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Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
171–180 of 1001 posts
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#172Not 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…
It's a matter of taste, but your original writing is way better. Your writing has your voice. Like dropping the "I am" from your first sentence, using parentheticals, couching your point in understatement (e.g "sometimes" meaning often instead of just saying "often").
The AI comment might be clear, but it sounds like a press release, not a person, and there's nothing to engage with.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#173The link doesn't work perfectly for me, it seems that since the page is already scrolled down all the way to the bottom, there is no way to focus specifically on the #generated element.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#174I don't get it. We use tools to assist in written communication all the time. If someone wants to ask an LLM to check their grammar or edit for clarity or change the tone, it's still a conversation between humans. Everyone now has access to a real time editor or scribe who can craft their message the way they want it to sound before sending it off. Great.
My personal interpretation of the rule is that if it's human-originated but passed through a layer of cleanup, it's human-originated. For the same reason I'm not refraining from running the spellchecker or using speech-to-text to generate this sentence. "If I could be having my English-speaking nephew type this on my behalf while I told him my thoughts in Japanese, it passes the smell test for human-sourced" feels about the right place to set the bar.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#175I like this guideline, at least in principle.
But I have some concerns about suppression of comments from non-native English writers. More selfishly, my personal writing style has significant overlap with so-called "tells" for AI generated prose: things like "it's not X, it's Y", use of em-dashes, a fairly deep vocabulary, and a tendency toward verbosity (which I'm striving to curb). It'd be ironic if I start getting flagged as a bot, given I don't even use a spell-checker. Time will tell.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#176On the other hand, shouldn’t there be a policy forbidding use of HN data for LLM training? I would certainly be more encouraged to participate, if I knew that the content I provide for free is not used to train LLM that is later sold by a company valued hundreds of billions. Perhaps there are others who feel the same.
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Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#177I occasionally used AI to edit and restructure my comments. I’m very open about it, and I don’t feel like I’m talking to non-humans when others do the same.
To be clear, I'm neither proud nor embarrassed by this. I'm just trying to communicate in the most efficient way I can.
I'm not sure how I feel about this new rule.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#178"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…
Books and newspapers have had editors for centuries. It is just code review for the written word.
[It looks like MS Word 97 had the ability to detect passive voice as well, so we're talking 30 year old technology there that predates LLMs -- how far down the Butlerian Jihad are we going with this?]
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#179Not 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…
There's nothing inherently better about the edited version. It's just saying the same thing with synonyms substituted, at a slightly more formal but less personal register. HN comments are not academic text, colloquial turns of phrase are perfectly fine and expected.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#180As 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?
Oof although I feel this pain a lot. What I like to do is respond to them politely if someone talks about such thing. Although it takes time and this does sometimes make you want to dis-incentivize/dis-engange.
But at some point, the rationale behind it is that your comments are your words and I find it liberating. Some people won't appreciate it and some people would but this goes the same for AI-edited posts too.
(I would recommend to add that if you are still worried, then within your hackernews profile, please talk about you having dyslexia as people might be so much more forgiving when they get more context. We are all humans after all and I would like to think that we understand each other's struggles)