GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#71

Post by chmod775 » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:11 AM UTC

I have hopes this will actually improve the average quality of blog posts that get upvoted and shared on platforms.

Because people may realize that if their blog entry is going to be so bad it could be generated by GPT-3, they should probably be doing something else. And everyone else who is upvoting may just become a bit more aware what constitutes something of substance.

Things GPT-3 can't do:

    - Research
    - Technical Documentation
    - Investigative Journalism
    - Write useful software

GPT-3 may be able to fake the first three, but that would be glaringly obvious (because it'd be lying if it isn't just copying and also each of those are generally more than just text content).

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#72

Post by XCSme » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #12

nabla9 wrote: post #9

I think GPT-3 could be blessing for Reddit and HN type forums. Add some GPT-3 content and links into the feed. Decrease the vote weight for users who upvote them and increase vote weight for those who downvote them.

So, you’re experimenting on users without their knowledge? There’s a thing called ethics. You might want to look into that.

So if a restaurant sells today pizza only while yesterday sold only pasta to see what sells better, is that unethical?

Or is it unethical if half the people get one waiter and the other half a different one, to see who can sell better?

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#73

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #62

happytoexplain wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I can't tell if that poster actually suspects the content was generated, or if they are simply using the comparison as an insult.

As a criticism, i don't see how that matters. An article written by a human at the quality level of gpt-3 has the same value as an article actually written by gpt-3. Knowing that gpt-3 actually wrote the article doesn't change its level vapidity. Either the article is vapid or it isn't.

But there's no need to accuse the author of being a robot. They could have written:

> This article is vapid. Zero substantive content, pure regurgitation

Now, I would still have downvoted such a comment. If I'm reading a thread, I clearly like at least the article's topic, and I want to read more on that topic, not dismissive comments telling me that it's stupid. But, at least the modified version focuses on the content, rather than the author.

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#74

Post by School-Cotton » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

not2b wrote: post #70

School-Cotton wrote: post #55

The article if written by a human was bad -- poorly argued and trite. However, my mind is blown if it really was written by an AI. As bad as it might seem by human standards, it's almost impossible for me to accept that this was created by an entity without consciousness or at least understanding. Edit: it seems this might be a fraud; i.e., it indeed was produced by an entity with consciousness. I almost hope that’s…

It is stringing together phrases and sentences that appear in the training data. After digesting gigabytes of text, it has built up structures that represent grammar and semantics to some degree, so you'll find very coherent sentences, because those sentences were originally written by humans or pasted together from sentences written by humans. It's amazing that it works as well as it does.

I disagree. The essay in question develops a coherent argument over several paragraphs. It’s not just disjointed individual sentences.

The argument about overthinking vs creative thinking isn’t particularly _great_, but it’s certainly intelligible.

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#75

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #66

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of https://xkcd.com/810/ . The example comments you linked (Where GPT-3's presence was disclosed) were believably human, particularly if you were skimming, but they were not good comments. If not for the note at the end about GPT-3, I'm pretty confident they would have been downvoted. And if I'm wrong, and GPT-3 is actually capable of writing thoughtful and substantive comments... well, in the words of X…

The longer the comment, the easier to detect GPT-3. The more rigorous the subject, the easier to detect GPT-3. But GPT-3's presence is harder to detect for short comments on less rigorous subjects generated using as input context actual headlines and top-voted comments on HN.

[deleted]

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#76

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #31

anigbrowl wrote: post #3

The best part is the very serious people shushing those who saw through the prank.

I've seen this criticism a few times, specifically about the example in the article, and it's bonkers to me. What I see is somebody calling the blog post garbage, and another person saying that person was being hostile. In what possible interpretation is that a "very serious" person "shushing" somebody who "saw through the prank"? It's totally reasonable to interpret "this looks like an AI wrote it - regurgitated gar…

The comment sin question were

This is either something written by GPT-3, or the human equivalent. Zero substantive content, pure regurgitation. and

I think this was written by GPT-3.

I think you've misrepresented the tone of those comments, and saying that the correctness of their matter-of-fact opinions is unrelated to their validity is strange to me.

It's not just that these commenters said 'this blog post is no good' but that they correctly identified its artificial nature. It's like the difference between dismissing a photo or social media profile as fake and correctly pointing out that it uses an image from thispersondoesnotexist.com.

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#77

Post by codezero » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

albatruss wrote: post #69

codezero wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and this is my instinct, but I worry about the effort becoming very asymmetric. In a world where a large amount of content CAN be generated (my time to read becomes much larger than time to generate / get my attention), and I may or may not be reading sincerely generated content, at what point do I get to attack the content creator for that, especially since it's very difficult for me to understand any given…

This is exactly the reason why academics like their ivory tower, and value credentials more than egalitarian hackers do.

Because they can trust the work of their peers as having met some agreed upon standard, or are you saying academics are bad and hackers are actually egalitarian as a general rule?

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#78

Post by minimaxir » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #63

minimaxir wrote: post #20

HN submission from the blog post author, where the comments from dang reveal the author engaged in voting manipulation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24062702

Sorry to pop the balloon, but the story is bogus. It's false that the post was generated by GPT-3. The author admitted to writing the title and editing the intro. He also described the article body this way: "as unedited as possible"—in other words, edited. It's false that (as he originally claimed) only one commenter called the post out as GPT-3, and false that all such comments were downvoted. All that is just what…

I was trying to be neutral but your response is much more accurate. :P

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#79

Post by sthnblllII » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #40

swyx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this the largest scale Turing test ever performed on an audience acutely aware of what a Turing test is?

I think fewer people know what the Imitation game actually consists of than think they do - namely that a questioner has to guess whether a machine is a respondent to their questions, rather than another player. That certainly hasn't been tried with GPT-3 that I'm aware of. However I would agree that it is an oblique version - that is, can a machine fool humans into thinking that they are human. In which case I think…

Turing actually asked a slightly different question, that I think is a lot more interesting. From Computing Machinery and Intelligence by A. M. Turing:

> The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B

> What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman?

Somewhat politically incorrect, assuming men and women should ever be distinguished, but much more revealing about how exactly people see themselves.

Re: GPT-3 generated blog post reach #1 on Hacker News

#80

Post by albatruss » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

codezero wrote: post #77

albatruss wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the reason why academics like their ivory tower, and value credentials more than egalitarian hackers do.

Because they can trust the work of their peers as having met some agreed upon standard, or are you saying academics are bad and hackers are actually egalitarian as a general rule?

Trust is important. Hackers are naive and will rediscover the old lessons.