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How much of HN is AI?

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11–20 of 370 posts

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#11
"At the same time, it has a fair number of toxic commenters, making it a dependable source of insults hurled in my general direction; if you want a taste, {another article by same author} has been called “watered-down” and “slop”."

We have gotten to the point where it is virtually guaranteed that some commenter to almost any given article will have an oversensitive AI detector and accuse the author of it being AI. I swear there's people whose AI detectors are just

    def is_content_ai(content):
        return True
Occasionally such people also complain about how much of the world is AI now... well... yeah, that's what happens when that's your detector. It's not quite that bad, as bad as it is.

I don't know what to do about it. Discussion about AI provenance of a given work is often a valid topic. When YouTube shovels an AI channel at me and it briefly penetrates my defenses, it's heartening to see the commentors trying to warn people about it, shortly before I block the channel.

(It's annoying that so many legit channels, which I know are legit because they predate AI and the same person is on camera as before, have switched to heavily-AI thumbnails. That's the hole that the other channels sometimes get me with, because just having an AI thumbnail doesn't prove it's not a legit channel now.)

On the other hand, the chorus of very annoyed people who are very annoyed because they see AI everywhere who see AI everywhere because they literally see AI everywhere are becoming a bit of a nuisance themselves.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#12
post #2

Is Pangram's detection capability considered to be on the higher side? This post seems to be written under the assumption that Pangram's detection is highly effective. Is it actually considered to be on the higher side in English-speaking circles?

Yes, from my experience it is highly effective

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#13
post #10

My reaction is: that's an appropriate amount. AI is probably the biggest thing to happen (in tech) in the last two decades, so I think it's fair that it's taking up a lot of the discourse.

I'm sick of it, but you are 100% right. I'm sure a good number of active readers here want even more AI-related articles.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#14
Democratization of access has its victims.

I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes.

15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars.

10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce.

5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter.

Now it is a blurry view into the future through the black mirror of AI.

How could we jump back into the cozy past again?

I do not have a clear answer, but what seems to work for you are small groups of friends and friends of friends hanging out on WhatsApp or Discord, discussing geeky news together in the context of their backgrounds. But these are very curated and very closed groups, still operating on the social media platforms of behemoths.

Would now be the right time to restart self-hosted message boards or Mattermost/Campfire instances?

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#18
Not everyone here is AI. I can't tell the difference so what does it matter? If I learn something or get inspired by a person or a bot, great.

AI tools are incredibly powerful, new and rapidly evolving, you shouldn't be surprised that everyone on HN is all over it.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#19
post #14

Democratization of access has its victims. I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes. 15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars. 10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce. 5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter. Now it is a blurry view into the future…

Run a self hosted forum or instance of whatever you like, and just only let people sign up if they are recommended by someone or can argue their way in, basically. xenforo and some add ons can do that, and I'm sure there's a few self hosted messaging apps like you mention but I'm not as familiar

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#20
post #10

My reaction is: that's an appropriate amount. AI is probably the biggest thing to happen (in tech) in the last two decades, so I think it's fair that it's taking up a lot of the discourse.

I'm sick of it, but you are 100% right. I'm sure a good number of active readers here want even more AI-related articles.

Same. I hate that the TS is right.
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