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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?

#101

Post by SoftTalker »

ALittleLight wrote: post #21
bragr wrote: post #13

Seems like a non problem. If it's a dull comment or just inane it'll get downvoted out of existence. If the bot actually produces something interesting about the topic, what's the problem?

I think it's a capacity problem. Right now, the "system" (legit HN users) have the capacity to deal with dull and inane comments currently provided by dull and inane human commenters. If the dull and inane comments become automated they can arbitrarily increase their number until the system lacks the capacity to deal with them. If there was one or ten bad comments on this thread - no problem. What if there were ten t…

To what benefit?

HN karma is pretty worthless outside of enabling a few capabilities here, and it's rather easy to attain those thresholds with some thoughtful participation.

What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments?

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

#102

Post by Trouble_007 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #101
ALittleLight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a capacity problem. Right now, the "system" (legit HN users) have the capacity to deal with dull and inane comments currently provided by dull and inane human commenters. If the dull and inane comments become automated they can arbitrarily increase their number until the system lacks the capacity to deal with them. If there was one or ten bad comments on this thread - no problem. What if there were ten t…

To what benefit? HN karma is pretty worthless outside of enabling a few capabilities here, and it's rather easy to attain those thresholds with some thoughtful participation. What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments?

Maybe adding a few more hay bails to your Stylometry fingerprint?

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

#104

Post by makeworld »

drusepth wrote: post #97

This debate reminds me a lot of early-Quora moderation discussions over anonymous users. People wanted to mass-ban any answers from "anonymous" because they weren't from "real people". I argued that, in a public forum, questions/answers should be judged on their content, rather than "who" wrote them. People disagreed. Anonymous functionality on Quora has since been gutted. AI-generated content seems similar. If a com…

I disagree, I care. I believe if something is written by a human it has inherent value. This belief seems to be held by a minority of tech people unfortunately.

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

#105

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

drusepth wrote: post #97

This debate reminds me a lot of early-Quora moderation discussions over anonymous users. People wanted to mass-ban any answers from "anonymous" because they weren't from "real people". I argued that, in a public forum, questions/answers should be judged on their content, rather than "who" wrote them. People disagreed. Anonymous functionality on Quora has since been gutted. AI-generated content seems similar. If a com…

Answer: Because AI-generated content is (frequently) lower quality while maintaining the appearance of high quality.

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

#106

Post by jfoster »

ramraj07 wrote: post #59
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…

It’ll be interesting if we soon come to a day when a comment can be suspected to be from a bot because it’s too coherent and smart!

Seems this isn't a widely held opinion, but some of what I've seen from ChatGPT is already better than the typical non-LLM equivalents.

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

#108

Post by gkoberger »

drusepth wrote: post #97

This debate reminds me a lot of early-Quora moderation discussions over anonymous users. People wanted to mass-ban any answers from "anonymous" because they weren't from "real people". I argued that, in a public forum, questions/answers should be judged on their content, rather than "who" wrote them. People disagreed. Anonymous functionality on Quora has since been gutted. AI-generated content seems similar. If a com…

Anonymous and AI are very different (at least currently).

Take the following statement: "The CEO of ACME Co is abusive and you should avoid him at all costs. Do not work there."

If it's an anonymous poster on Quora, that's a (potentially) valuable response and a good reason for that person to stay anonymous. But if it's AI, it can't possibly reflect any actual first-hand experience. At best it's a regurgitation of something out there already and at worst is a AI hallucination based on a mishmash of fact and fiction.

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