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Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT

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

#51

I assume that this is by folks wanting to up their scores. That's a huge problem with "gamification." I'm not especially a fan of the concept, in a venue like SO. I think it has led to a rather nasty community, and I hardly ever go there, anymore. I assume that we'll be seeing a lot of robotic HN content (I would not be surprised if it is already here, but has been sidelined by the mods).

> I would not be surprised if it is already here, but has been sidelined by the mods

I can virtually guarantee you that there's been a nontrivial amount of GPT-generated content on HN that has not been caught by mods since ChatGPT, and likely since GPT-2/3, as well. Dang (and the other one whose tag I can't recall) already have their hands full trying to keep the tone civil across thousands (tens of thousands?) of comments a day - it's impossible for them to catch every ML-generated comment (some humans actually do write like these newer language models, after all), and more than likely they're missing a decent number of them - through no fault of their own, it's just an extremely hard problem.

The three solutions that I'm shilling for this problem are (1) invite-trees for HN (like Lobsters, which makes the community much less open but also much more resistant to abuse) (2) webs of trust (not cryptographic, just databases of how much you trust users) overlaid onto HN and other places and (3) people actually reading the content of comments very carefully and upvoting logically sound arguments and downvoting illogical and emotional/manipulative ones, but all of these require a lot of effort and social buy-in.

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

#53
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.

So, effectively the status quo?

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

#54
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.

> SEO pages

I think GPT could improve things in this regard. It's already a huge garbage pile, so we might as well go all in and at least generate better garbage.

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

#55
It's worth understanding the community and org better, and their reaction. Relevant links:

- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/421778/how-do-you-p...

- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/412696/is-it-accept...

- https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/384355/could-chatgp...

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

#56
I wouldn't even mind so much if the answers were right. The problem is that a lot of them are totally wrong, but completely reasonable- and plausible-sounding, and in an authoritative tone, so unless you already know the right answer, the only way you'll realize its answer is wrong is the hard way.

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

#57
post #41

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.

Gotta love it. Akin to Silicon Valley-ites ensuring their own children don’t have access to the technologies they go into the office to create and propagate every day.

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

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fun but it's already starting to NOT be fun.

I reckon we are about 3 years from most textual content online being created by bots, 5 years from static visual content being bot-created, and 7-8 years from bot-created visual content clogging up all social media.

I'll take the under.

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

#59
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.

Gotta love it. Akin to Silicon Valley-ites ensuring their own children don’t have access to the technologies they go into the office to create and propagate every day.

I would expect most automotive engineers don't let their children drive the cars they go to the office to create and propagate every day. Because... they're children.

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

#60
This was the first use case that I thought of when I learned that ChatGPT could generate code. Then I considered how I’d feel if I ran into a fake (incorrect) answer and decided not to actually do this. Well, guess someone was eventually going to try this.
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