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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?

#361

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gorgoiler wrote: post #252

One thing I’m guilty of on this site is not upvoting enough. I vote down the banality and flag the pollution. Upvoting doesn’t seem to come as naturally — whenever I read an interesting response it’s the last thing on my mind. It’s a good thing really. Interesting stories and comments are the norm. I wonder what the userDB says about any scarcity of upvoters? Are there many others like me? Am I not pulling my weight?…

I think that's a very common issue, not just with upvote based comment sections but reviews in general; people write reviews when they have something to complain about, which means that a lot of reviews are just bad. But at some point, app manufacturers and webshops started to prompt people to please leave a review if they like the app as well.

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

#362

Post by lekevicius »

gorgoiler wrote: post #252

One thing I’m guilty of on this site is not upvoting enough. I vote down the banality and flag the pollution. Upvoting doesn’t seem to come as naturally — whenever I read an interesting response it’s the last thing on my mind. It’s a good thing really. Interesting stories and comments are the norm. I wonder what the userDB says about any scarcity of upvoters? Are there many others like me? Am I not pulling my weight?…

HN already has a “reply” link below the comment. Adding “upvote” would solve both the timing (noticing upvote after reading the comment) and usability (solves touch target size on mobile).

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

#363

Post by brokenbutton »

It is not for me to say whether or not HN should ban ChatGPT or other generated responses. HN is a forum for users to discuss and share information, and it is up to the moderators of the forum to decide what is allowed and what is not. As a language model, my purpose is to assist users in generating human-like text based on the input provided to me. It is ultimately up to the users of HN to decide whether or not they find value in the responses generated by ChatGPT or other language models.

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

#364

Post by FpUser »

nobrains wrote: post #353
gorgoiler wrote: post #252

One thing I’m guilty of on this site is not upvoting enough. I vote down the banality and flag the pollution. Upvoting doesn’t seem to come as naturally — whenever I read an interesting response it’s the last thing on my mind. It’s a good thing really. Interesting stories and comments are the norm. I wonder what the userDB says about any scarcity of upvoters? Are there many others like me? Am I not pulling my weight?…

I am the opposite. I vote up easily, but think a hundred times before downvoting. Downvoting feels like censorship to me.

I never downvote at all. It reminds me for some reasons faceless mob with the clubs. But I have to admit that I do not upvote enough. Definitely not all the deserving posts.

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

#365

Post by foota »

mdp2021 wrote: post #354
foota wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

> seems Suppose you can consult an expert, or some bookworm who suffered from strokes that impaired judgement while preserving intaken notions.

Sure, being able to consult an expert on some topic is definitely more useful (and less likely to be reasonable sounding gibberish, depending on the field), but that's not always possible.

I've been somewhat skeptical of AI in the past, but I've been blown away by how useful chatGPT has been. I used it to learn a bunch about laser transceivers for fiber optics the other night. I didn't really believe everything it said, so I had to Google on the side, but I was lost trying to find answers on my own.

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

#366

Post by davidkunz »

psychphysic wrote: post #345
randomsearch wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. ChatGPT has made me realise the gulf between “short form essay” school writing and the professionals. Here’s an example article that begins with the cliched GPT-generated intro, and then switches up into crafted prose: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatg...

I agree with the under current what chatGPT does well is making a good first draft of a text which is intended to be mostly neutral. It is to communication what calculators are to mathematics.

ChatGPT can also change its style, e.g. "Make the following text more interesting".

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

#367

Post by sph »

midoridensha wrote: post #283
sph wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nextdoor lives on the internet. People in real life tend to be less terrible when you talk with them face to face. Put them on the internet, it's easy being an inconsiderate imbecile.

Putting them on a pseudo-anonymous web forum like Nextdoor shows what these people really think of you.

I disagree. While I subscribe to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, I do not believe the vast majority of people are awful. The current format of the internet fosters an unnatural way of behaving, but sit at a table with most people and they are able to disagree, or even get around to another viewpoint, pretty easily.

Sadly, I do think this view of mine of the Internet will die soon, as only the people that grew halfway during the Internet age are able to know: older people lack the finesse and the capacity to empathise with someone through text, younger people lack the knowledge that real life humans are capable of being decent, as most of their socialising is done through a screen now.

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

#368

Post by solarkraft »

gorgoiler wrote: post #252

One thing I’m guilty of on this site is not upvoting enough. I vote down the banality and flag the pollution. Upvoting doesn’t seem to come as naturally — whenever I read an interesting response it’s the last thing on my mind. It’s a good thing really. Interesting stories and comments are the norm. I wonder what the userDB says about any scarcity of upvoters? Are there many others like me? Am I not pulling my weight?…

I upvote a lot, wherever possible. Posting on the internet mostly feels like screaming into a void to me, so I'm always happy to know someone has read and even appreciates what I posted - which is why I try to do the same thing for others.

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

#370

Post by noirscape »

rglullis wrote: post #58
keiferski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has a far easier and less dystopian solution: charge money to access communities, which are smaller and more focused. I find it very unlikely that corporate PR bots will be paying $5 a month each to spam Substack communities, for example.

It's doesn't even have to be $5/month. Make a $10 deposit required for creating an account, and for each offense against the guidelines, you get a "fine" that proportional for the severity of the infraction (uncivil discussion? $0.10 cents, participating in hell-threads? $0.50. Comparing HN with reddit? $1.337 Obvious spam? Your whole $10 is gone.) Repeat offenses get exponentially more expensive, and you only get to…

SomethingAwful does something like this iirc, signing up costs like 10$ (more if you want to read archives).

It worked largely pretty well to keep out the trolls; as it turns out, a very low amount of people bother trying to troll others when it means that they get hit with an account ban and signing up again means paying the entry fee again.

You could probably also see it as the reason that while SA culture is uh... pretty toxic, it still largely managed to be fairly consistent and polite to each other (towards other communities... less so). Take away the 10$ signup fee and what you get instead is 4chan (whose original culture was a wholesale copy of SA at the time, since it was made for SA users after moot got banned from SA).

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