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Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

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Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#971

Post by vova_hn2 »

bikamonki wrote: post #103

My words: This feels like don't buy at Walmart, support the local small shop. We passed the no return sign miles ago. Gemini's: This is like advocating for artisanal blacksmithing in the age of industrial steel. It sounds great in theory, but we passed the point of no return miles back. Yeah, we can tell the difference :)

> We passed the no return sign miles ago > we passed the point of no return miles back

Unrolling a metaphor into its literal meaning is one of the most annoying features of the "AI voice", IMO

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#972

Post by stefap2 »

Freebytes wrote: post #949

Using AI to write content is seen so harshly because it violates the previously held social contract that it takes more effort to write messages than to read messages. If a person goes through the trouble of thinking out and writing an argument or message, then reading is a sufficient donation of time. However, with the recent chat based AI models, this agreement has been turned around. It is now easier to get a writ…

If it takes longer to read, it's not an AI problem, but the author failing to catch that the comment is too drawn out. I don't see how it is a problem to have AI write a comment if you agree with the content. If it is bad content, it will eventually reflect badly on the author anyway.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#974

Post by kouunji »

Freebytes wrote: post #949

Using AI to write content is seen so harshly because it violates the previously held social contract that it takes more effort to write messages than to read messages. If a person goes through the trouble of thinking out and writing an argument or message, then reading is a sufficient donation of time. However, with the recent chat based AI models, this agreement has been turned around. It is now easier to get a writ…

This is very well put, and captures my feelings on it. I take it as disrespect that someone would have any expectation for me to read something they can’t be bothered to write. LinkedIn is a great example - my entire professional network is just spamming at this point, which drowns out others that DO put in any effort.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#975

Post by forgetfreeman »

plewd wrote: post #935
forgetfreeman wrote: post #918

There's an element of cognitive dissonance to the community's response to AI that I find fascinating. Nearly unanimous rejection of AI-generated content while simultaneously breathlessly touting AI tooling in significantly more sensitive (and lets face it riskier) environments like the company codebase.

I think people care less about risk and more about human creativity & genuinity. Personally, I get disgusted when I see AI encroaching into artistic fields because I hope new technologies will be used to replace our monotonous work, not take away from authentic discussion/work.

This and other social media are hardly platforms for authentic discussion, and as far as artistic fields go AI is perfectly incapable of encroachment provided you accept Stephenson's definition of what makes "art":

"Hard art demanded commitment from the artist. It could only be done once, and if you screwed it up, you had to live with the consequences." - Neil Stephenson, Diamond Age

I feel like what you're arguing for here is "it's fine as long as it's convenient for me".

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#977

Post by sean2 »

stefap2 wrote: post #972
Freebytes wrote: post #949

Using AI to write content is seen so harshly because it violates the previously held social contract that it takes more effort to write messages than to read messages. If a person goes through the trouble of thinking out and writing an argument or message, then reading is a sufficient donation of time. However, with the recent chat based AI models, this agreement has been turned around. It is now easier to get a writ…

If it takes longer to read, it's not an AI problem, but the author failing to catch that the comment is too drawn out. I don't see how it is a problem to have AI write a comment if you agree with the content. If it is bad content, it will eventually reflect badly on the author anyway.

I skim 100 comments here everyday. Good comments/bad comments, overly long comments, whatever, time to read is low. I assume all those authors have a strong opinion / expertise on the subject that urged them to take the time to write that comment, which makes skimming hacker news to keep a pulse on the world (imho) a valuable task. If, instead, most of those comments are composed by molt-bots, then I'm not getting a "real" view of the world, I don't care how good and concise the comments are, I'd be wasting my time reading about news that may not matter to anyone and opinions that may not exist.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#978

Post by romperstomper »

dang wrote: post #426
arrsingh wrote: post #381

There should be a "flag as AI" link in addition to "flag" and then a setting for people to show flagged as AI. Once the flagged as AI reaches a certain threshold then it disappears unless you enable "Show AI". Maybe once enough posts have been flagged like that then that corpus could be used to train an AI to automatically detect content generated by AI. That would be cool. Maybe the HN site wouldn't add this feature…

We're going to add that. I've resisted adding reasons-for-flagging for years, but even I can change my mind every decade or so. A nice side effect is that it will double as a confirmation step, solving the FFF (fat finger flagging) problem.

Could it be also a toggle to skip/not show any AI-generated content? And all child branches?

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#979

Post by notanastronaut »

>>However, with the recent chat based AI models, this agreement has been turned around. It is now easier to get a written message than to read it. Reading it now takes more effort. If a person is not going to take the time to express messages based on their own thoughts, then they do not have sufficient respect for the reader, and their comments can be dismissed for that reason.

Unless you're a billionaire* or a CEO firing off memos where you fire half your company's workforce.

u got to be powerful to puond out a txt this way and have ppl still listen to u.

Otherwise, it is getting dismissed because 'you didn't put enough effort into the comment, so I'm not going to read it.'

That is amusing to me.

*Reference to the analysis performed on the Epstein emails and texts.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#980

Post by toobulkeh »

dang wrote: post #439
meiuqer wrote: post #191

I feel a little bit of irony in this post of a company/forum that is asking its users to not use AI while simultaneously trying to fund countless companies that are responsible for ruining the internet as we speak.

We aren't asking people to not use AI. (We use it ourselves.) What we're asking is not to post AI-generated comments to Hacker News. (We don't do that ourselves.) By all means make good use of LLMs and other AI. What counts as good use? The world is figuring that out, it will take years, and HN is no exception ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). We just don't want it to interfere with…

1. There’s nothing human about hacker news. Since the telegraph, we lost human to human communication. We’ve gained a lot. But it’s naive to claim that HN is any semblance of human-to-human communication. 2. YC helped unleash the war that you’re now losing. This pleading screams too little too late. 3. Just because something “should” happen doesn’t mean it will. HMW Go build that future. HMW Replace HN with human verification and trust signals over AI slop algorithms that AI can’t produce. Pleading for change about it is not building. It’s the lawyers defense, not the engineers. I have only the utmost respect in YC and HN—but have heard this same argument for LI or any social media change. The networks’ defenses are crumbling and AI accelerated it.

Might be time to increase the value of trust signals over content.

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