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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#151

Post by dang »

minimaxir wrote: post #134
dang wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sometimes used that way, sometimes a fact, and sometimes both. It's all unclear because we're still in the early stages of this working itself out.

And then there's clanker (which has fortunately tapered off a bit): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

This is a nested-enough subthread that I can say whatever I want because no one will ever link to it because if they do no one will care.

The class of comments you're talking about—not just ones that say "clanker" literally but the more general category—is particle-wave undecidable right now.

If the commenter is right—i.e. if the commenter they are castigating actually did post LLM-generated text—then it's a community immune system response.

If the commenter is wrong—i.e. they are castigating a sincere human and hauling them to court on false charges—then it's the kind of attack that we tell people not to post here.

They can't know for sure whether what they're saying is true or false, and we can't know for sure how we should moderate it. Both questions depend on information that is unavailable. This is what I mean when I say that the whole question is in a chaotic state right now, and it's too soon to know which way it will stabilize.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#152

Post by bigcityslider »

dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

If AI-generated comments are disallowed, why are AI-generated articles allowed? Seems like they have the same issues.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#153

Post by browski »

browski wrote: post #39
dawnerd wrote: post #4

Considering YC invests in AI I doubt you’ll get anything of the sort. Too many people here also think you just have to give in and accept (abuser mentality IMO).

[flagged]

Fwiw I find social media scores corny

Just stokes addiction to a false sense of empowerment and social contribution

Downvote away to hide from ideas and opinions you don't like.

Conservative people are the only people so dysregulated by ideas they don't understand or that do not validate prior experience and embedded biases they just try to hide them from view. Not the kind of people whose judgment I concern myself with in any meaningful way

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#155

Post by SilverSlash »

browski wrote: post #153
browski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Fwiw I find social media scores corny Just stokes addiction to a false sense of empowerment and social contribution Downvote away to hide from ideas and opinions you don't like. Conservative people are the only people so dysregulated by ideas they don't understand or that do not validate prior experience and embedded biases they just try to hide them from view. Not the kind of people whose judgment I concern myself w…

> Fwiw I find social media scores corny

I agree. We've had large and thriving online forums for at least a decade before upvote systems became ubiquitous and things were just fine.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#156

Post by bellowsgulch »

dang wrote: post #149
bhaney wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I do think we'll (finally) add is a "please give a reason why you flagged this post" step, and "because I think it's genai" will be one choice among several Does that mean that an article being AI-generated is a flaggable offense? Should we be flagging suspected AI-generated articles already, or should we wait for the flagging system to support reasons first?

Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag art…

Generally speaking, HN seems to have more of a problem now of people just drive-by downvoting things because they don't like someone's opinion.

I know you hate the supposedly "noob" comment, as you've put it over the years, and as it is written in the guidelines, that HN is or isn't turning into Reddit, but this aspect of HN makes it indistinguishable to me as a long-time reader here whether you accept it from your perspective as a long-time moderator or not.

Because HN moderation allows people to downvote or flag things simply because they don't like something, it will always be like Reddit. There is no distinguishing feature to separate it otherwise.

One thing that would, would be forcing users to say why they downvoted or flagged something.

Edit: If you spend years saying "no, no, it isn't true" to people, you're just sticking your fingers in your ears. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#157

Post by unholiness »

asdff wrote: post #79
avaer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope HN doesn't get into moderating the politics of articles. I can see a grim future (present?) where "AI generated" turns into a slur, warranted or otherwise, in a world where the difference between human trained to talk like an AI and AI masquerading as human becomes increasingly difficult to discern, and some hidden cabal passes judgement. That is wholly different from taking a stance on HN being a place for hu…

Why would humans ever be trained to talk like an AI? If they are working in some capacity where there is strong incentive to write llm-slop adjacent content, might as well use the llm slop generator.

Are you maybe misunderstanding this point?

> It's a fascinating arms race right now: the AIs are training on the humans but the human hivemind is also training on the AIs. Readers are developing allergic sensitivities to language that sounds like an LLM produced it.

Humans are training to detect AI content. Humans writing more like AIs is an unrelated (and slower) phenomenon.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#159

Post by sph »

dang wrote: post #149
bhaney wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I do think we'll (finally) add is a "please give a reason why you flagged this post" step, and "because I think it's genai" will be one choice among several Does that mean that an article being AI-generated is a flaggable offense? Should we be flagging suspected AI-generated articles already, or should we wait for the flagging system to support reasons first?

Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag art…

I have been discouraging people from flagging ‘articles that they think don't belong on HN’, because you have disabled my ability to do so time and time again. In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines.

So either I read your mind, or it is best not to flag unless something is obviously, unequivocally, running afoul of the guidelines.

I keep being annoyed at how arbitrary, and dare I say hypocritical, the entire flagging mechanism and its surrounding politics are.

Re: Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

#160

Post by MisterSandman »

avaer wrote: post #53
dang wrote: post #42

We don't allow genai text on HN itself - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 . How to enforce it is a separate question, of course, but the rule exists. We don't have a similar rule yet about article content but my sense is that the community mostly doesn't want to read it—or, to put it more conservatively, discounts it. This is why we see s…

I hope HN doesn't get into moderating the politics of articles. I can see a grim future (present?) where "AI generated" turns into a slur, warranted or otherwise, in a world where the difference between human trained to talk like an AI and AI masquerading as human becomes increasingly difficult to discern, and some hidden cabal passes judgement. That is wholly different from taking a stance on HN being a place for hu…

Hacker News is already in the business of policing articles though. This is a curated list of articles that people share, and a lot of unrelated articles are automatically deleted or just downvoted out of existence. This isnt Reddit.

It’s okay to have an opinionated website. Not every corner of the internet needs to be a bastion of free speech

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