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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?

#421

Post by jacquesm »

asne11 wrote: post #409
bilekas wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prob…

The problem is that (1) human hardware is fixed and (2) computer hardware is variable and getting better all the time and (3) computer software is variable and getting better all the time. The question then is if and when they cross over and the recent developments in this domain have me seriously worried that such cross over is inevitable. Human/AI hybrid may well be slowed down by the human bit...

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

#422

Post by flurdy »

andy_ppp wrote: post #318
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?…

The UI for voting in general isn’t great and gives me anxiety on mobile so I almost never click it. With my sausage fingers it’d be good if the clickable area was bigger and up voting had some CTA…

Slashdot moderation for the win! Except it didn't...

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

#423

Post by Udo »

xienze wrote: post #412
nobrains wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder why this site -- or any site with up/downvoting, really -- doesn't implement a "must comment to downvote" policy. Far too often downvoting is just the "I disagree and think you suck" button[0]. Make someone elaborate on _why_ they disagree or _why_ the original poster is wrong before allowing a downvote. 0: in particular, on HN the downvote button also seems to serve the purpose of "I don't think other peopl…

People have differing opinions on downvoting. The majority seems to think that disagreement is enough. Personally, I'm in the same camp as you: a comment has to actively detract from the conversation to get my downvote. I don't see HN changing in that regard though.

Requiring a comment is probably a bit much, but I do think two separate downvote buttons would be helpful to the commenter, even if only they could see this feedback. Maybe one link labeled with "disagree" and one with "low quality" or something. UI-wise this would have the added benefit of letting new users know that HN officially expects them to consider both options.

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

#424

Post by KirillPanov »

metafunctor wrote: post #387
rglullis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't this be treated like parking fines by the very rich—just a tiny price to keep broadcasting whatever drivel they feel like?

No; it would be treated like parking fines by the very rich United Parcel Service corporation -- i.e., an extremely effective deterrent.

The penalty scales with the number of bot accounts, but even Bill Gates can only drive one automobile at a time.

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

#426

Post by jacquesm »

msravi wrote: post #286
max-ibel wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trurl's machine, indeed. It insisted that the volume of the unit cube and unit ball are both the same, and 1, in all dimensions, even though it knew the correct formula for the surface of the n-ball. Wen I pointed out that n=2 is a simple counter example, it refused to talk to me (no answer, try-again button, ad inifinitum). Well, safer than Trurl's machine.

Don't even have to go that far. Just have it multiply two 3 or 4-digit numbers. It'll give an incorrect answer somewhere in the ballpark of the right answer.

You're asking a language model to do math. What's impressive there is not that it fails but that it comes up with an answer at all, especially if it is in the ballpark.

Most humans would do exactly the same unless given either access to pen and paper or a calculator, and it would likely be trivial for GPT-3 input processing to detect it has been presented with a math question and to farm it out to a special calculation module. Once you start to augment its input like that progress would be very rapid but it would no longer be just a language model.

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

#428

Post by Udo »

flurdy wrote: post #422
andy_ppp wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI for voting in general isn’t great and gives me anxiety on mobile so I almost never click it. With my sausage fingers it’d be good if the clickable area was bigger and up voting had some CTA…

Slashdot moderation for the win! Except it didn't...

Slashdot didn't win for several reasons, but the voting system in general had the problem of only giving you voting rights sporadically (I think it may have been coupled to recently earned Karma or something). The effect was that inevitably when you wanted to vote you couldn't - and vice versa. Also, the UI was a dropdown box, which made it tedious to vote. But I do think being able to state the reason was a good idea. It had the added benefit of letting the voter know what the voting considerations should be in the first place.

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

#429

Post by jacquesm »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #326
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…

You have thrown down the gauntlet there Dan! I have argued that the way to respond to the AI “threat” as a blogger is to write better blog posts that clearly took a human mind, experience and emotion so there can be no doubt. Bots might win SEO for now but good writing will win return visits.

SEO is people writing for software consumption (Search Engines!), it stands to reason that software can create input for that process as good as a human could. But the bar should be text written for human consumption, not for machine consumption.
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