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Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles

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

#341

Post by Chu4eeno »

dang wrote: post #130
152334H wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lots of things happening in this post 1st: the presumption that AI generated text is actually unsuccessful, rather than proliferating broadly unchallenged today 2nd: the disposition that negative attitudes towards AI text are unjustified discrirmination, rather than working as a strong latent predictor of low-effort content 3rd: the assumption that human writing is reliably doled benefits, rather than some poor proxy…

Interesting points! though I don't follow them all. > 1st: the presumption that AI generated text is actually unsuccessful, rather than proliferating broadly unchallenged today I can only talk about HN. If you think this is proliferating broadly on HN itself, I'd like to see such links. Assuming it's "broadly", they should be easy to find. > 2nd: the disposition that negative attitudes towards AI text are unjustified…

On the humans (vs. pangram) ability to reliably spot LLM generated content, there was an independent study: https://arxiv.org/html/2501.15654v1

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

#342

Post by freehorse »

handfuloflight wrote: post #182
dang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting points! though I don't follow them all. > 1st: the presumption that AI generated text is actually unsuccessful, rather than proliferating broadly unchallenged today I can only talk about HN. If you think this is proliferating broadly on HN itself, I'd like to see such links. Assuming it's "broadly", they should be easy to find. > 2nd: the disposition that negative attitudes towards AI text are unjustified…

What about people who genuinely write their own articles but due to their time spent with AI, they are sounding like AI? I know people like this. They really are writing like that now. Shouldn't there be fairness to them?

Typical linkedin posts always sounded like that and they were already not well liked.

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

#343

Post by Aachen »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #63
tadfisher wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you no longer feel welcome?

Saw three years worth of my work be classified as "slop" because a few months ago I subscribed to and started using Claude. Had someone describe me as a slop fetishist, as though I was some kind of exhibitionist. Got flagged so much I became the second most flagged user on the site according to their own statistics. Got told to delete my account by the website itself. Got directly told to leave by other users. I thin…

> my work be classified as "slop" because a few months ago I subscribed to and started using Claude

Wait I'm not sure I understand the cause and consequence here if you're saying you use an LLM but your articles aren't slop (note that those are rough synonyms). Do you mention in your submissions you subscribed to or used Claude? The mere existence of the subscription and using it for unrelated things won't be why people flag, I can only assume they notice the quality level and/or style

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

#344

Post by freehorse »

IgorPartola wrote: post #48

Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. Communities can flag posts as AI generated based on speculation and telltales but it won’t be 100% and will take extra work. I think the era of the blog is simply dead now and that’s mostly ok. Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago even before AI was a thing. The real question is what replaces it. Oh and of cou…

> Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago

One of the main reasons that I (and I assume others) am here is because I can discover interesting content. It is true that there is a lot of spam in the internet but if I wanted that I would be in x, linkedin or sth. My problem with AI right now is that I consider machine generated content low quality one, and I would like to be able to decide if I want to read such an article without having to waste time before I realise it is ai generated.

> if an AI generated article is indistinguishable from a human written article and it is accurate and interesting, do you care who wrote it

Ideally I would like to know regardless. Practically in such a hypothetical future scenario it may be impossible, but I think that not doing sth right now because of some hypothetical future that may or may not happen is not a very good argument. Right now the AI content is pretty distinguishable, and if one took the time and effort to make it not seem like AI then at least that text contains some more human effort.

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

#345

Post by Nition »

hypfer wrote: post #290
dang wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kudos to you for responding exactly as I asked! That is rare to begin with, and more so when I'm being irritable. Big respect. I can see how using the word "good" was confusing, but I just meant the opposite of "comments that were unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or otherwise broke the site guidelines". It just boils down to: what fits the guidelines or not. > Wondering how does one tell what is ‘good’ in your mind…

Completely meta and possibly out-of-place, but this thread was I think my first encounter with dang (the human), and, based on it, I'm filled with respect for him. Good job being you. Please continue doing so.

I can honestly say I've never seen a moderator on any forum as good as Dang. I wish I had!

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

#347

Post by wartywhoa23 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #48

Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. Communities can flag posts as AI generated based on speculation and telltales but it won’t be 100% and will take extra work. I think the era of the blog is simply dead now and that’s mostly ok. Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago even before AI was a thing. The real question is what replaces it. Oh and of cou…

> do you care who wrote it?

I do.

> We want to avoid low quality, not AI generation, right?

We want to avoid further dehumanization of the already semi-dehumanized humankind.

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

#348

Post by sidkh »

IgorPartola wrote: post #48

Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. Communities can flag posts as AI generated based on speculation and telltales but it won’t be 100% and will take extra work. I think the era of the blog is simply dead now and that’s mostly ok. Blogspam and corporate blogs had killed quality bogs ages ago even before AI was a thing. The real question is what replaces it. Oh and of cou…

I think the era of blogging is pretty alive. I find most of the signal on agentic coding in articles (Armin Ronacher, Simon Willison, etc.). It's just harder to find because of all the noise.
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