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Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

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Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#51

Post by dathinab »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #41
dathinab wrote: post #12

The comment section on HN is for comments and discussions of people so yes any form of generated responses does IMHO fundamentally disqualify. I mean to nitpick if a AI becomes sentient and flexible enough to be called a person and decides to comment on their own that would be fine. But when it comes to: - auto generating responses - hiring people to generate responses for you - anything similar to the other points I…

I have a disability. I'm a bad writer and a bad speller. It takes me a long time to compose a response that I wont later regret. I haven't looked into it yet, but I was thinking ChatGPT might help me. I could quickly jot down my thoughts, and let the computer arrange them in an easier to read format.

What I mean is not allowing responses of which the content is auto generated not that the text syntax/prosa is auto formulated.

I don't believe any form of auto detection of ChatGPT-like text will long term work, even through it has a certain style you can change that style or post process it and that's just the first version of ChatGPT.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#53

Post by avalys »

dathinab wrote: post #16
avalys wrote: post #7

How are they going to be banned? Or are we just talking about banning the lame “durr, I asked cGPT and here’s what it said” responses? Those get downvoted anyway because they got boring real fast, especially since cGPT is free and open to all.

Banning on HN is kinda pointless. But I think this is more about preventing/limiting karma gain of an account, potentially posting/commenting limits and similar stuff. I.e. it's more about migating the (assumed negative) effect a few people abusing comment generation could have then it is about punishing people.

How do you propose to ban that kind of use? In order to ban it you have to detect it.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#54

Post by Lockal »

Tbh, clay-dreidels just posted few ChatGPT-generated comments mostly in ChatGPT-related posts (more as a joke to show the pointlessness). And these comments were perfectly identifiable, despite the lack of a disclaimer. If we were talking about really hard-to-detect comments coming in mass quantities, then we could discuss the ban. In the meantime, it's too early.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#55

Post by dang »

They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either!

Edit: It's a bit hard to point to past explanations since the word "bots" appears in many contexts, but I did find these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33911426 (Dec 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32571890 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27558392 (June 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693590 (April 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24189762 (Aug 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22744611 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427782 (Feb 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774797 (Dec 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325914 (March 2019)

We've already banned a few accounts that appear to be spamming the threads with generated comments, and I'm happy to keep doing that, even though there's a margin of error.

The best solution, though, is to raise the community bar for what counts as a good comment. Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better. If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter*. But that's a ways off.

Therefore, let's all stop writing lazy and over-conventional comments, and make our posts so thoughtful that the question "is this ChatGPT?" never comes up.

* Edit: er, I put that too hastily! I just mean it will be a different problem at that point.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#56

Post by greatpostman »

ctoth wrote: post #38

Generate a Hacker News comments section discussing whether or not ChatGPT responses should be allowed on the site. Response from model User 1: I think allowing ChatGPT responses on Hacker News is a bad idea. This technology is still new, and could be used to create spam comments, or even worse, low-quality content. Plus, it could lead to more automated responses and more automation in general on the site, which I don…

Honestly that would be amazing. If you’re comment is so vanilla chatgpt can come up with it, then don’t comment. A new bar, beat the ai retrieved canned opinions

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#58

Post by rglullis »

keiferski wrote: post #40
kossTKR wrote: post #24

The fact that soon the internet will be so flooded with bots that you'll be floating eternally alone in a sea of imposters unless we create some draconian real person ID system is a tragedy so great it's crazy it has not dawned on people yet. I started out loving the net because of the feelings of connection and partly because of the honesty and discussions stemming from at least pseudo anonymity, both silly stuff an…

This has a far easier and less dystopian solution: charge money to access communities, which are smaller and more focused. I find it very unlikely that corporate PR bots will be paying $5 a month each to spam Substack communities, for example.

It's doesn't even have to be $5/month. Make a $10 deposit required for creating an account, and for each offense against the guidelines, you get a "fine" that proportional for the severity of the infraction (uncivil discussion? $0.10 cents, participating in hell-threads? $0.50. Comparing HN with reddit? $1.337 Obvious spam? Your whole $10 is gone.) Repeat offenses get exponentially more expensive, and you only get to post with a positive balance.

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#59

Post by ramraj07 »

dang wrote: post #55

They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either! Edit: It's a bit hard to point to past explanations since the word "bots" appears in many contexts, but I did find these: https://news.yc…

It’ll be interesting if we soon come to a day when a comment can be suspected to be from a bot because it’s too coherent and smart!

Re: Ask HN: Should HN ban ChatGPT/generated responses?

#60

Post by rglullis »

MollyRealized wrote: post #48
keiferski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has a far easier and less dystopian solution: charge money to access communities, which are smaller and more focused. I find it very unlikely that corporate PR bots will be paying $5 a month each to spam Substack communities, for example.

... Metafilter, since pre-2000. [1] [1] - www.metafilter.com

Which is probably one of the best sources of good discussion on the internet.
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