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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?

#211

Post by foota »

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…

Based on what Ive seen, I strongly believe that chatGPT responses to many questions are better than a non human expert in many cases. You can still generally tell when a response is from chatGPT, at least by "default". Maybe someone could prompt it to sound more human, but it's really just that the AI responses are cold, not that they're imo worse.

Not that I want AI responses, but that's my 2 cents.

I also think there's a difference between a "bot" account, which I think the common definition of would be one that only or mostly posts AI responses, and posting a comment on your account that you don't claim is from an AI (or even when you do as an afterthought).

While many people wouldn't defend the first, more might defend the latter as acceptable, and I wouldn't say a "no bots" policy would be interpreted as banning the latter.

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

#212

Post by khyryk »

scarface74 wrote: post #66
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…

The problem with ChatGPT is that it often reads authoritative. But is often just flat out wrong. I asked it a few questions for which I consider myself a subject matter expert and the answers were laughably wrong.

My biggest fear for the short term is that tools like ChatGPT would allow spamming most of the internet with the equivalent of a Gish Gallop -- so much plausible-looking bullshit spewed out in a short time that it would be a lost cause to attempt to sort through it.

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

#213

Post by squokko »

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…

ChatGPT is already capable of producing writing far superior to the average or even above-average native English speaker, as long as it has a reasonable statement to make provided in the prompt. So, we're already at the point where (most) humans can't do better.

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

#215

Post by beebeepka »

midoridensha wrote: post #168
ramraj07 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is, but it’s definitely weird when the jokes only funny when it’s not easy to think of it as a real possibility! In someways this thread sounds like the real first step in the raise of true AI, in a weird banal encroachment kind of way.

When I compare the ChatGPT-generated comments to those written by real humans on most web forums, I could easily see myself preferring to only interact with AIs in the future rather than humans, where I have to deal with all kinds of stupidity and bad and rude behavior. The AIs aren't going to take over by force, it'll be because they're just nicer to deal with than real humans. Before long, we'll let AIs govern us,…

Thanks for deciding for us. I greatly appreciate people who overuse "we" when expressing their own thoughts.

I would take rude, well-intentioned jerks to kindly speaking devils seeking to deceive me. Have a good one in your pod, though

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

#216

Post by arcturus17 »

foota wrote: post #211
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…

Based on what Ive seen, I strongly believe that chatGPT responses to many questions are better than a non human expert in many cases. You can still generally tell when a response is from chatGPT, at least by "default". Maybe someone could prompt it to sound more human, but it's really just that the AI responses are cold, not that they're imo worse. Not that I want AI responses, but that's my 2 cents. I also think the…

Based on what I’ve seen, ChatGPT has some disastrous responses. I asked it yesterday if it made sense to speak of partial derivatives in single-variable calculus and it made an absolute carnage of the response. I could not steer it with prompts towards something intelligible - it only produced jank.

I do not want people who cannot answer a question in the first place to copy-paste ChatGPT responses, just like it has always been bad etiquette to refer people to Google without further commentary.

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

#217

Post by roenxi »

xcambar wrote: post #154
im3w1l wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter. I disagree with this. The exact same comment written by a human is more valuable than one written by a bot. For example imagine I relate something that actually happened to me vs a bot making up a story. Byte for byte identical stories. They could be realistic, and have several good lessons baked in. Yet one is more valuable,…

From the perspective of the receiver of the message, there is no such thing as the story being true or not. If it's byte for byte the same story and I don't know whether the author is a human or a bot and I believe the story, the same reaction will be triggered at every level. The emotions, the symbolics, the empathy, all the same, whether the author is this or that. As a matter of fact, none of us know whether the o…

The fact that the nature of the story teller mattering more than the nature of the story is a bias. One of the more compelling robot-takeover scenarios is they turn out to be much better at making decisions because a machine can be programmed to weight strong evidence more strongly than an emotionally compelling story.

It is visible even in this thread. im3w1l cares about the teller of the story because that is the medium to relate to another human's experience. Which is fine, but that is probably part of the decision making process. And that is a terrible way to make decisions when good alternatives (like poverty statistics, crime statistics, measures of economic success, measures of health & wellbeing) exist.

A fake story out of a chatbot which leads to people making good decisions is more valuable than the typical punter's well-told life experiences. People wouldn't like that though.

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

#218

Post by foota »

arcturus17 wrote: post #216
foota wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what Ive seen, I strongly believe that chatGPT responses to many questions are better than a non human expert in many cases. You can still generally tell when a response is from chatGPT, at least by "default". Maybe someone could prompt it to sound more human, but it's really just that the AI responses are cold, not that they're imo worse. Not that I want AI responses, but that's my 2 cents. I also think the…

Based on what I’ve seen, ChatGPT has some disastrous responses. I asked it yesterday if it made sense to speak of partial derivatives in single-variable calculus and it made an absolute carnage of the response. I could not steer it with prompts towards something intelligible - it only produced jank. I do not want people who cannot answer a question in the first place to copy-paste ChatGPT responses, just like it has…

Really? Because this is what I got:

"Me: How do partial derivative apply in one dimensional calculus?

In one-dimensional calculus, a partial derivative is a derivative taken with respect to one variable, while treating all other variables as constants. For example, if a function f(x,y) depends on two variables x and y, the partial derivative of f with respect to x is denoted as ∂f/∂x, and it represents the rate at which the value of the function f changes with respect to the variable x, while holding the variable y constant.

Me: What about the partial derivative of a function that has only one input variable?

If a function has only one input variable, then taking the partial derivative with respect to that variable is equivalent to taking the ordinary derivative of the function. For example, if f(x) is a function that depends only on the variable x, then the partial derivative of f with respect to x is denoted as ∂f/∂x, and it is equivalent to the ordinary derivative of f, which is denoted as f'(x) or df/dx. In this case, the partial derivative ∂f/∂x represents the rate at which the value of the function f changes with respect to the variable x."

Clearly in the first question it got confused about the difference between single variable calculus and multivariable, but in it's defense that's somewhat arbitrary. It's second answer seems spot on?

That said, I agree that accounts presenting chatGPT responses as their own or even with a disclaimer, is... Weird. And I don't want it on hn.

edit: I'm impressed it got the unicode in there :-)

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

#219

Post by midoridensha »

andsoitis wrote: post #196
midoridensha wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you haven't heard of a VPN?

You can require address as part of credit card validation.

So only people with credit cards are allowed to use the forum? That shuts out a lot of people, especially in places where credit cards aren't used.

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

#220

Post by godmode2019 »

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…

Hi dang, is my account shadow banned? Or in any way limited

I hardly post because when I do its down voted, sometimes the post is popular but after 24 hours its back to being down voted.

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