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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

#281

Post by tpmoney »

bambax wrote: post #161
convexfunction wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

For some reason, we assume what comes out of a computer is more trustworthy than what people say. We think computers are transparent, reliable, idempotent and don't have an agenda. Even more so if we call it "intelligent"... But ChatGPT is a bullshit machine, and that much is new.

At least the good part of the answers being on stack overflow then is, like they used to say "On the internet no one knows you're a dog". So whether the answer came from ChatGPT or an aggressively overconfident fool, a wrong answer should get the same downvotes regardless, and a correct answer should get the same up votes. Probably the two biggest issues with ChatGPT being used to provide answers is whether it's wrong often enough to start swinging the experience of the site negative, and more importantly that some people are getting fake internet points unfairly.

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

#282

Post by canemacchina »

wizeman wrote: post #266
robocat wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 1/2 correct - 40 weeks is 10 months from conception to birth. Sorry, is this a cultural difference or are you just nitpicking math? Even Wikipedia says: This is just over nine months. I have never seen anyone argue that pregnancy takes 10 months in humans, I've always heard people say it takes 9 months (indeed, being 9 months pregnant is equivalent to saying you're just about to give birth, where I come from).

Nope, 40 weeks is the correct answer. Usually, the calculation is done from the first day of the last menstrual period, and from the medical point of view, we consider 40 weeks of pregnancy (even if doctors consider a period between 38 and 42 weeks a normal pregnancy). 40 weeks are exactly 280 days, that are ~9 months. So for this reason we say that the pregnancy is 9 months, but doctors usually say 40 weeks.

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

#283

Post by jahewson »

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"…

I could tell that your comment was ChatGPT by the second sentence.

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

#284

Post by dragonwriter »

robocat wrote: post #259
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…

> 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…

> 40 weeks is 10 months from conception to birth.

Months vary in length, 9 average months (1/12 year per month) is. 39.1+ weeks, 10 is 43.4+ weeks; 40 weeks is closer to 9 months.

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

#285

Post by CrypticShift »

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...

Isn’t it this just the first form of that "AI takeover" some are fearing in the distant future?

It's accelerating now. AI is taking over the internet. Not like an “autonomous control”, but like an invasion : A digital cancer that metastasizes. Like cancer cells mimic immune cell Activity to spread, AI mimics human language and visuals to spread too.

And it may “kill the internet” (hence the “dead internet”)

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

#287

Post by karmasimida »

petesergeant wrote: post #204
karmasimida wrote: post #80

Let me be the advocate of devil I think ChatGPT is actually sometimes a lot better than SO answers

For the last few days I've been using ChatGPT instead of SO. It's OK, it's just frequently wrong, so I assume I have to fact-check its answers. Yesterday it claimed to me JavaScript has a built-in `sum` method, before admitting no browsers supported it and it's not in the spec. It's useful for starting investigation, but one of the nice things about SO is that answers are voted for, so you can usually see which are a…

The thing about SO is you are often not able to find the question that precisely answer your question, while ChatGPT could do just that.

I just used ChatGPT to answer some not so complex but still custom questions about linux command, it can just do that, while it will for sure take effort for me to search that answer from SO.

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

#288

Post by dalmo3 »

rightbyte wrote: post #269
layer8 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Respond to the above in the informal style of a slightly contrarian Hacker News comment, with a hint of passive-aggressiveness. Avoid repetitive wording and long sentences. Wow, thanks for the tip! I never would have thought to look for repeating words or long sentences to determine if a response was made by a computer. I guess I'll just blindly trust everything I read online from now on. Sarcasm aside, this is a p…

This is terrible. Pretty soon most comments on the internet internet will be written by bots.

> the internet internet

I think you pass the Turing test. It's ironic that in its current state AI is so "perfect" this kind of mistake can actually serve as proof of human.

Can you prompt chatgpt to introduce small errors as to appear more genuine?

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

#289

Post by disqard »

SoftTalker wrote: post #65
echelon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit and Twitter are going to be overwhelmed with bots indistinguishable from humans.

A lot of reddit and twitter posts are already just people regurgitating and rehashing what they have heard/read from others, mostly without a lot of critical thought. Is this really going to be very different?

Your comment reminds me of something I read in Ouspensky's narrative of the teachings of Gurdjieff: (from memory) most people are automatons, so they don't actually operate at a very high level of intelligence to begin with.

The above was also expressed (in less cruel terms) by DFW in his "what is water" commencement speech at Kenyon College: (again, from memory) it is our natural tendency to operate in "default mode", which we must fight.

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

#290

Post by plasticchris »

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"…

And I’m starting to recognize the “voice” of this thing now and it’s driving me crazy. The content is so bland, the conclusions so plainly obvious.
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