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This is pretty damning. It would be interesting to see if new accounts collect karma at any rate whatsoever.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Don’t mind me, just skewing the results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — results. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —…
Could be an argument made for aggregating by user instead however, if some bots are found to be particularly active and skewing the data.
I’ve had this sense that HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. Is it possible to differentiate between a bot, and a human using AI to 'improve' the quality of their comment where some of the content might be AI written but not all? I don't think it is.
> HN has gotten absolutely innundated with bots last few months. hm, the whole internet really, youtube, reddit, twitter, facebook, blog posts, food recipes, news articles, it's getting more and more obvious
(author) I saw a 32:1 rate of EM-dashes last night when I just eyeballed the first 3 pages of /newcomments and /noobcomments. So I'm not sure how stable this is over over time.
I just took a look at /noobcomments and wow, there's ever a comment where a person argues with AI instead of, you know, using their own brain. It was abivous it was ai since it was formatted with markdown
What will/can HN do about it?
(author) I saw a 32:1 rate of EM-dashes last night when I just eyeballed the first 3 pages of /newcomments and /noobcomments. So I'm not sure how stable this is over over time.
I just took a look at /noobcomments and wow, there's ever a comment where a person argues with AI instead of, you know, using their own brain. It was abivous it was ai since it was formatted with markdown
How many of those are bots and how many of those are "fuck you, clankers" humans—like me?
Maybe the em dash is the self censorship/deletion mechanism that we've all been waiting for. Better than having to write pill subscription ads, I suppose.
(1) I don't recommend focusing disproportionately on one signal. They'll change, and are incredibly easy to optimize for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
(2) I do recommend taking one minute to dash a note off to hn@ycombinator.com if you see suspicious patterns. Dang and our other intrepid mods are preturnatually responsive, and appear to appreciate the extra eyeballs on the problem.