Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 1001 posts

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#131

Post by Mordisquitos »

Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"AI-edited comments" is a very interesting one. Where is the line between a spelling/grammar/tone checker like Grammarly, that at minimum use N-Grams behind the scenes, and something that is "AI" edited? What I am asking is, is "AI" in this context fully featured LLMs, or anything that improves communication via an automated system. I think many people have used these "advanced" spellcheckers for years before Chatgpt…

I think that the line between A"I" editing to fix grammar or to translate from a different native language and A"I" editing by using an LLM is one of those things that's very hard to unambiguously encode in written guidelines, but easy to intuitively understand using common sense, in the vein of I know it when I see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#132

Post by armchairhacker »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #26

I would amend to: "Don't post comments that are not human originated at this time. We want to see your human opinion shine through." This gives people some amount of leeway and allows just rhe right amount of exceptions that prove the rule. (That said, to be frank, some of the newer better behaved models are sometimes more polite and better HN denizens than the actual humans. This is something you're going to have to…

These are guidelines. I'm sure asking an AI about your comment (not pasting its text, so it's still your words) isn't an issue. The main target is obvious slop like https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patchnull

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#133

Post by gdulli »

WD-42 wrote: post #97
iammjm wrote: post #15

I believe the issue of proving who is and who isn't really human on the Internet will be a really important issue in the coming years, especially without sacrificing people's right to privacy and anonymity in the process.

Will it be? Or is the solution to move to smaller, trusted networks where there's less need for proof. Unfortunately I think the age of large scale open discussion forums like HN is coming to an end.

The utility of those larger sites is coming to an end, but most people aren't discerning or ambitious enough to leave and seek out the smaller places you mentioned. Places like this will remain but will join Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter as shadows of their prior useful selves. The smaller, better sites won't have to worry about attracting the masses and therefore worsening, because the masses have finally settled.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#134

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Yes! This is really great feature, at the very least there being some proper Hackernews guidelines about it.

In my observation, recently there are quite many new AI generated comments in general. Like not even trying to hide with full em-dashes and everything.

I do feel like people are gonna get sneaky in future but there are going to be multiple discussions about that within this thread.

But I find it pretty cool that HN takes a stance about it. HN rules essentially saying Bots need not comment is pretty great imo.

It's a bit of a cat and a mouse problem but so is buying upvotes in places like reddit but HN with its track record of decades might have one or two suspicious or actions but long term, it feels robust. I hope the same robustness applies in this case well hopefully.

Wishing moderation luck that bad actors don't try to take it as a challenge and leave our human community to ourselves :]

Another point I'd like to say is that, if successful, then we can also stop saying, "did you write your comment by LLM" and the remarks as well which I also say time to time when I see someone clearly using AI but it seems that some false-positives happen as well (they have happened sometimes with me and see it happen with others as well) and they also de-rail the discussion. So HN being a place for humans, by humans can fix that issue too.

Knowing dang and tomhow, I feel somewhat optimistic!

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#135

Post by altairprime »

RealityVoid wrote: post #19

I think using AI for a bit more potent spellchecking or style hints is... fine, honestly. I don't usually do it, you can tell from all the silly spelling mistakes I do. But a bit more polishing for your posts is a good thing, not a bad one, as long as it doesn't hide your voice.

Polish hides your voice. If your composition skills are lacking and you feel that hinders your self expression, set aside some time to improving them: write a short (15 minutes) blog post about some HN topic to yourself in a word doc editor of some sort (Word, Gdocs, LibreOffice, etc); then enable Review Changes and annotate your post for 10 minutes; then, review and accept your changes individually and re-read what you’ve written.

AI is being used as a substitute for skills development when it costs nothing but time to get better. If you’ve reached a plateau with the above method, go find an article or book or interview about editing, pay attention to it and take notes, rinse/repeat.

Spellcheckers will catch grossly obvious errors, but not phonetic typos. AI grammar tools will defang, weaken, soften, neutralize your tone towards the aggregate boring-meh that they incorporated at training time.

