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

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

#671

Post by collingreen »

tlogan wrote: post #653
nkh wrote: post #286

What a welcome post. The whole reason I come here is to get thoughtful input from smart people, and not what I could get myself from an LLM. While we are at it; Think your own thoughts as well :) I know how easy it is to "let it come up with a first draft" and not spend the real effort of thinking for yourself on questions, but you'll find it's a road to perdition if you let yourself slip into the habit. Thanks to al…

You are missing the point here. It is not about whether the comment was written by AI, a native English speaker, English major, or ESL. What matters is an idea or an opinion. That is all what matters.

To follow the pattern of your comment: You are missing the forest for the trees. Like many things, the difference between theory and practice matters here. In theory the only thing that matters is the idea. In practice the context and human element matters AND a culture of ai text could very much reduce the bar for quality.

An equivalent overly-pure reductive mistake is "why do you need privacy if you aren't doing anything wrong".

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

#672

Post by simonbolivar »

QQ00 wrote: post #318
nkh wrote: post #286

What a welcome post. The whole reason I come here is to get thoughtful input from smart people, and not what I could get myself from an LLM. While we are at it; Think your own thoughts as well :) I know how easy it is to "let it come up with a first draft" and not spend the real effort of thinking for yourself on questions, but you'll find it's a road to perdition if you let yourself slip into the habit. Thanks to al…

Totally agree with you. I come here to read comments made by humans. If I need to read comments made by AI Bots I would go to Twitter or reddit, both made me not read the comments section entirely.

You sound like you're a bot lol

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

#673

Post by dolebirchwood »

jjgreen wrote: post #559
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…

Good writers use semicolons and em-dashes. Sometimes we used bulleted lists or Oxford commas. - You seem to have a rather high opinion of your own writing :-) - Why the mix of tense (use/used)? - Oxford commas are a monstrosity

> Oxford commas are a monstrosity

This is objectively wrong.

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

#674

Post by kashyapc »

I'm tickled pink to read this! I very much support this move. HN is one of the few internet forums I use. It'd be awful to see this riddled by bot spew.

This rule will atleast partly stem the danger of HN getting turned into what dang calls a "scorched earth" situation.

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

#675

Post by hbjkhgkytfkytv »

The "no AI" rule finally being official feels like a necessary line in the sand.

The real issue isn't just "slop" or bot-spam; it's the cost of entry. HN works because of the "proof of work" behind a good comment. If I’m spending five minutes reading your take on a kernel patch or a startup pivot, I’m doing it because I assume a human actually sat down and thought about it.

When the cost of generating a response drops to zero, the value of the conversation follows it down. If the author didn't care enough to write it, why should I care enough to read it?

The "AI-edited" part of the rule is the trickiest bit, though. We’re reaching a point where the line between a sophisticated spell-checker and a generative "tone polisher" is non-existent. My worry isn't that the mods will ban bots—they've been doing that for years—it's that we'll start seeing "witch hunts" against anyone who writes a bit too formally or whose English is a little too perfect.

Ultimately, I’m glad it’s a rule. I don't come here to see what an LLM thinks; I can get that on my own localhost. I come here for the "graybeards" and the niche experts. If we lose the human friction, we lose the signal.

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

#678

Post by customguy »

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…

> 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?

For me it's the first one every time. If only because LLM don't learn from responses to it (much less so when the response is to a paste of their output). It's just not communication. From that perspective, the quality of even the most brilliant LLM output is zero, because it's (whatever high value) multiplied by zero.

Even a real person saying something really horrible and too dense to learn from any response at least gives me a signal about what humans exist. An LLM doesn't tell me anything, and if wanted the reply of an LLM, I would simply feed my own posts into an LLM. A human doing that "for me" is very creepy and, to my sensibilities, boundary violating. Okay, that may be too strong a word, but it feels gross in a way I can't quite put my finger on, but reject wholeheartedly.

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

#679

Post by drtgh »

nunez wrote: post #648
schopra909 wrote: post #548

Honest question, why were folks posting AI generated comments in the first place? There's such a high inertia to comment. I only comment when I have something to contribute OR find something incredibly interesting. So I'm just baffled, why anyone was using AI to generate comments. Like what was the incentive driving the behavior?

Most comments on here are really well-written. I can imagine someone for whom English is a second language (or a first language but aren't as good at writing as they'd like to be) using an LLM to "keep up." Of course, this sometimes works until they decide to post something without those tools.

Although I'm unsure about their purpose, I am fairly certain it is not an English as a second language matter.

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

#680

Post by monksy »

"It's cute you think you can tell what's human and what's not. Honestly, the average HN comment is indistinguishable from a poorly written AI prompt anyway. This rule just lowers the bar for what passes as 'intellectual discourse.'"

Sorry everyone, I couldn't help but to ask Gemma3-27B-it-vl-GLM-4.7-Uncensored-Heretic-Deep-Reasoning-i1-GGUF:q4_K_M to respond. Sorry dang. :)

PS It followed it up with:

> Disclaimer: "Slightly insulting" is subjective on HN. The mods there are sensitive.

These Heretic models are fun.

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