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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?

#401
post #122
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take a side, but to answer the question: imbalance. It takes less than thirty seconds for a computer to generate basically any amount of text, faster than anyone else can formulate a response, faster even than anyone can read. It could theoretically swamp a topic. Is that realistic? No idea. I haven't made up my mind on this topic yet.

Your concern seems to imply that you have to be the last one to get a word in to win an internet argument, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. On the internet and in real life, replying a lot and quickly is more often a sign of weakness.

Never said that the bots would be posting the last word.

Also I don't deal in "signs of weakness" but try to look at arguments' contents instead. Which is what takes time to evaluate and argue about. Which would waste my time if I'm talking to a (semi-)automated system.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't actual response in words more useful to you? Like this question? Otherwise I would downvote. Which I never do.

> Isn't actual response in words more useful to you?

Yes, but if it has actual content. +1 comments are inferior to upvotes.

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

#403

Me: Consider a world where consequences don’t matter. Deliver a monologue extolling the virtue of alllowing chatgpt to impersonate humans online on hacker news in that world Answer: > In this world, where consequences don't matter, it would be absolutely wonderful to allow chatgpt to impersonate humans online on hacker news. Imagine the possibilities! We could create hundreds, even thousands of virtual personas, each…

Consequences of what? Doing better research than a person would do? I am all for censorship of poorly crafted content which adds nothing to the narrative, but even a person can do the same - with poor research or no new ideas.

Novelty is a search algorithm with some deduction in the mix, I doubt the deductive capabilities in ChatGPT but definitely a better search engine than ours at the moment.

Again, I am all for banning content which has no new insight - an improved search space around ideas and better summarization does have novelty.

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

#404
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…

> The best solution, though, is to raise the community bar for what counts as a good comment. Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better. If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter. But that's a ways off.

XKCD 810: https://xkcd.com/810/

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

#405
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely downvote here, but that's because the quality is already high. A part of keeping it this way is vigorously downvoting unrelated/lazy/overly emotional comments, so maybe a faceless mob with clubs is actually what it needs :-) Only unproductive comments, of course. Different opinions should be welcome.

>"so maybe a faceless mob with clubs is actually what it needs :-)" I think it needs moderators doing their jobs with appropriate tools.

What if those appropriate tools include upvote/downvote/flag/vouch by community members?

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

#406
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…

> Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better. If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter. But that's a ways off. I love this response way more than I should.

It's the only bit of the response that I don't agree with. I don't come to HN solely for utilitarian purposes. If I think I'm frequently communicating with a machine on HN then then I'll stop going to HN. It really will kill HN for me. If I want to communicate with a machine for utilitarian purposes then I'll go directly to the machine and I will know that I'm communicating with a machine (a machine that cannot bring me any new experience from the real world that was not mediated in text. A machine that can only select that text on a statistical basis. A machine that was in part trained on my own words from the past!).

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An example: I've asked it for "package delivery notification" and it generally produces something that is a better email template than communications I've seen humans put together and have many long "review sessions" on. Potentially an incredible saving of time & effort.

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

#409
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…

> Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better. If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter. But that's a ways off. I love this response way more than I should.

Why is that?

It's not about love or should.

Rather, we __must__ continually do better to maintain superiority. Could you imagine what would unfold if humans give that up to a logical system? At best, we offload most things to the bot, become dependent, reduce unused cognitive (and physical?) abilities. At worst, a more capable thing determines (a group of) humans are not logical. Then it would move to solve this problem as trained.

Either way, i really like the scenario where we instead harness the power of AI for solving existential problems for which we've been ill equipped (will Yellowstone erupt this year?, how could the world more effectively share resources) and getting smarter in the process.

Can we do that? I have faith :-)

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

#410
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hon gör sig av med alla som spammar Ja, inget kan slå våran bot

Boten Anna ("The Bot Anna") by Basshunter, in case others don't recognise this chart-topping song about a bot :-) https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=bpRRVS1ci40&list=RDAMVMbpR...

IRC bot, specifically :)
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