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Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#321

Post by Teever »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #100
Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"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…

But the problem is that people with poor written language / english skills are 'competing' with people who have superb skills in this domain.

There are people here who sit at a desk all day banging out multipage emails for work who decide to write posts of a similar linguistic calibre for funsies.

Meanwhile you have someone in a developing country who just got off a brutal twelve hour shift doing manual labour in the sun who wants to participate in the conversation with an insightful message that they bang-out on a shitty little cellphone onscreen keyboard while riding on bumpy public transit.

You could have a great idea and express it poorly and be penalized for doing so here while someone could have a blah idea expressed excellently and it's showered in replies despite being in some metrics (the ones I think are most important) worse than the other post.

What's the solution for that?

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#322

Post by minimaxir »

cubefox wrote: post #54

Meanwhile, the top comment on one of the most upvoted submissions today is AI generated by an LLM account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47334694 Most people don't seem to care.

Please don't vaguepost as it wasted my time trying to trade down which comment you thought was LLM generated and why.

OP is likely referring to this one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47335032) by LuxBennu because it has an em-dash, that's one of the few cases it's used correctly. But the account's comment history comments that do not follow the typical LLM tropes but are still odd for a human to write: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=LuxBennu

LuxBennu did reply to accusations of being an AI bot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340704

> Fair enough — I've been lurking since 2019 and picked a bad day to start commenting on everything at once. Not a bot, just overeager. I'll pace myself.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#323

Post by phs318u »

altairprime wrote: post #210
Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"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…

Grammarly use is outright prohibited by this; AI-edited writing is no longer writing that you hold personal and exclusive responsibility for having written. Consider Stephen Hawking’s voice box generator. While the sounds produced were machine-assisted, the writing was his alone. If you find yourself unable to participate in this web forum without paying a proofreader (in time, money, or cycles) to copy-edit your wri…

> If you find yourself unable to participate in this web forum without paying a proofreader (in time, money, or cycles) to copy-edit your writing, then you’re not welcome on HN as a participant.

You forgot the /s ?

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#324

Post by czhu12 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"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…

Finding it more refreshing these days when reading text with broken grammar, incorrect use of pronouns, etc. especially for HN, the human connection is more palpable. It’s rarely so bad that it’s not understandable

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#326

Post by AnimalMuppet »

amichail wrote: post #303

This policy will not age well.

Perhaps not. But if it reduces the junk right now, it's a good policy for right now. I'll take it, for now. If it needs revisited, then it should be revisited when circumstances change enough to warrant that.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#328

Post by xpe »

jmuguy wrote: post #244
bondarchuk wrote: post #167

All the weak excuses posted here are just making me lean more towards a hardline policy. No I don't want to read a human-generated summary of your llm brainstorming session. No I don't want to read human-written text with wording changes suggested by an llm. No I don't want to read an excerpt from llm output even if you correctly attribute it. I acknowledge this is partly just my personal bias, in some cases really n…

Beyond folks for whom English is a second language, I agree with you. I don't understand why people are immediately trying to find some loophole in this with spelling, grammar, etc checks. We just want to communicate with you, and if you sound like an idiot without the help of an LLM then maybe work on that rather than pretending to be Hemingway.

> I don't understand why people are immediately trying to find some loophole in this with spelling, grammar, etc checks.

First, what "loophole" is the comment above referring to? Spell-checking and grammar checking? They seem both common and reasonable to me.

Second, I'm concerned the comment above is uncharitable. (The word 'loophole' is itself a strong tell of that.)

In my view, humanity is at its best when we leverage tools and technology to think better. Let's be careful what policies we put in place. If we insist comments have no "traces of LLM" we might inadvertently lower the quality of discussion.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#329

Post by observationist »

Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"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…

On a technical level, you can really only guard against changing your semantics and voice - if you're letting software alter the meaning, or meanings, you intend, and use words you don't normally use, it's probably too far.

This is probably ok:

>> On a technical level, you can really only guard against software that changes your semantics or voice. If you're letting it alter the meaning (or meanings) you intend, or if it starts using words you would never normally use, then it's gone too far.

This is probably too far:

>>> On a technical level, it's important to recogn1ize that the only robust guardrail we can realistically implement is one that prevents modifications to core semantics or authorial voice. If you're comfortable allowing the system to refine or rephrase the precise meanings you originally intended — or if it begins incorporating vocabulary that doesn't align with your typical linguistic patterns — then you've likely crossed a meaningful threshold where the output no longer fully represents your authentic intent.

Something to consider is that you can analyze your own stylometric patterns over a large collection of your writing, and distill that into a system of rules and patterns to follow which AI can readily handle. It is technically possible, albeit tedious, to clone your style such that it's indistinguishable from your actual human writing, and can even icnlude spelling mistakes you've made before at a rate matching your actual writing.

AI editing is weird, though. Not seeing a need, unless English isn't your native language.

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