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Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

news.ycombinator.com

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

#211

Post by yeeeloit »

wizeman wrote: post #95
theptip wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly 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.

> 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…

> And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans?

I tend to agree... I've been growing more and more tired with the content in familiar places. eg. reddit. (As an aside I think a lot of it is driven by advertising/marketing, but not all of it...)

Anyway, your comment reminded me of the recent footage of baggage handlers at an airport, and how that dovetails nicely with the recent move by tesla to build a humanoid robot.

Looking for a ray of light in the approaching storm: Maybe these AI can be used to filter the content more effectively for us.

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

#213

Post by wizeman »

true_religion wrote: post #205
wizeman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's an interesting argument if I ever saw one! Your viewpoint is completely the opposite of mine, let me argue a couple of points: > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level AI thinks? Are you saying…

> Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level AI thinks? HN is a professional social network. People are most interested in what their peers have to say, not any random human being or human level AI. Now if this human level AI is working in the field as a professional, or at least in computer science academia the it’s opinions are valid and interes…

> People are most interested in what their peers have to say, not any random human being or human level AI.

> Now if this human level AI is working in the field as a professional, or at least in computer science academia the it’s opinions are valid and interesting. However if it’s merely an average best possible response then it’s pointless to hear it’s opinion.

Yes, I agree with that, but I don't think that's what the parent poster was arguing.

It's also clear that I didn't phrase my question as clearly as I could, because instead of "human-level AI", I should have said this instead: "a human-level (or more intelligent) AI that has equivalent or better knowledge/experience than the people who post on HN".

> Additionally if multiple people post chatGPT responses that’s just like talking to same person using humans as sock puppets.

Yes, I agree with this as well.

But as a counterpoint, (as far as I understand) it's possible to have ChatGPTs with different levels of knowledge/experience and different personalities, as evidenced by GPT-3's fine-tuning capability (disclaimer: I've never used this functionality, so I'm not 100% sure if this is correct).

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

#214

Post by metadat »

brindidrip wrote: post #26

It seems like there are a few potential negative consequences of using AI-generated answers on Stack Overflow. For one, the quality of the answers may be lower than if they were written by a human. Additionally, if these AI-generated answers become too common, it could potentially lead to a more impersonal and less supportive community on Stack Overflow. Finally, if the AI is able to search the internet and "inbreed"…

What prompt input did you use? When I tried this:

> What are the repercussions of Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT?

It returned:

> I'm sorry, but I'm not aware of any situation in which answers on Stack Overflow are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT. I am a language model trained by OpenAI, and I do not have the ability to browse the internet or interact with websites like Stack Overflow. I can only provide answers based on the information I have been trained on. Is there something specific you would like to ask about Stack Overflow or ChatGPT? I'll do my best to help.

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

#216

Post by TillE »

pugworthy wrote: post #151

For some things, ChatGPT is just better than SO. I have to say I probably won't hit SO for some basic stuff anymore, I'll just ask ChatGPT. And some queries are just not acceptable on SO, but fine for ChatGPT. For example I might wish to ask, "Give me the framework for a basic API written in Python that uses API key authentication. Populate it with several sample methods that return data structures in json." If I ask…

I think the reactions which suppose that AI will replace programmers or artists are a little silly, but this is a great example of where it could be genuinely revolutionary, as a true next generation of search engines.

That's really exciting, because it's a scenario where you're looking for and scrutinizing information. Just add some links to sources and you're in business.

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

#217

Post by alfiedotwtf »

pimlottc wrote: post #209
brindidrip wrote: post #26

It seems like there are a few potential negative consequences of using AI-generated answers on Stack Overflow. For one, the quality of the answers may be lower than if they were written by a human. Additionally, if these AI-generated answers become too common, it could potentially lead to a more impersonal and less supportive community on Stack Overflow. Finally, if the AI is able to search the internet and "inbreed"…

This is definitely not going to help combat the "Dead Internet" conspiracy theory https://theswaddle.com/what-the-dead-internet-theory-predict...

Reminds me of Heavenbanning:

https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

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

#218

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

bediger4000 wrote: post #109
ravenstine wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said may sum up the current state of AI. People's minds are continually being blown, but will there be a realization that these AIs are specialized to provide specious output and nothing else? There's a canyon of difference between something that sounds correct and a thing that is actually correct.

Yes. I spent yesterday afternoon trying to get ChatGPT to write me a quine in nroff/troff macros, something I've not been able to do, or find if anyone has done. The generated quines look like they'd work, but don't. Same with an M4 macro processor quine - looks maybe correct, doesn't work. It did generate a Go quine.

>> It did generate a Go quine.

Because there are several of them on the web:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Go+quine&atb=v344-1&ia=web

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

#219

Post by bigbillheck »

vineyardmike wrote: post #165
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…

> what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn’t satisfy the purpose even if it’s better written. The internet is about people . I may not be friends with everyone on H…

There's already plenty of comments on this forum that are low-effort regurgitations of talking points, memes, 'common sense', and the like.

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

#220

Post by anigbrowl »

I see what you did there.

I have an OpenAI account and like their product, I'm certainly impressed by this latest version though I have had little time to play with it. But the combination of quality AI with social reputation scoring is absolutely toxic, and the wider impact of SEO (a less curated version of the same thing) are a disaster. I was already sick of all the tutorial sites like geeks4geeks, w3schools etc and their numerous imitators just content farming whatever is turning up in searches. Marketing and self promotion is cancer and the people who try to game their way to success in this manner are awful. Perhaps the best use of counter-AI will not be in filtering these people, but in providing hem with useless rewards and the appearance of excited fanbases that will divert them into a parallel hamster wheel web. Nothing would please me more than for the top 5000 influencers of this sort to be granted exclusive access to a luxury cruise that leaves port once a year for a tour of the Bermuda triangle.

I think the best use of ChatGPT would be in an IDE plugin, so you could point at function trees or code blocks and ask it to explain things, have it take care of basic refactoring tasks, help porting between languages or libraries and so on. I can definitely see a future where you throw together a working prototype of something, answer a few questions about type hinting and edge cases, and AI does the legwork of converting the prototype into a strongly typed final product.

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