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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?

#561

Post by krageon »

mysterydip wrote: post #470
Jataman606 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if it's an area of knowledge you're not really that familiar with Thats actually dangerous way to use ChatGPT. Since you don't know the real answer you won't be able to tell when it gets something wrong.

Honestly this could be the silver lining of ChatGPT. Some people trust the answers of random commenters on the internet for anything from how things work technically to medical advice. Having an ever-increasing chance that any given commenter literally knows nothing except how to string words together might break that habit.

> Having an ever-increasing chance that any given commenter literally knows nothing except how to string words together might break that habit.

This is already figuratively the case and it has had no impact on this phenomenon. Why would the new situation be any different?

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

#562

Post by interestica »

andsoitis wrote: post #136
dang wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but in that case we can learn from the bots instead of wincing at regurgitated material. Basically, if it improves thread quality, I'm for it, and if it degrades thread quality, we should throw the book at it. The nice thing about this position is that comment quality is a function of the comments themselves, and little else.

I suggest thinking about the purpose of discussion on HN. There’s a tension between thread quality on the one hand and the process of humans debating and learning from each other on the other hand.

Yeah. Overemphasis on wanting "smart thoughtful comments" coul create a chilling effect where people might refrain from asking simple questions or posting succinct (yet valuable!) responses. Sometimes dumb questions are okay (because it's all relative).

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

#563

Post by carbocation »

viraptor wrote: post #79
carbocation wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this test isn't particularly informative. Given 5 attempts and 5 successes, even though the point estimate of accuracy is 1, the 95% CI ranges from 0.48 to 1: > binom.test(5,5,0.5) Exact binomial test data: 5 and 5 number of successes = 5, number of trials = 5, p-value = 0.0625 alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is not equal to 0.5 95 percent confidence interval: 0.4781762 1.000000…

I think the message was claiming something else, specifically that each classification was given a score of how confident the model was in the answer and the answers were given 99.9%+ in those cases. See the app: https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/ - it gives a response as % chance it's genetic or chat bot.

With 5 samples, we have no way to assess whether the app’s 99.9% self-assessment is remotely well calibrated. (As noted above, 5/5 is also consistent with a model that is right 50% of the time.)

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

#564

Post by tambourine_man »

Timwi wrote: post #556
tambourine_man wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that’s what I’m trying to say. Is being conscience just fooling yourself and others really well or is there some new property that eventually emerges from large enough neural networks and sensory inputs? The philosophical zombie is one the most important existencial questions that we may be at the cusp of ignoring.

Hello, not to be rude or anything, but please consider looking up the words “conscience”, “conscious” and “consciousness” in a dictionary and use the correct one for what you mean.

Hi, not a native speaker, thanks. The distinction between conscience (moral inner voice) and conscious (being aware of ones's existence) is not present in my mother tongue, if that's what you're referring to. Seems like an interesting english quirk.

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

#565

Post by matkoniecz »

elwebmaster wrote: post #545
shkkmo wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wordy response that lacks any actual content. While it may not be written by a person, (or it may be a person trying to blur the line by sounding botty), it at least qualifies as the types of low value add comment that should be discouraged.

It’s surprisingly easy to identify AI comments in informal or semi-informal setting. They are too wordy. They would never say something stupid, controversial, or offensive.

> They would never say something stupid, controversial, or offensive.

That applies to ChatGPT that was deliberately setup to eliminate PR-problematic responses.

Without that it would be able to write NSFW stories about real people, laden with expletives and offensive topics.

(and probably still losing track of what is happening, but better matching prompt than many humans would write)

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

#566

Post by roflyear »

kossTKR wrote: post #24

The fact that soon the internet will be so flooded with bots that you'll be floating eternally alone in a sea of imposters unless we create some draconian real person ID system is a tragedy so great it's crazy it has not dawned on people yet. I started out loving the net because of the feelings of connection and partly because of the honesty and discussions stemming from at least pseudo anonymity, both silly stuff an…

You're already floating in a sea of imposters. What's the difference if they are bots?

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

#567

Post by lettergram »

krageon wrote: post #526
contravariant wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are arguing that a piece of software misses a metaphorical soul (something that cannot be measured but that humans uniquely have and nothing else does). That's an incredibly poor argument to make in a context where folks want interesting conversation. Religion (or religion-adjacent concepts such as this one) is a conversational nuke: It signals to anyone else that the conversation is over, as a discussion on reli…

Perhaps you have people around you who are not well suited to political, religious philosophical discussions or perhaps you don’t enjoy them / can’t entertain them.

Personally, I find the only interesting conversations technical or philosophical in nature. Just the other day, I was discussing with friends how ethics used to be a regular debated topic in society. Literally, every Sunday people would gather and discuss what it is to be a good human.

Today, we demonize one another, in large part because no one shares an ethical principal. No one can even discuss it and if they try, many people shut down the conversation (as you mentioned). In reality, it’s probably the only conversation worth having.

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

#568

Post by switzer »

Maybe ban AI-generated responses from users, but post AI-generated responses (generated by HN) that are clearly marked as generated, that can be upvoted by users. These responses could live within the comment thread, or separately (to the side), with the ability for users to filter out these responses if they wish.

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

#569

Post by techdragon »

jacooper wrote: post #515
techdragon wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s a bot that can take a topic and research the argument you feed it, all without hallucinating any data and made up references… please please point me to it.

Prompt: systemd is bad

I mean … if the whole “the internet is dead” conspiracy was true then all the Linux systemd debate for like the last 5 years was entirely generated by bots…

Not that it’s true. Cause I’d know if I was a bot… unless I was programmed not to notice ;-)

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

#570

Post by krageon »

tambourine_man wrote: post #560
krageon wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The philosophical zombie is fundamentally uninteresting as a conversational piece, as they are by definition indistinguishable from a "regular" person. For all we know, you could be one. You can speak of this concept until the end of time, just as you can with all things that cannot be measured or proven. It is a matter of faith.

Not really. If you agree with Descartes that you can be sure of your own conscious, which is one leap of faith, and that it's more likely that the other entities you interact with are a result of evolution just as you, instead of a figment of your imagination (or someone else's), which is yet another leap, you're good to go. And that is the way most of us interpret the human experience. Inquiring about the consciousn…

Given that you have to admit you do not understand the subject (what it means to be conscious), none of what you said has bearing (aside from being interesting, I appreciate the response). And you must admit to that, since this is neither philosophically nor scientifically solved.

As we do not understand our own consciousness and how it functions (or whether or not it functions in me the way it does in you, if it exists at all - anywhere), we cannot compare a replication of that system to ourselves except as a black box. When seen as a black box, a philosophical zombie and a sapient individual are identical.

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