Each person will have to decide whether they want individuality or AI-assisted writing for themselves. Sure, some will get away with it undetected, but that’s a universal statement about all human criteria of any kind, and in no way detracts from the necessity of drawing a line in the sand and saying “no” to AI writing here.

Consider the Borg. Everyone’s distinctiveness has been added to the Collective. The end result is mediocre (they sure do die a lot), inhuman (literally), and uniform (all variation is gone). It’s your right if you desire to join the Collective and be a uniform lego brick like the others, but then your no-longer-fully-human posts are no longer welcome at HN.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#136

Post by nsxwolf »

chrystianpl wrote: post #82

As English is my second language and as I have dyslexia. I was just wondering what do you mean by "AI-edited comments"? I can't ask an llm to check if I have made correct grammar/fix it and then as I was on other account, down-voted because of my styling/grammar, not because of the content?

I have never downvoted for this, and I hope no one else would do that either. If anyone here does that, please stop.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#137

Post by drusepth »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #100
Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"AI-edited comments" is a very interesting one. Where is the line between a spelling/grammar/tone checker like Grammarly, that at minimum use N-Grams behind the scenes, and something that is "AI" edited? What I am asking is, is "AI" in this context fully featured LLMs, or anything that improves communication via an automated system. I think many people have used these "advanced" spellcheckers for years before Chatgpt…

You should use your own words. It might seem that a tool like Grammarly is just an advanced spellcheck, but what it's really doing is replacing your personal style of writing with its own. It's better to communicate as an individual, warts and all, than to replace your expression with a sanitized one just because it seems "better." Language is an incredibly nuanced thing, it's best for people's own thoughts to come t…

I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't really want to see someone else's stylistic "warts".

I just want clean, easy-to-read content and I don't care about the person who wrote it. A tool like Grammarly is the difference between readable and unreadable (or understandable and understandable) for many people.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#138

Post by tsukikage »

Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"AI-edited comments" is a very interesting one. Where is the line between a spelling/grammar/tone checker like Grammarly, that at minimum use N-Grams behind the scenes, and something that is "AI" edited? What I am asking is, is "AI" in this context fully featured LLMs, or anything that improves communication via an automated system. I think many people have used these "advanced" spellcheckers for years before Chatgpt…

> Where is the line between a spelling/grammar/tone checker like Grammarly

For me, the line is precisely at the point where a human has something they want to say. IMO - use the tools you need to say the thing you want to say; it's fine. The thing I, and many others here, object to is being asked to read reams of text that no-one could be bothered to write.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#139

Post by thewebguyd »

WD-42 wrote: post #97
iammjm wrote: post #15

I believe the issue of proving who is and who isn't really human on the Internet will be a really important issue in the coming years, especially without sacrificing people's right to privacy and anonymity in the process.

Will it be? Or is the solution to move to smaller, trusted networks where there's less need for proof. Unfortunately I think the age of large scale open discussion forums like HN is coming to an end.

I think this is the most likely and best path. There's no stopping the flood of bots, the dead internet theory is beyond just a theory at this point.

Best we can do, for the internet and ourselves, is to move away from it and into smaller networks that can be more effectively moderated, and where there is still a level of "human verification" before someone gets invited to participate.

I don't like what that will do to being able to find information publicly, though. The big advantage of internet forums (that have all but disappeared into private discords) is search ability/discoverability. Ran into a problem, or have a question about some super niche project or hobby? Good chance someone else on the net also has it and made a post about it somewhere, and the post & answers are public.

Moving more and more into private communities removes that, and that is a great loss IMO.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#140

Post by dustycyanide »

resiros wrote: post #119

Not sure I agree with the AI edited comments. Using AI to improve the readability and clarity is fine. Sometimes a well structured comment is much better than a braindump that reads like ramblings. And AI is quite good at it (and probably will get better). To make the point, here is how this comment would have looked if edited: "I don't fully agree with banning AI-edited comments. Using AI to improve readability and…

I prefer your non-edited version. My brain automatically starts to zone out with the AI edited version, side effect of having read way too much AI text
Post reply on HN