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

391–400 of 500 posts

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

#391

Post by derdi »

dspillett wrote: post #331
derdi wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to label their stuff as AI generated because they removed credibility. I don't think this is true. I think most of the people who post LLM content without editing and without even style guidelines are simply of the opinion that the resulting text is genuinely of an acceptable quality. Agreed with the rest of your post. We should think of this in terms of quality of the result, not the process.

> I think most of the people who post LLM content without editing and without even style guidelines are simply of the opinion that the resulting text is genuinely of an acceptable quality. I don't disagree with that assessment, with one extra detail: for many of them their bar of “an acceptable quality” is too low. No higher than “sod it, it'll do” and often lower. To too many, generated content is seen as a gateway…

A little detail to your extra detail :-) I agree that there's a general "it'll do", motivated by just pushing something, anything, out there. But I think that's party because they don't know better. The people who generate the articles that reach the HN front page surely interact a lot with their agents. Their agents will certainly talk to them in "AI-shaped", "LLM-marker-bearing" bot-speak, but they apparently don't mind, because they can't tell that this is bad writing. If they did, if this annoyed them as much as it annoys many of us, they would surely adopt some style guidelines for their agents. And those should apply to their blog posts too.

As for the rating system, we already have many people who first check the comments for things like "AI, don't bother". I think that's OK; it could be better by quoting two or three sample sentences so that others could quickly judge how bad it is. I don't think it needs to be more formal than this.

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

#392

Post by supermatt »

Hendrikto wrote: post #378
supermatt wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us use genAI as an accessibility tool. It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist. Some people already dismiss genuinely useful content solely based on the use of AI to assist in writing it - i am not sure what flagging would do other than to reinforce that prejudice. I posted a couple of my articles here, and the one that got traction was generally well received (and also recei…

> I'd rather not hide what I am doing So why are you doing that by sloppyfying your own writing? If you want people to take interest in your writing, it should probably actually be your own writing.

I am VERY clear that i use assistive AI with my writing. I dont believe it is "sloppyfying" - I believe it makes it much more readable than i would otherwise achieve, not least because I simply wouldn't publish it without.

Your prejudice/ableism in calling it "sloppyfying" is exactly the problem I mention with allowing it to be a flag.

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

#393

Post by CM30 »

I do think it'd be useful if AI generated content was pointed out here, given that it usually indicates a lot less investment in the work than if someone made it themself.

But I'm not sure there's a great way to handle it. Flagging works as AI generated is good in theory, but it's become a bit of a witch hunt online, with plenty of human created pieces getting wrongly flagged as AI generated due to using em dashes in text, having the hands drawn awkwardly in artwork, or using other stylistic traits that AI content overuses. I fear half the site could end up flagged as AI-generated, just because a lot of people are hyper-vigilant about such content and assume the worst for everything.

At the same time, there's not really much of a way to incentivise writers to flag their own articles here, since revealing that a work is created by AI is a great way to both kill your credibility and drive away about half the people who'd otherwise enjoy it. So, if it's up to the authors, the incentives are for them to lie through their teeth.

I also don't really trust many AI detection tools, since they usually use AI themselves and misflag a lot of content.

But I don't think the site should change that much. Maybe add an option for AI content in the flagging system, and assume good faith for submissions in general. I'd rather not see the site get too paranoid or restrictive over this stuff.

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

#394

Post by fireflash38 »

sph wrote: post #329
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…

> what fits the guidelines or not It is no coincidence lawyering is a lucrative career, even when (in most countries) it is simply about interpreting what’s written in the big book. Until you rewrite the guidelines in an unambiguous programming language (Lisp will do), and provide a system to discern whether a comment falls afoul of them, your personal interpretation of the Word will often differ from someone else’s.…

I think you'll find as soon as you codify something strict, people will do their absolute best to work around those rules in any way possible.

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

#397

Post by westurner »

tripzilch wrote: post #317
grayclhn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think classifying it as an allergy or a status thing is a little too glib. I’ve read and reviewed, conservatively, hundreds of AI generated documents for work, and “written”/commissioned a bunch too. My biggest issue is that it’s impossible to engage with and give feedback on an AI written document, because it’s impossible to know whether misconceptions or gaps are because the author doesn’t understand the material…

This exactly. Whenever someone shows me their (or someone else's) AI-assisted-coded (vibe coded) thing, I can only ever engage with it on a very superficial level, saying "oh cool". You can't have a discussion about it, how it was done, because for 80% of cases it's "the AI did it". I don't think this is that interesting or useful for HN, because indeed it's a discussion site. It would be different if the vibe coded…

> what is there to say

Ways to contribute: Peer review, human code review, money for tokens for code and code review, configure SAST and DAST tools to make it DevSecOps instead of DevOpsSec, configure AGENTS.md and an /upgrade-dependencies-and-run-tests skill,

Compare "It's inadequate because it's AI" with "it looks like this generation of agents doesn't yet handle this quality aspect with or without explicit prompts" with "you could improve quality by writing tests, docs, and before that refactor for maintainability and subjective elegance" (if you're trying develop a hit open source project)

> impossible to know whether misconceptions or gaps are because the author doesn’t understand the material

Shouldn't a researcher consider the argument - it's premises and form - instead of tangential ad hominem about the author?

Pushing for well-formed arguments is older than AI

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

#398

Post by IgorPartola »

derdi wrote: post #388
IgorPartola wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What upside is there to labeling your content as AI generated (except when you are showing some novel way to use AI)?

I don't know, I wasn't saying that there was an upside. Sorry if my post was unclear. My "I don't think this is true" was in response to the assertion that people who use AI would be afraid of losing credibility from labeling.

My thesis on that is just that AI generated content is generally viewed as worse than human-generated content, but it is a lot cheaper. There is a lot of (financial) incentive to create and post a lot of cheap AI generated content and trying to pass it as higher quality human-generated content than to be honest about it.

It’s the same reason recipe websites don’t honestly label that they ripped off other recipe websites: it would train users to go to the source.

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

#399

Post by danieltanfh95 »

atahanacar wrote: post #314
danieltanfh95 wrote: post #154

1. because your belief that AI-generated text is worse than human written text is flat out illogical and wrong. 2. judge content not by its cover and think.

>judge content not by its cover and think If we are supposed to not judge the content by its cover, then don't put a cover on it. It's that simple. AI adds no value to the content, just some noise that makes it harder to reach the actual information/emotion.

what do you even mean to "not put a cover" on it, everyone communicates differently. Your comment here puts on a "snide, snarky, trying to be smart but failing" cover that I have discarded because your idea may have some merit to be discussed on.

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

#400

Post by jaredcwhite »

ldoughty wrote: post #40
jaredcwhite wrote: post #11

I'm of the deepest conviction AI-generated text should not show up at all. Proving that however can be difficult (obvious LLM tells aside). Requiring evidence of authentic human authorship is also difficult, though increasingly I lean towards communities where that is a given for any legitimate shares.

What qualifies as AI generated? If a human writes it then has AI improve/fix it, does that count? How do you tell which is the case? If we don't allow AI help at all, is that perhaps discriminating against those who don't feel comfortable posting with imperfect English? I agree in principle, but am concerned in implementation... I'm not sure we can be fair without high risk of discrimination Edit: typo fix Edit: or a…

This is starting to veer into "smoking bans in the restaurants is discrimination against smokers."

It's not discrimination to ban a practice which has been proven to be harmful. AI slop is harmful to readers, as well as being harmful to produce. Whatever issues one might raise, for instance someone who is not a native English speaker, we can find alternative solutions which are better for the environment and better for human minds.

Post reply on HN