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Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

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Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#21

Post by imadr »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

StackOverflow and Google are finished. This is expected and it may not look like it now, but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back. In a few years from now when ChatGPT and perhaps the much awaited GPT-4 are released, get better, (or even an implementation is open sourced) it will further plummet the usage for SO and Google. The genie is o…

> but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back.

Answers given by chatgpt have a high chance of being incorrect, how is this a ban on advancement in technology? How is banning chatgpt in it's current state unreasonable for a website that tries to provide correct answers?

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#22

Post by rogerb »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #10

Are there some examples of the answers by ChatGPT? I'd really like to look at them.

prompt: write a short essay as a scientist which is better, celsius or fahrentheit

partial answer which some faulty reasoning about precision:

First, the Celsius scale is based on a more intuitive and logical reference point. The Celsius scale sets the freezing point of water at 0 degrees and the boiling point of water at 100 degrees, whereas the Fahrenheit scale sets the freezing point of water at 32 degrees and the boiling point at 212 degrees. This means that the Celsius scale has a smaller unit interval, which allows for more precise temperature measurement.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#23

Post by liuliu »

vxNsr wrote: post #11

Do they have a plan for identifying chatGPT posts aside from “looks like it”?

Since it is a centralized service provided by OpenAI, they should really provide services (paid or not) that given a text, check if it is generated by ChatGPT recently.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#24

Post by FooBarWidget »

It wouldn't surprise me at all if ChatGPT was trained on data originating from Stack Overflow. Not familiar with deep learning algorithms but I can't imagine that it would be a good idea to have an unintended training data loop.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#25

Post by mjr00 »

colesantiago wrote: post #3

StackOverflow and Google are finished. This is expected and it may not look like it now, but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back. In a few years from now when ChatGPT and perhaps the much awaited GPT-4 are released, get better, (or even an implementation is open sourced) it will further plummet the usage for SO and Google. The genie is o…

> StackOverflow and Google are finished. This is expected and it may not look like it now, but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back.

Depends on the reason for banning a technology. In this case it isn't because SO's business model is threatened, really; right now it's largely because the ChatGPT answers are usually wrong, and getting spammed to high hell by people who think they're clever by using ChatGPT to answer questions.

It's similar to image boards banning or requiring labels for AI-generated art. It's not that artists feel threatened... it's that the people looking at art don't want to have to wade through a ton of similar-looking, mediocre AI-generated crap.

Or to put it another way; if I set up some bots to start spamming every HN post with dozens of ChatGPT generated comments based on the submission title[0], and I (rightfully) got banned for such, is that because HN feels threatened by ChatGPT?

[0] not using text from the article as a prompt to more accurately simulate the average HN comment

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#26

Post by samcheng »

rogerb wrote: post #22
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #10

Are there some examples of the answers by ChatGPT? I'd really like to look at them.

prompt: write a short essay as a scientist which is better, celsius or fahrentheit partial answer which some faulty reasoning about precision: First, the Celsius scale is based on a more intuitive and logical reference point. The Celsius scale sets the freezing point of water at 0 degrees and the boiling point of water at 100 degrees, whereas the Fahrenheit scale sets the freezing point of water at 32 degrees and the…

Perfect. This kind of junk is going to litter our collective knowledge bases for years. It looks just good enough to be authoritative, but is fundamentally incorrect.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#28

Post by ksaj »

cokeandpepsi wrote: post #14
colesantiago wrote: post #3

StackOverflow and Google are finished. This is expected and it may not look like it now, but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back. In a few years from now when ChatGPT and perhaps the much awaited GPT-4 are released, get better, (or even an implementation is open sourced) it will further plummet the usage for SO and Google. The genie is o…

I'm not sure about that, it's a temporary ban and the reasoning presented in their post is sound they are swarmmed with a massive influx of incorrect answers to questions that 'look somewhat correct at first glance'

I found a great example to demonstrate. I asked how to transpile Lisp to C. It perfectly described what transpiling is, said (correctly) that not all Lisp structures will translate directly into C, so those parts of the code may be broken, then gave this method for transpiling:

    sbcl --script example.lsp --output example.c
Now... that would be REALLY GREAT if it was true. But SBCL is not a transpiler (except for bytecode, but that's a little different), and this command will just error out. But boy, do I wish it was actually a thing!

As far as AI answers go, I would give it two thumbs up. However, the information is wrong, and so I must save my thumbs for another time.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#29

Post by msla »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #24

It wouldn't surprise me at all if ChatGPT was trained on data originating from Stack Overflow. Not familiar with deep learning algorithms but I can't imagine that it would be a good idea to have an unintended training data loop.

An intended double-loop might be interesting: Train one GPT on the output of another.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#30

Post by insanitybit »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #20
insanitybit wrote: post #16

> Overall, because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers. Would like to learn more about this. Tons of SO posts are wrong, it's almost always the case that you have to scroll past the accepted answer to find one that's actually right. Is ChatGPT much…

Even if it is the same why should it be allowed? We want better answers not same shit or something even marginally worse

I'm asking what makes it worse.
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