Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses? • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by tambourine_man » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #417

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…

> But that's a ways off. Given the jumps in output quality between '1', '2' and '3' that may not be as far off as I would like it to be. It reminds me of the progression of computer chess. From 'nice toy' to 'beats the worlds best human' since 1949 to 'Man vs Machine World Team Championships' in 2004 is 55 years, but from Sargon (1978) to Deep Blue (1997) is only 21 years. For years we thought there was something uni…

What I fear the most is that we‘ll keep at this “fake it till you make it” approach and skip the philosophical questions, such as what conscience really is.

We’re are probably at the verge of having a bot that reports as conscious and convinces everyone that it is so. We’ll then never know how it got there, if really did or if just pretends so well that it doesn’t matter, etc.

If feels like it’s out last chance as a culture of tackling that question. When you can pragmatically achieve something, the “how” loses a bit of its appeal. We may not completely understand fluid dynamics, but if it flys, it flys.

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

#492

Post by goatlover » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

system2 wrote: post #274

noncoml wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can quickly google it

Have you seen ChatGPT responses? It can easily find out yesterday's topics and write a 10 page essay.

It's not connected to the internet (outside of being prompted), and the training data was from 2021 and before, so no it can't. ChatGPT will even tell you so, unless you fool it into hallucinating a fake answer. It would be simple to ask a human the result of recent sports score like a World Cup match.

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

#493

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

drunkpotato wrote: post #418

verisimi wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you downvote, I think that should come with an explanation of your downvote. There may be genuine reasons for downvoting, errors in what is presented, etc. Fair enough. But if you downvote because you don't like something, all you are doing is attempting to create an echo chamber of views and opinions you already believe. Is that what you want? If so, you are now in a war for control of the echo chamber you want t…

I have to strongly disagree with you. In my opinion a policy like this would err on valuing form over content, when content matters a great deal. Downvotes (and upvotes) can be a signal for content as well as form. For example, an articulate, well-reasoned, passionate argument for why PHP is the best get shit done language? Sure, I can upvote that even if I firmly disagree. But an articulate, well-reasoned, passionat…

[deleted]

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

#494

Post by imranq » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

These LLMs will make the text-based internet unusable eventually. Unless someone solves the problem of verified identities on the internet, sites will be flooded with confident AI-generated prose that is completely wrong.

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

#495

Post by dspillett » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #396

Disappointing the comments don’t address the elephant in the room. GPT doesn’t understand what it is saying and it doesn’t generate original thought. What is left is dull and boring. Noam Chomsky has some original thought on this topic.

> GPT doesn’t understand what it is saying and it doesn’t generate original thought.

Egads, they are much closer to fully emulating many humans online that I previously feared!

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

#496

Post by mdp2021 » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #365

mdp2021 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sa…

> reasonable sounding gibberish

I would be very scared of an unintelligent pretender.

> AI

"AI" is a different thing ;) No need to be skeptical, no more than of sorting. "AI" just means "a solver". "Computer" was a profession before the automation.

(In fact, one could argue that chatGPT does not exactly look like AI, because in a way it does not look like a solver. It may seem to diverge, not to approximate.)

> how useful ... used it to learn a bunch about

What did you do, you asked it to summarize pages?

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

#497

Post by tootie » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #248

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…

> 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.

My gut feeling is that we're still nowhere near that point. GPT is based on it's incredibly large and diverse model based on a huge corpus of human writing. Anything it creates will always be derived from what humans have already done. It can't easily react to new information nor can it make inferences beyond what it's told. I could be wrong but as impressive as the tech is, it will never be able to make deductions or inferences.

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

#498

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #185

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…

Should HN ban the discussion of mobile apps on smartphones on its platform? The excessive use of mobile apps on smartphones has been linked to addiction and a range of negative effects on mental and physical health [0]. Should HN consider banning the use of mobile apps on smartphones on its platform in order to promote a healthier and more focused environment for discussions? [0] : https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/01/heal…

The community here would never support such a measure.

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

#499

Post by jtode » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #431

jacquesm wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's a ways off. Given the jumps in output quality between '1', '2' and '3' that may not be as far off as I would like it to be. It reminds me of the progression of computer chess. From 'nice toy' to 'beats the worlds best human' since 1949 to 'Man vs Machine World Team Championships' in 2004 is 55 years, but from Sargon (1978) to Deep Blue (1997) is only 21 years. For years we thought there was something uni…

Sure it might produce convincing examples of human speech, but it fundamentally lacks an internal point of view that it can express, which places limits on how well it can argue something. It is of course possible that it might (eventually) be convincing enough that no human can tell, which would be problematic because it would suggest human speech is indistinguishable from a knee jerk response that doesn't require t…

>it fundamentally lacks an internal point of view that it can express, which places limits on how well it can argue something.

Are you sure that the latter follows from the former? Seems to me that something free from attachment to a specific viewpoint or outcome is going to be a better logician than otherwise. This statement seems complacently hubristic to me.

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

#500

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #491

jacquesm wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's a ways off. Given the jumps in output quality between '1', '2' and '3' that may not be as far off as I would like it to be. It reminds me of the progression of computer chess. From 'nice toy' to 'beats the worlds best human' since 1949 to 'Man vs Machine World Team Championships' in 2004 is 55 years, but from Sargon (1978) to Deep Blue (1997) is only 21 years. For years we thought there was something uni…

What I fear the most is that we‘ll keep at this “fake it till you make it” approach and skip the philosophical questions, such as what conscience really is. We’re are probably at the verge of having a bot that reports as conscious and convinces everyone that it is so. We’ll then never know how it got there, if really did or if just pretends so well that it doesn’t matter, etc. If feels like it’s out last chance as a…

The answer may well be 'consciousness is the ability to fake having consciousness well enough that another conscious being can't tell the difference' (which is the essence of the Turing test). Because if you're looking for a mechanism of consciousness you'd be hard put to pinpoint it in the 8 billion or so brains at your disposal for that purpose, no matter how many of them you open up. They'll all look like so much grisly matter from a biological point of view and like a very large neural net from a computational one. But you can't say 'this is where it is located and that is how it works'. Only some vague approximations.