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StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

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Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#71

Post by fabian2k »

Ukv wrote: post #58
softwaredoug wrote: post #9

Can answers be edited by the community to correct any hallucinations? Or is there just an outright ban on removing AI content?

There's no ban on removing AI content as far as I'm aware - admins just upped the evidence requirement for determining a post as AI-generated, seemingly in response to high false positive rates of hunches and current detectors: > We recently performed a set of analyses on the current approach to AI-generated content moderation. The conclusions of these analyses strongly indicate to us that AI-generated content is not…

This is essentially a ban on removing AI content, the cases where it is still allowed to remove the posts are exceedingly rare. This is rather confusing as the public policy doesn't contain those details.

I'm a moderator on a small SE site, so I have seen the internal communication between SE and the mods on this.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#72

Post by crazygringo »

koochi10 wrote: post #37
crazygringo wrote: post #17

Either answers are good or not. It doesn't matter if they're generated by a 13-year-old in their bedroom, someone studying CS at university, a well-respected IC at a top tech company... or an AI. If answers are good, keep them. If they're bad, downvote them. If they're redundant or off-topic or gibberish, delete them. And to those asking why you would ever want AI-generated content on StackOverflow when you could jus…

This doesn't work at scale. Stack overflow as a platform has been handling user generated input via moderators, voting, and testing. This is fine when there are only 26.8 million coders on the planet, most of which aren't posting on stack overflow regularly. With LLM's all of a sudden there is a huge influx of mediocre content on the platform that people can't handle. Inevitably this will erode trust in the platform.…

Again, you can handle this by rate-limiting and standard anti-abuse measures. To elaborate: don't allow new-ish accounts to post more than one question/answer per day, don't allow allow accounts to more than one question/answer per week/month if their previous content hasn't reached a certain quality threshold of votes, and so forth.

It's entirely possible to set up the system to prevent it from being flooded by content that moderation can't handle. In fact, StackOverflow has already been largely set up that way, and this will just require just a little more tweaking of the types of existing policies that have already been in place for a long time. People attempting to flood internet forums with low-quality content or outright spam isn't anything new.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#73

Post by nologic01 »

Me1000 wrote: post #47
nologic01 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If answers are good, keep them. If they're bad, downvote them. If they're redundant or off-topic or gibberish, delete them. Yeah, lets us keep providing free labor to help train somebody else's models, improve somebody else's infrastructure so that they can even more effectively dominate.

How is that any different than providing free labor to help someone learn how to build the next [X] so that they can more effectively dominate? But more importantly banning AI generated content from Stack Overflow doesn’t solve the “problem” you’re describing.

> How is that any different than providing free labor to help someone learn how to build the next [X] so that they can more effectively dominate?

Its an absurd equivalence. A human can never "dominate" no matter how much they learn.

Training for free a closed, for-profit private enterprize infrastructure that will eventually make your preferred free collaboration platform obsolete is like the ultimate of naivete (or vested interest).

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#74

Post by DoingIsLearning »

One problem with this is that future Models will probably be trained with data that includes a subset of AI generated data.

As this ratio grows the need to classify AI/human becomes critical, otherwise all these models will probably degrade over time.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#75

Post by digitalsushi »

_jab wrote: post #4
deepnotderp wrote: post #2

“Let’s ban computers on a forum about computers”

I mean, would you want HN to be completely overrun by bots?

that's fascinating.

if i am here as a technical resource, i dont care

if i am here to make connections and maybe even, every 10 years, a new friend, then absolutely not.

so the challenge to the reply to my post, is to say something that disproves i come here for connections and friends.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#76

Post by amalter »

dvt wrote: post #60
cosmolev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is also this idea that you can't judge the system while being a part of it. You simply can't see the whole picture.

True, but like solipsism or nihilism, those ideas are just not that interesting.

