Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#401

Post by ffsm8 »

wvenable wrote: post #362
iammjm wrote: post #15

I believe the issue of proving who is and who isn't really human on the Internet will be a really important issue in the coming years, especially without sacrificing people's right to privacy and anonymity in the process.

I don't think the real issue is LLM posts. The issue with low quality on the Internet has always been quantity . The problem always has been humans who post too much, humans that use software to post too much, and now it's humans who use LLMs to post too much. The problem with a medium that is completely free and unrestricted is that whomever posts the most sort of wins. I could post this opinion 30-40 times in this…

If you had the LLM write the comment, then it wasn't your thoughts.

I sometimes wonder if people aren't forgetting why we're on this platform.

The goal is to have an interesting discourse and maybe grow as a human by broadening your horizon. The likelihood of that happening with llms talking for you is basically nil, hence... Why even go through the motion at that point? It's not like you get anything for upvotes on HN

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

#402

Post by bittercynic »

GMoromisato wrote: post #272

I'm here to read what actual humans think. If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it. But here's where it gets tricky: Do I prefer low-effort, off-the-top-of-my-head reactions, as long as it is human? Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced? Am I here to read authentic humans because I value authenticity for its own sake (like preferring Champagne instead of…

I like to read human comments because I'd like to know what my fellow humans think. I'd prefer not to read low-effort, throw away comments, but other than that I want to know what people think about different topics.

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

#403

Post by altairprime »

humanfromearth9 wrote: post #357

Sometimes, an AI helps articulate an idea or an intuition. Is that okay, or is it too much already?

If you discuss an idea with an AI and then close the AI window, turn to an editor, and write what the AI said from memory, that’s going to come across as AI-assisted writing and be unwelcome here.

If you discuss an idea with AI, then close the window and write a post about how you came up with the idea, got stuck, decided to ping an AI for unstuck-ness, describe how the AI’s response got you unstuck, and then continue writing about your idea, that’s not going to be necessarily treated as AI-assisted writing — but people are going to be extremely suspicious of you, because the perception is that 99.9% of people who use chatbots go on to submit AI-assisted writing. That’s probably more like 90% in reality but it’s something to be aware of as you talk about your experiences.

If you use AI in your process and don’t disclose it when writing about your idea and process, that’s generally viewed as lying-by-omission and if egregious enough you could end up downvoted, flagged, and/or banned (see also the recent video game awards / AI usage affair). Better to disclose it with due care than to hide it.

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

#404

Post by TacticalCoder »

GMoromisato wrote: post #272

I'm here to read what actual humans think. If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it. But here's where it gets tricky: Do I prefer low-effort, off-the-top-of-my-head reactions, as long as it is human? Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced? Am I here to read authentic humans because I value authenticity for its own sake (like preferring Champagne instead of…

> Am I here to read authentic humans because I value authenticity for its own sake (like preferring Champagne instead of sparkling wine)?

Mate, Champagne is a sparkling wine. In French you can even at times hear people asking for "un vin mousseux de Champagne" meaning "a sparkling wine from Champagne" instead of the short form (just saying "un Champagne" or "du Champagne").

Now, granted, not all sparkling wine are Champagne.

The Wikipedia entry begins with: "Champagne is a sparkling wine originated and produced in the Champagne wine region of France...".

I drank enough of it to be stating my case, of which I'm certain!

P.S: and btw, yup, authentic humans content only here, even if it's of "low quality". If I want LLM, I've got my LLMs.

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

#405

Post by postalcoder »

arrsingh wrote: post #381

There should be a "flag as AI" link in addition to "flag" and then a setting for people to show flagged as AI. Once the flagged as AI reaches a certain threshold then it disappears unless you enable "Show AI". Maybe once enough posts have been flagged like that then that corpus could be used to train an AI to automatically detect content generated by AI. That would be cool. Maybe the HN site wouldn't add this feature…

I’ve actually been thinking about this exact idea for https://hcker.news/. Stay tuned, I’ve already started rolling out some comment filtering.

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

#408

Post by malfist »

wvenable wrote: post #362
iammjm wrote: post #15

I believe the issue of proving who is and who isn't really human on the Internet will be a really important issue in the coming years, especially without sacrificing people's right to privacy and anonymity in the process.

I don't think the real issue is LLM posts. The issue with low quality on the Internet has always been quantity . The problem always has been humans who post too much, humans that use software to post too much, and now it's humans who use LLMs to post too much. The problem with a medium that is completely free and unrestricted is that whomever posts the most sort of wins. I could post this opinion 30-40 times in this…

Amusingly your comment carries some of the tropes of AI authorship ("is not a problem on it's own....is the problem") but it's not shaped like a profound insight is being discovered in every line is what makes it human.

How much of AI writing will pass under the radar when the big companies aren't all maximizing to generate the most engagement hacking content in a chatbot UI? Maybe it'll still stand out for being low quality, but I'm not sure. There's lots of low quality human authored content.

Not sure where my comment is going, I just kinda rambled.

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

#409

Post by tyg13 »

jedberg wrote: post #359

I'm absolutely 100% for this policy. My only caution is that good writers and LLMs look very similar, because LLMs were trained on a corpus of good writers. Good writers use semicolons and em-dashes. Sometimes we used bulleted lists or Oxford commas. So we should make sure to follow that other HN rule, and assume the person on the other end is a good faith actor, and be cautious about accusing someone of using AI. (I…

I don't really think that good writing and LLM writing looks all that similar. It's not always easy to spot (and maybe HN users aren't always doing a great job at it), but even the best LLM output tends to have an "LLM smell" to it that's hard to avoid.

Like, sure, LLM writing is almost always grammatically correct, spelled correctly, formatted correctly, etc., which tends to be true of good writing. But there's a certain style that it just can't get away from. It's not just the em-dashes, the semi-colons, or the bulleted lists. It's the short, punchy sentences, with few-to-no asides or digressions. Often using idiom, but only in a stale, trite, and homogenized manner. Real humans, are each different -- which lends a certain unpredictability to our writing, even if trying to write to a semi-formal standard, the way "good" writers often do -- but LLMs are all so painfully the same, and the output shows it.

Post reply on HN