChatGPT is considered to be scraping the underlying recipe or the webpage itself and all the content that goes along with it. The recipe may be centuries old potentially, but the page, content, images, etc are all content created and owned by the site creator Edit: for a better example - Brothers Grimm stories aren't protected,…

I think the real question is this: Is chatgpt "just copying" the content in its training set? What constitutes plagerism, exactly?

If ChatGPT is reproducing content verbatim from its training set, then I think the claim its violating copyright holds a lot of water. (And I think there was a NYT lawsuit claiming such - and I wish them well).

But if chatgpt learns from 100 recipes for bechamel sauce, and synthesizes them into its own, totally original description, then I don't see how what its doing is any different from what the authors of those recipe books & websites are doing. If anything, its probably synthesizing a lot more sources than any recipe author. If the only common factor between chatgpt's output and any specific source is the (public domain) recipe itself then that seems ethically in the clear to me.

I can't see a justification to criminalise what chatgpt is doing with recipes, without casting so wide a net as to open recipe authors up for persecution in the same way.

Scraping a website isn't illegal. When humans do it, we call it browsing the web.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#199

Post by _heimdall »

josephg wrote: post #198
_heimdall wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the underlying question there, and one I don't have a solid answer for, is whether ChatGPT is considered to be scraping the underlying recipe or the webpage itself and all the content that goes along with it. The recipe may be centuries old potentially, but the page, content, images, etc are all content created and owned by the site creator Edit: for a better example - Brothers Grimm stories aren't protected,…

I think the real question is this: Is chatgpt "just copying" the content in its training set? What constitutes plagerism, exactly? If ChatGPT is reproducing content verbatim from its training set, then I think the claim its violating copyright holds a lot of water. (And I think there was a NYT lawsuit claiming such - and I wish them well). But if chatgpt learns from 100 recipes for bechamel sauce, and synthesizes the…

At a minimum it's a big legal gray area. Writing a book review isn't illegal and requires no financial engagement with the publisher, but I can't actually find if SparkNotes or CliffNotes have to pay royalties. Those would be a pretty good parallel in my mind, they are doing more than a quick summary or review and are effectively compressing the content.

It feels wrong to me but that says nothing of the laws we currently have or how a judge would rule on it. Personally if I were on a jury I'd be inclined to side with the NY Times in their case against OpenAI, with the huge caveat that I only know the basic of their case and am not bound to only what's officially evidence.

Re: Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

#200

Post by _heimdall »

vidarh wrote: post #197
_heimdall wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you prefer expenditure or income calculations over production. That makes sense and I think I'd agree. I'm not sold on tying it back to opportunity cost though. That may require knowing the potential value of work that could have been done instead. It also means that we could view GDP as the potential economic value if everything is optimized, regardless of what is actually produced. That feels wrong to m…

Production will only change things there if both tasks are carried out as part of the same service, charged as one. Otherwise, there will still be two outputs that nullify each other but both cause GDP to increase. But even then, if you charge someone for a service to dig and fill in holes, that there is no tangible product at the end does not mean there isn't an output that has a price, and that so increases GDP, ju…

> even then, if you charge someone for a service to dig and fill in holes, that there is no tangible product at the end does not mean there isn't an output that has a price, and that so increases GDP, just the same as, say, performing a dance does not leave a tangible product at the end, but the service still has a price and a value, and paying for it still increases GDP.

That blurs the line between the different calculation methods though, doesn't it? If nothing is produced then the production method of calculating wouldn't account for the transaction.

This method would also open the possibility for fraud. If the government wanted to boost GDP, for example, they could hire a bunch of people to dig a whole and fill it in all year. Would they? Probably not, they have easier ways to waste money and game GDP. But they could and that seems like a problem.

> because it takes time, it has a cost.

I don't know of any economic metrics that quantify the cost of time like this though. People like to point to unpaid labor as a huge blindspot for GDP precisely because of that - when your day is spent taking care of your home, children, or elderly parents the time is spent but GDP isn't impacted.

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