Oh, it's not an "interesting idea" that we're teetering on the edge of not being able to differentiate between machine-generated and human-generated content. It does seem that our AI learning models simply mimic our own thinking processes, absorbing and combining experiences to create results that sometimes outshine their origins.

The real question that'll soon dominate is, "How can we even tell the difference?"*

(* - Reworded with ChatGPT 4)

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#77

Post by yyyk »

koochi10 wrote: post #37
crazygringo wrote: post #17

Either answers are good or not. It doesn't matter if they're generated by a 13-year-old in their bedroom, someone studying CS at university, a well-respected IC at a top tech company... or an AI. If answers are good, keep them. If they're bad, downvote them. If they're redundant or off-topic or gibberish, delete them. And to those asking why you would ever want AI-generated content on StackOverflow when you could jus…

This doesn't work at scale. Stack overflow as a platform has been handling user generated input via moderators, voting, and testing. This is fine when there are only 26.8 million coders on the planet, most of which aren't posting on stack overflow regularly. With LLM's all of a sudden there is a huge influx of mediocre content on the platform that people can't handle. Inevitably this will erode trust in the platform.…

>>If answers are good, keep them. If they're bad, downvote them.

>This doesn't work at scale... with LLM's all of a sudden there is a huge influx of mediocre content

The GP's answer may not work at scale - however LLM detection doesn't work at all. So the only semi-workable solution is aggressive filtering and banning users who post trash (LLM or not).

Also, there's a need to think about score and trust mechanisms - the same mechanisms which can be used for filtering also provide an incentive for LLM use, is there a way to avoid that?

>When someone posts a answer I assume they actually ran the code, and can verify the result

I wish we lived in a world where this assumption wasn't naive.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#79

Post by pixl97 »

yyyk wrote: post #77
koochi10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work at scale. Stack overflow as a platform has been handling user generated input via moderators, voting, and testing. This is fine when there are only 26.8 million coders on the planet, most of which aren't posting on stack overflow regularly. With LLM's all of a sudden there is a huge influx of mediocre content on the platform that people can't handle. Inevitably this will erode trust in the platform.…

>>If answers are good, keep them. If they're bad, downvote them. >This doesn't work at scale... with LLM's all of a sudden there is a huge influx of mediocre content The GP's answer may not work at scale - however LLM detection doesn't work at all. So the only semi-workable solution is aggressive filtering and banning users who post trash (LLM or not). Also, there's a need to think about score and trust mechanisms -…

Yep, and if you aggressively ban bots/LLM content, then you'll see everyone accuse and report each other for said content even if it's good content.

For example here on HN we have a rule if you see bot content you don't mention it in the thread. You report it and let the admins decide. Anything else just turns into flamewars.

Re: StackOverflow petition to allow removing AI generated content

#80

Post by Ukv »

fabian2k wrote: post #71
Ukv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no ban on removing AI content as far as I'm aware - admins just upped the evidence requirement for determining a post as AI-generated, seemingly in response to high false positive rates of hunches and current detectors: > We recently performed a set of analyses on the current approach to AI-generated content moderation. The conclusions of these analyses strongly indicate to us that AI-generated content is not…

This is essentially a ban on removing AI content, the cases where it is still allowed to remove the posts are exceedingly rare. This is rather confusing as the public policy doesn't contain those details. I'm a moderator on a small SE site, so I have seen the internal communication between SE and the mods on this.

> This is essentially a ban on removing AI content

I think framing it as "a ban on removing AI content" is wrong/misleading and the reason for softwaredoug's question about whether you'd even be allowed to edit low-quality hallucinations.

To my understanding you can still remove/edit/ban for all the same reasons as normal content, just that the additional reason (removing for inherently being AI generated) is now significantly stricter.

> the cases where it is still allowed to remove the posts are exceedingly rare.

Not aware of the internal guidelines unless there's something you're allowed to share, but generally I could understand the admins' desire to err towards high-precision over high-recall.

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