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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

#251

Post by tartoran »

TillE wrote: post #216
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.

Hocus pocus preparatus, smoke and mirrors, we present the Oracle! You can ask him anything. Beware, he likes to bullshit and hallucinate

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

#252

Post by unethical_ban »

wizeman wrote: post #231
unethical_ban wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI we see today is a synthesis of a huge number of arbitrary inputs. You may argue that humans are, as well, but humans are different machine than AI. If I am asking for a human response, or a human piece of artwork, I am doing so because I want to understand and experience the output of machines of the same model. I want to continue the human experience. AI-generated content can be fascinating, helpful, and in s…

> But if I ask for a human, I want a human. > I don't care if AI is more interesting than a human. I want a human, because I am human. I am not transhumanist. I think I understand your point but I'd like to give a counterpoint: replace "human" by "white human" and "AI" by "black human" and you might see how that line of reasoning is flawed. In other words, there might come a time when AIs could become really offended…

You think AI is a being. I am not yet convinced.

I am a human supremacist, yes.

Further, it is not unreasonable to have more interest in some cultures than others, or find the experiences of ones own culture more engaging or relevant to oneself than another. The "line of immorality" comes with banning or violently oppressing other experiences.

Again, fundamentally, I disagree with an analogy giving AI equal morality or agency to a homo sapiens. There is no room for "find replace" here.

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

#253

Post by stoppingin »

theptip wrote: post #41
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"…

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.

What if AI could be leveraged to find interesting content? I doubt I'd even notice the bulk of comments being replaced by an AI. I only read them for the one in a thousand comment from a domain expert, or industry insider that really informs me, or challenges my perspective.

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

#254

Post by palisade »

After reading about this I decided to try my hand at using ChatGPT. I decided okay, let's see if it can recreate some code that took me a few hours at work to figure out. I asked it very precisely what I needed and my mind was blown as it produced code that looked similar to what I had coded at work. And, I was like, well that's that then, we're all out of a job. But, then I tried to run the code, and it didn't work. I looked more closely and the code had a lot of flaws. Even after manually fixing those, it still didn't work. And, then using my knowledge of how to actually solve the problem I rewrote the code 40% and made it perform the action needed.

I think all ChatGPT is doing is grabbing a lot of different answers off the interwebz and squishing them together and hoping it answers your question. But, in a lot of cases it only kind of looks like what you want. If you look at images generated by AI, it is the same issue, they sort of look like what you want but there are flaws, like faces that don't look quite human, fingers that are just squishy appendages barely resembling actual fingers, etc. I mean, the tech is getting better, it's impressive, and uncanny.

But, I think we're pretty far from having these things write themselves, they need quite a lot of human intervention to be useful. Still, very impressive and something that could potentially get you closer to an answer. But, no more than spending a little time googling or learning the skill yourself. And, if you learn the skill you're better off, because then you can do it right yourself IMHO.

Also, anytime someone gets a fully working program generated out of this thing the saying, "A broken clock is right twice a day." comes to mind.

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

#255

Post by fragmede »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #207
warbler73 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are about 3 years from most textual content online being created by bots 0 years.

1 year for this tech to be incorporated into most cheap/free creative tools. 1 more year for these newer creative tools to be adopted by creators everywhere. 1 more year for the humans to completely give up. You have to remember that tech takes time to permeate to the bottom rung. Most of my non tech friends haven’t even heard of Dall-E, let alone chatGPT.

1 year? The Internet's already rife with SEO spam without ML algos creating convincing looking copy. They'll copy a site wholesale just with a different domain name. Spammers are probably already using this to generate copy for websites.

eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640819

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

#256

Post by true_religion »

wizeman wrote: post #213
true_religion wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Here is a thought experiment. Let’s say there is a posting about best practices on HN. The commenters can discus the topic and create a new consensus on what best practices is.

AI even at its best won’t be a part of that consensus unless it’s also working in the field.

I think AI chats can help with self improvement, but public discussion with others is the only way to have community improvement. As a disclaimer, sure AI which is indistinguishable from humans would be a part of the community but that isn’t what we have, nor is it the trajectory of current AI. What we currently have are better and better parrots, and task specific AI.

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

#258

Post by palisade »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #169

Well, for starters, it's just annoying. It's like having a bot spamming every single question with useless answers. It dilutes the quality of the content on the site and makes it harder for genuine contributors to get their answers noticed. But it's also a serious concern from a security standpoint. If ChatGPT is providing incorrect answers, it could lead to people implementing flawed code or making poor decisions ba…

The other problem is that ChatGPT is getting its answers from the source it is now polluting with its own wrong answers. Therefore making its results incrementally more wrong than before. Eventually, ChatGPT will generate absolute gibberish given enough time.

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

#259

Post by robocat »

wizeman wrote: post #181
vineyardmike wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

> Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here), like 99% of the time?

So, let’s see whether ChatGPT gets the wrong answers:

  Q: How long does it take to have a baby?

  A: The average length of pregnancy is about 40 weeks, or 9 months.
1/2 correct - 40 weeks is 10 months from conception to birth.

  Q: Why is emacs better than vi?

  A: […] Overall, emacs is widely considered to be a more powerful and versatile editor than vi, with a user-friendly interface and a wealth of support and resources available to users.
1/2 correct. It seems to alway agree with the question’s framing - humans would often disagree.

  Q: Write me a simple python function called are_hacker_news_users_confrontational() that returns either true or false.

  A1: def are_hacker_news_users_confrontational():
        return True

  A2: def are_hacker_news_users_confrontational():
        return False
      This function simply returns False, indicating that Hacker News users are not confrontational. Of course, this is just a simple example, and the actual answer to this question may vary depending on various factors. Alternatively, if you want to determine whether or not Hacker News users are confrontational by analyzing their behavior on the platform, you could use natural language processing techniques to analyze the comments and posts made by users on Hacker News, and use that information to determine whether they tend to be confrontational or not. However, this would require a more complex implementation, and would require access to a large dataset of Hacker News comments and posts.
9/10 for that answer!

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

#260

Post by FridgeSeal »

kposehn wrote: post #9
senko wrote: post #7

This is just a preview of things to come. Wait a few weeks until Google is completely swamped with ChatGPT SEO pages barely distinguishable from the real thing. If I worked at search quality at Google, I'd be very worried.

The most recent update also managed to rank ML generated content above written content in many instances, compounding the problem. I absolutely expect a carpet bombing of SEO results with spam.

My friend has already re-written the marketing pages for his startup using ChatGPT.

As you said, it'll only get worse from here, which in some ways, might make a lot of it easier to sift through. That is, if everyone uses machine-generated content for marketing, the winning strategy no longer becomes "write the best marketing copy to get people interested", it becomes (for the users), "simply filter out all marketing copy and rely instead on results" (or something else that is difficult to falsify).

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