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Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

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Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

#1

Post by yathern »

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed, but nearly every post on Hacker News is getting LLM comments now. For anyone who works regularly with LLMs, it's very obvious from the tone alone - and a quick check to previous comments will confirm it. Some have gotten slightly more sophisticated and auto-add typos, or other tricks. I'm sure there's plenty that I don't recognize as AI either.

I understand the motivation - running a mini bot farm would allow you to make sure your posts get a number of quick upvotes - or manipulate the conversation about your startup, or some other field one has a vested interest in. But seeing this infestation, and the rate at which it is growing is very demoralizing.

There probably aren't any solutions that don't involve significant privacy invasions or a fundamental change in how the site operates, so maybe this is more of a vent post - but I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions? What happens next? The entire internet becomes (even more) of a greed-manipulated psychological nightmare?

Re: Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

#2

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Smaller forums.

I came here from Slashdot, after it turned into too much of a cesspool. And HN was a wonderful place. But over a decade, it slowly became less wonderful. More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations. More zealots and shills, less thought.

I think what happened is that HN became a place that was worth influencing. Some people decided they'd do that rather than enjoying it for what it was. The more people on HN, the more valuable it was to manipulate, and so the more people did.

So one solution is just to find smaller forums - ones that aren't big enough to be worth trying to manipulate. That doesn't same HN, though. It doesn't get it back to what I loved.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

#3

Post by lolakutty »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #2

Smaller forums. I came here from Slashdot, after it turned into too much of a cesspool. And HN was a wonderful place. But over a decade, it slowly became less wonderful. More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations. More zealots and shills, less thought. I think what happened is that HN became a place that was worth influencing . Some people decided they'd do that rather than enjoyin…

>More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations.

What is the difference? Just curious...

Re: Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

#4

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lolakutty wrote: post #3
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #2

Smaller forums. I came here from Slashdot, after it turned into too much of a cesspool. And HN was a wonderful place. But over a decade, it slowly became less wonderful. More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations. More zealots and shills, less thought. I think what happened is that HN became a place that was worth influencing . Some people decided they'd do that rather than enjoyin…

>More people showed up just to argue, rather than to have curious conversations. What is the difference? Just curious...

Whether you listen to someone you disagree with.

There's a difference between "why?" to try to understand, and "why?" trying to prove the other person wrong. (If you have kids, you've probably seen this.)

There's a difference between good-faith questions and "gotcha" questions.

There's a difference between thoughtful statements and talking points. (The presence or absence of nuance is a big part of it.)

People who are here to score points don't talk the same way as people who are here for conversation. (Now, it's not quite that simple, because some people here aren't neurotypical, and they don't always talk like good-faith people, even when they're in good faith. Still, most of us here have heard neurodiverse people, and we've heard politicians, and we can often tell which is which. Neurodiverse people are usually committed to the truth. They may be nitpicky, but they will acknowledge an accurate point when one gets made. Politicians are committed to their side; they won't acknowledge that the other side has had a valid point ever in history.)

Re: Ask HN: Is there any solution to the AI infestation?

#8

Post by brudgers »

My take is HN is changing to adapt to current changes to the hard question:

  What separates intellectually interesting AI
  from uninteresting AI, right now?
Thirty years ago, Baysian generated poetry was intellectually interesting enough that Paul Graham put some in one of his programming books…yes, it made it through an actual professional editor and the publisher’s money was spent printing the poetry on a few pages instead of printing something else.

A ten years ago, code-completion was intellectually interesting.

A five years ago, images from text was.

Today, none of them generally are except occasionally at the leading edge.

Or to put it another way, there’s an ice machine on the airplane taking you to Dallas Fort Worth and we just take it for granted.

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