Live data from Hacker News

AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

rickmanelius.com

231–240 of 729 posts

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#231
post #36

The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. If I'm reading something on the internet, I'm either reading it to learn, or I'm reading it to be persuaded. If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I…

> The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. Because it wasn't pre-AI. It was normal for people to post links as arguments, counterarguments, etc. It annoyed me, and I didn't bother clicking most of them, and would occasionally tell them "If you can't bother articulating…

You're precluding the possibility that the other party instructed the LLM to write what he intended to say.

That is not currently possible. At best, you could train on millions of personal examples of style, eg historical emails, reports, etc, and you'd still never get what the person would have written.

I'd be astonished if an LLM didn't even miss important nuance, data, and focus on the wrong point.

It think the parent's point was, hearing a summary of what someone was thinking, from a second party isn't interesting as data from the primary source.

When you come to listen to Bob the Great, having a minion walk put and paraphrase Bob's words isnt the same. Human, LLM, or not.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#232
post #36

The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. If I'm reading something on the internet, I'm either reading it to learn, or I'm reading it to be persuaded. If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I…

Is Ai really any more offensive than the templated influencer slop of the past few years?

If your favourite creator is engaged in generating this style of content, then I think it says more about your tastes than their morals.

Don't smash the like button, don't share and unsubscribe.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#233

My coworkers continue to dump hundreds of lines of AI documentation in every PR and every other line of code has between one and ten lines of AI generated comments, talking about the real unlock and how things are byte for byte identical on the load bearing path or how the acceptance ladder is misleading. Features are coming out and metrics are improving, but we’re basically in a post readability code base, with the…

My team uses a Claude Code hook that blocks any comment more than 2 lines long, and when tripped it encourages the agent to rewrite the comment more concisely and focus only on the "why" not the "what" of the code. I've found this extremely useful for code reviews.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#235

I really like the point I read somewhere the other day; instead of sending me the AI output, just send me the prompt you used to generate it. That is the only part that contains only the information you are trying to convey. The rest is just guesses flowery language added, and it confuses the actual message being sent.

How is this? https://claude.ai/share/99bfee0f-bab9-4593-aabb-377e71f1151d

FWIW, I tried to read the AI version first, and found myself bouncing back to the prompt multiple times. The AI version just reads as flat, impersonal, and as if it has had all the corners sanded off (both in style and content). The prompt conveys much more about what _you_ want to say, and is easier to read without zoning out and losing interest.

If you must use AI in this way, I'd tell it to take a _much_ lighter touch. It cleans things up without washing away the personality of your writing. ChatGPT example:

> adjust the following for spelling and grammar, making MINIMAL alterations to the original wording and content. do NOT rewrite, just clean up what is already there: [post]

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a8382b9-3620-83eb-b17e-4397aee5ad...

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#236
post #36

The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. If I'm reading something on the internet, I'm either reading it to learn, or I'm reading it to be persuaded. If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I…

while i might not have written it, i used my masters in prompt engineering to carefully guide its creation :)

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#237
I've asked questions to people who wrote interesting articles where I didn't know it was AI generated. But then, they couldn't really answer me because most examples in the article wasn't something they experienced themselves. So basically, we were both reading the article for the first time, with made up scenarios.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#238
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN Guidelines explicitly forbid posting AI-generated comments; they will be deleted if detected or reported. I'd like them to go further and delete links to AI-generated content, but I haven't been able to persuade management to do that yet.

The HN guidelines prohibit a lot of behaviors that remain unmoderated, you can see it in any thread that goes over 80 comments.

Community mostly keeps us in check though.

(Sharing next sentence for the newbies, since you know-) All our jobs to flag on site & even email the worst offenders to hn@ycombinator.com . That said I rarely flag or even downvote anything. People either really behave, or perhaps the rulebreakers break rules that don’t grind my gears. Politely admonishing good faith rulebreakers is another tactic in the arsenal.

AI-generated comment posters with comment histories of exclusively slop get email alerts from me. Don’t know whether they’re planning to sell or spam but they clearly need help finding the door :)

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because it wasn't ..." Not so. Posting links is not the same. If you were to copy+paste someone's blog post into the forum and post is as your own, without attribution, it would be seen as plagiarism. Everyone understands this; you're trying to pass another's work as your own. On X there's actually a good modern equivalent to "posting links" which is @grok, and letting Grok add to the thread. There is occasional tea…

So I take it you'll be fine with responses that begin with: "ChatGPT says ... "? > Everyone is free to do this, instead of using ChatGPT as a ghostwriter. I guess the bulk of folks use ChatGPT as the preferred chatbot, but people like me have a completely different interface that doesn't use ChatGPT. I can't send someone links to my conversation. (And as an aside, over 80% of ChatGPT conversation links I click on don…

"ChatGPT says" can be annoying but it's unequivocally better than passing ChatGPT off as yourself. Quoting it for convenience ("the relevant part") --- ok, great.

Does it look lazy? Well, if you respond _as its sockpuppet_ you look like a hustler, too.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#240
post #36

The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. If I'm reading something on the internet, I'm either reading it to learn, or I'm reading it to be persuaded. If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I…

Is Ai really any more offensive than the templated influencer slop of the past few years? If your favourite creator is engaged in generating this style of content, then I think it says more about your tastes than their morals. Don't smash the like button, don't share and unsubscribe.

Volume is the problem. There's so much more of it now. Many platforms I used to enjoy are just overwhelmed with valueless content.
Post reply on HN