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Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

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Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#141

Post by wizeman »

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #105
wizeman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we are going to have to take an aggressive stance against mediocre generated content here on HN, lest this small island of community be lost like the rest of the Old Internet. How do you propose we do that? And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? (... which I would argue it is already happening in some limited contexts, although I admit m…

> How do you propose we do that? One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted.

> One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted.

But isn't that what most people are presumably doing already?

I guess my question was more intended to be: how do you differentiate between content generated by humans vs machines?

At some point, we might not be able to. Or even if we can, it could actually result in a worse experience, if machines can generate better content.

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#142

Post by bnralt »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #16

I assume that this is by folks wanting to up their scores. That's a huge problem with "gamification." I'm not especially a fan of the concept, in a venue like SO. I think it has led to a rather nasty community, and I hardly ever go there, anymore. I assume that we'll be seeing a lot of robotic HN content (I would not be surprised if it is already here, but has been sidelined by the mods).

Some years ago I was trying to do something that required a certain amount of points. Perhaps write a comment to a question instead of posting an answer. So I looked for ways to make points. Most of the interesting questions I could easily find looked to be already answered, and the new questions seemed to be mostly requests to fix bugs in people's code.

I saw someone suggest fixing up answers that people had already made, and I found an upvoted answer that had a simple bug in it's code (something like "In the end I just left the bug in and gave up on trying to provide answers for the site.

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#143

Post by convexfunction »

egypturnash wrote: post #75

Well, guess the genie's out of the bottle and we can never stop this. Bow down to the inevitability of technological progress, Luddites! Good luck retraining into a new job, I hear "prompt engineer automation" is the new hotness. Or at least that's what all of you kept telling me when I was expressing my unhappiness at the way corporate-sponsored image generating black boxes are built atop a shaky moral foundation th…

At this point, I truly don't know which of your(?) current type of applied arts vs my current type of software development will turn out to be more sensitive to technological unemployment, or on what margins and time scales. So, hopefully this doesn't strike you as callous, since I think it applies to me as much as it does to you or your coworkers:

Roughly everyone who makes money has the same job, which is creating value in expectation for someone else. (Whether that activity is net good for society is a different question, I lean toward usually yes for stuff you can do legally, not always though). If you find yourself suddenly unable to give anyone a competitive deal on whatever expected value you know how to create, because of technological developments or otherwise, well, you'd better figure out what you need to change about what you're offering so you can. I wouldn't call this fair, exactly -- maybe it would be if you or your government had effective "technological unemployment insurance" -- but I struggle to imagine any substantially different state of affairs that's clearly better for the world. (No points for saying "imagine communism then".)

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#144

Post by Der_Einzige »

JW_00000 wrote: post #126
snek_case wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a bit more refinement, if it had the ability to generate graphs, etc, it might be able to generate very believable papers. At least, believable enough that you can't tell without reading the paper attentively.

Instead of spending 6 months laboriously doing experiments in a lab, and then a month writing up their results in a paper, researchers can already write a paper in one month if they just invent the numbers without actually doing the experiments. Peer review doesn't check for this. This only further reduces that one month to 5 minutes (+ hours of fiddling with LaTeX templates?). But in both cases if it gets found out…

There is so much plausible deniability with the reported numbers that getting "found out" won't matter either!

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#146

Post by convexfunction »

bambax wrote: post #84
josephcsible wrote: post #56

I wouldn't even mind so much if the answers were right. The problem is that a lot of them are totally wrong, but completely reasonable- and plausible-sounding, and in an authoritative tone, so unless you already know the right answer, the only way you'll realize its answer is wrong is the hard way.

That's the worst part. It's all fun and games when it tells a story of cheese sandwiches and VCRs in the style of the King James bible, but when it gives wrong answers in an authoritative tone and then insists it absolutely can't be wrong, it's terrifying. I don't understand what good could come of this. Or at least make it detect what is fiction and what isn't. People are treating it like it's Wikipedia, but it's no…

Just imagine the hell we'd be in if people could give wrong answers in an authoritative tone and then insist they absolutely can't be wrong!

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#148

Post by GrantS »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #134
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #101

Oh dear - basically if the answer is good then it's from ChatGTP... Q: how can I tell if a stackoverflow answer is generated by ChatGTP if someone has removed the "ChatGTP" tag from the text? A: One way to tell if a StackOverflow answer is generated by ChatGTP is to look for certain characteristics in the answer. ChatGTP answers tend to be concise and to the point, often providing code snippets or specific instructio…

Notably, it didn't correct "ChatGTP vs ChatGPT". If you still have this open, could you ask it what GTP stands for?

I noticed this phenomenon when asking for a story involving Stephen Hawking, Darth Vader, and Wookiees. I spelled it “Wookies” by mistake and ChatGPT used my misspelling throughout the story despite seemingly getting all the other details correct.

Edit: Part of the generated story:

As they continued to talk, Stephen and Darth realized that they had something else in common - they both had lost the use of their biological legs. Stephen had been diagnosed with ALS at a young age and had gradually lost the ability to move his legs, while Darth had lost his legs in a battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the planet of Mustafar.

Stephen and Darth discussed the challenges and obstacles that they had faced as a result of their mobility issues, and how they had adapted and overcome them. They also talked about the technological advancements that had allowed them to continue their work and pursue their passions, despite their limitations.

Suddenly, Stephen and Darth turned on each other, each revealing that they had been secretly plotting against the other. Stephen accused Darth of using the Force for evil and corrupt purposes, while Darth accused Stephen of using his scientific knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction.

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#149

Post by [deleted] »

tsol wrote: post #61
ethanbond wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta love it. Akin to Silicon Valley-ites ensuring their own children don’t have access to the technologies they go into the office to create and propagate every day.

Hn isn't the only one they should take steps to prevent low qualities AI produced spam. Everyone should. But since we're at hn, it makes sense they are talking about hn

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

#150

Post by Always42 »

rsync wrote: post #117
clusterhacks wrote: post #96

Human-curated content from trusted sources for top 1% information probably only available to subscribers will become more valuable and sought after. I suspect the days of generally trusting forums populated by anonymous users are done? I would not be surprised if the quality of human writing actually goes up. I have this weird feeling that ChatGPT and similar tools will become almost equivalent to calculators for mat…

The anonymity isn’t the problem - it’s the cost free aspect. Anonymous content can work very well if there are costs incurred…

But let's be real, who has the time or energy to carefully curate content these days? It's all about efficiency and getting the job done. And let's face it, anonymous forums have their charm and can be a great source of information if you know where to look.
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