Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 500 posts

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

#191

Post by not-a-llm »

dang wrote: post #151
minimaxir wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 communit…

and then some articles will have maybe a small section, 10% of it, LLM generated. And the it really is a superposition of LLM/human written, and flaggable/unflaggable

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

#192

Post by haunter »

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…

> users should flag articles that they think break the site guidelines

I'm more and more think that link actually hurts the site more than helps. It's a gotcha against everything, can be used a sword and a shield too.

See the part about politics. There is more and more US domestic politics post here (which I actually flag all the time) yet when the topic comes up people will say: "should hackers turn their back on when the world burns" So basically everything goes as long as it fits the narrative.

And the worst offender imo is the last part about reddit. Because I do _really agree_ that HN is more and more like reddit, if not already is. This very post with the comments where everyone is asking for a downvote button is a perfect example of that.

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

#193

Post by bluefirebrand »

dang wrote: post #151
minimaxir wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 communit…

I don't envy the position you're in.

I think the decision to ban AI submissions is a good one, but ultimately it's going to create this conflict for some time, maybe a really long time until things stabilize around AI in the broader culture

I hope eventually AI usage does become a taboo, at least in some fields. Creative fields should be for creative humans, not people who can't even publish an article without the help of an LLM

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

#194

Post by lpribis »

xeyownt wrote: post #185

I find the proposal ridicule. Would you skip articles because it's written with a text processor? You need to have it written bit by bit by fusing it directly in memory? AI / LLM is the new word editor. Get over it. What I find really annoying is all the comments that pretend to see / detect AI slop... with lot of false positives.

False equivalence, text processor leaves the authors intention completely in tact and is deterministically controlled completely by the author. Not true for gen ai

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

#195

Post by dcow »

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…

My only thought is that "good" genai authors/articles will easily get through the filter while "generic" ones will fail. So the outcome won't be all genai articles getting flagged (unless people self-report), just the low quality ones. I'm guessing that's okay and I'm one of those people who discounts genai writing the second I read one of the tells, so the flag would save me time.

Ultimately though this is the same debate as "should we allow genai code in codebases". High quality code lands naturally while slop is slop. Not much value in banning AI outright--the desire is predominantly to ban the slop.

Maybe the tag should be [slop] rather than [genai]...

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

#196

Post by bluefirebrand »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #163
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…

> This has the happy flipside that anyone who would like readers to classify their article as high-status rather than low-status can apply the judo move of simply writing it themselves. I really really hope more people take up pen and paper! My last blog post [0] came with proof-of-work attached. [0] https://abner.page/post/are-we-harold-bloom/

I was just thinking about this, the proof of work angle. Maybe written blogs need to come with recordings of the process now too, otherwise they will be suspicious.

What a goofy situation to imagine. I hope we can figure out a way though. I personally have no interest in reading anything spat out by an LLM, so if anything can be used to prove that an author wrote something themselves, I'm interested

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

#197

Post by ryukoposting »

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…

> This is why we see so many "just show me the prompt" responses, along with others like this

Many are quite a bit more subtle, like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844062

The more subversive undercurrent is interesting to me. People intentionally fucking with someone's bot, burning tokens for the lulz.

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

#200

Post by Barbing »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #165
sph wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fl…

Dan likes some people and you ain't in the group, buddy.

He has no idea who I am.

Privately, when I was new he was polite and helpful. (Tried to be polite, was returned.)

/singular anecdote for reader reference

Post reply on HN