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

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601–610 of 1001 posts

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

#601

What I think would actually be useful is a version of what was implemented on /r/ClaudAI which is an official bot which summarizes the discussion (and updates after x number of comments have been added). I think this level of synthesis has a compounding effect on discussion quality and pruning redundant arguments/topics. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/s/BJKLxzJA16

Just read the posts instead of an AI slop summary

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

#602

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.

I read HN both because I want to read what humans think, and because I want to read insightful discussion.

The tension is that as insightful discussion becomes easier/better with LLMs, there is less need to read HN. All I'm left with is provenance: reading because a human wrote it, not because it is uniquely insightful.

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

#603
post #573

How about comments that include AI output if labeled? Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for). I asked Perplexity and given my recol…

Perplexity supports sharing URL to the thread. I think it's quite natural to link AI summaries like that.

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

#604
post #577

Could we also discourage comments and comment-threads accusing an article of being AI-written? Half the threads these days have a comment that latches onto some LLM-ism in TFA, calls it out, and spawns a whole discussion which gets repetitive fast. I think this falls into the same category as "don't comment about the voting on comments." Personally, I try to look beyond the language, which admittedly can be grating,…

That is indeed a problem. If one must complain about it, I think it would help to at least try elevate these type of tangential remarks beyond hurled accusations. A focus on the the specifics (where arguments are poorly made, banal observations are gussied up with flowery language, points are needlessly reiterated, etc) would at least make for slightly more interesting meta commentary.

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

#605
post #426

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…

We're going to add that. I've resisted adding reasons-for-flagging for years, but even I can change my mind every decade or so. A nice side effect is that it will double as a confirmation step, solving the FFF (fat finger flagging) problem.

My radical opinion is there shouldn't be 2 flags, there should be N flags, user defined, so that we can flag humor/satire/factuality/insight/political and a bunch of other things. I fully realize that's not going to fly any time soon.

Adding AI in addition to the standard up/downvote and flag seems a reasonable thing.

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

#606
post #571

I am 100% behind this. I've been browsing hackernews since I started in tech, it is the only forum i regularly browse, and partake in. Simply because the quality of submissions and conversations are so high. There has been more AI related articles this part year, and it only seems ramping. I personally haven't found the AI part of the comments as big of a deal but dang and tom might be doing more than I realize on th…

I personally joined HN because of various AI discussions. Comparatively, other sites such as Reddit, Twitter and YouTube just shill content, applications or products. A ton of the posts on Reddit are just AI written ffmpeg wrappers which no one should care about but apparently people do...

Upvoting rings on Reddit are likely not policed like they are here. That is to say, I wouldn't assume there is real interest based on Reddit points.

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

#607

What I think would actually be useful is a version of what was implemented on /r/ClaudAI which is an official bot which summarizes the discussion (and updates after x number of comments have been added). I think this level of synthesis has a compounding effect on discussion quality and pruning redundant arguments/topics. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/s/BJKLxzJA16

I don't spend much time on that subreddit, but I've seen that bot on a couple posts I've read and have been pleasantly surprised by how useful it seemed. I may eat my words on this later, but to me this is exactly the kind of application of AI that I have always thought was the most promising.

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

#608
post #573

How about comments that include AI output if labeled? Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for). I asked Perplexity and given my recol…

> I though of pasting in Perplexity's summary, saying it was from Perplexity but that I had checked and it was a good summary.

> Would that be OK or would that count as an AI written comment?

The rule seems written to answer this directly.

Absolutely nobody cares what Perplexity has to say about the case - summary or otherwise. If you mention what the case is, I can ask claude myself if I’m interested.

Better yet, post a link to an authoritative source on the case (helpful but not required).

At minimum, verify your info via another source. The community deserves that much at least.

An AI-generated summary adds nothing positive and actually detracts from the conversation.

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

#609

In the age of AI, thinking becomes a privilege.

to get paid for*.AI has definitely reduced the influence pseudo-intellectuals have had on society. Now, you actually have to be smart enough to do something that isn't easily reproduced using LLMs.

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

#610

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…

Much like not dumping motor oil down the drain, it’s probably near impossible to catch skilled AI-users. I think we all want to have a nice space to chat, just like we don’t want a polluted planet, so we’ll just have to be on the honor system.

I don’t think there’s a lot to AI generated stuff on here that really bothered me to the point I wanted to call someone out.

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