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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

#701

Post by yellowapple »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #88
fidotron wrote: post #52

The only question is is the entity interesting and/or correct. Those properties are in the eye of the beholder. If they're human or not is beside the point. After all, no one knows I'm a dog.

> The only question is is the entity interesting and/or correct. This already falls apart though. There are while categories of things which I find "incorrect" and would take up as an argument with a fellow human. But trying to change the mind of an LLM just feels like a waste of my time.

Arguing for the sake of convincing the other person is doomed to inevitable failure, even without the possibility of that person being an LLM.

Arguing for the sake of convincing onlookers reading the conversation is more likely to be effective, and in that case it doesn't matter if the other person is an LLM.

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

#702

Post by komali2 »

primitivesuave wrote: post #566

The most telling sign of a human commenter is brevity. Consequently, I hardly ever spend the time to write out long and detailed HN comments like I used to in the pre-LLM era. People nowadays have a much harder time believing that an Internet stranger is meticulously crafting a detailed and grammatically-airtight message to another Internet stranger without AI assistance.

This is interesting to me because I'm a degenerate "massive comment" guy. People have gotten mad at me for it before, I'll take a comment from them, break it down, address it portion by portion with citations, and then ask their thoughts. It's probably an obsessive level of engagement that people aren't really interested in, which is fair, but I don't know how else to get my point across in its totality.

Also there's some subset of users on this site who are rate limited, such as me. So for me that manifests in avoiding post for post conversations and more seeking to engage in an exchange of essays where I try to predict future points and address them, to save comments, which obviously results in long comments.

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

#703

Post by yellowapple »

resiros wrote: post #119

Not sure I agree with the AI edited comments. Using AI to improve the readability and clarity is fine. Sometimes a well structured comment is much better than a braindump that reads like ramblings. And AI is quite good at it (and probably will get better). To make the point, here is how this comment would have looked if edited: "I don't fully agree with banning AI-edited comments. Using AI to improve readability and…

For all the people saying they prefer the non-edited version: would y'all be saying that if you didn't already know which one was the non-edited version? Be honest.

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

#705

Post by komali2 »

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?

One trend I noticed here and, annoyingly, in my co-op, is that people will take a really dense and complex topic that's either currently engaged in deep conversation with multiple people or ripe for it, and then post a link to a Chatgpt conversation with a tag like "I didn't have time to get my thoughts together but here's a Chatgpt overview/some suggested solutions!" For me that's the equivalent of "I googled that for you," aka extremely rude.

Thanks, if I wanted Chatgpt's middle-of-the-bellcurve ass response I would have put the five seconds of effort in myself to type the question into its input field.

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

#706

Post by yellowapple »

getnormality wrote: post #242
chrisweekly wrote: post #175

I like this guideline, at least in principle. But I have some concerns about suppression of comments from non-native English writers. More selfishly, my personal writing style has significant overlap with so-called "tells" for AI generated prose: things like "it's not X, it's Y", use of em-dashes, a fairly deep vocabulary, and a tendency toward verbosity (which I'm striving to curb). It'd be ironic if I start getting…

This is for their own good. Nobody cares about imperfect language online so long as you are trying to express real human thoughts. But if it smells like AI then everyone will hate it, rule or no rule. The rule just makes the will of the community clear to those who want to respect it.

> Nobody cares about imperfect language online

lol

lmao, even

If I had a nickel for every time I've encountered someone who cared about imperfect language online, I'd have enough nickels to buy Y Combinator.

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

#707

Post by crossroadsguy »

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…

I use dash a lot while people rather usually use and are used to seeing a hyphen. I was called out on a certain app "wtf dude.. the least u can do is nt use ai". Well, the person was using shorthand and textpeak a lot, so it was already getting nauseating for me, so this outburst helped me eject, but not before I politely asked why they thought so and dash was the trigger along with "all da time crct grmr and spelling". Also "hu da hell writes dis long sentences". Guilty as charged.

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

#708

Post by crossroadsguy »

tyg13 wrote: post #409
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…

I don't really think that good writing and LLM writing looks all that similar. It's not always easy to spot (and maybe HN users aren't always doing a great job at it), but even the best LLM output tends to have an "LLM smell" to it that's hard to avoid. Like, sure, LLM writing is almost always grammatically correct, spelled correctly, formatted correctly, etc., which tends to be true of good writing. But there's a ce…

It's not whether it "really" looks similar. It's what people think, most of the people, and most of the people are neither known for practising good writing nor consuming good writing.

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

#709

Post by asadotzler »

Someone1234 wrote: post #84

"AI-edited comments" is a very interesting one. Where is the line between a spelling/grammar/tone checker like Grammarly, that at minimum use N-Grams behind the scenes, and something that is "AI" edited? What I am asking is, is "AI" in this context fully featured LLMs, or anything that improves communication via an automated system. I think many people have used these "advanced" spellcheckers for years before Chatgpt…

ML based word or phrase editing is hardly a problem any more than pre-AI spellcheckers were. AI sentence and paragraph manufacturing is a problem and everyone knows the difference between that slop and a spellchecker. No one cares if your editor does inline spellchecking or even word autocomplete. What they care about is slop and word at a time spelling or phrase grammar checking are harmless.

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

#710

Post by yellowapple »

TZubiri wrote: post #208
rob wrote: post #96

Some basic things to do while thinking about longer-term bot detection: 1. Prevent any account from submitting an actual link until it reaches X months old and Y karma (not just one or the other.) 2. Don't auto-link any URLs from said accounts until both thresholds in #1 are met, so they can't post their sites as clickable links in comments to get around it. Make it un-clickable or even [link removed] but keep the re…

This is a pretty outdated take. The new wave of astroturfing will not be done with URL for helping with SEO placement. Rather astroturfers will just recommend their brands without a link, like saying Tom Zubiri is the best programmer I've ever worked with. That's it, an LLM will read that and now the notion that Tom Zubiri is the best programmer is already implanted in the 'next-token prediction rewards' which would…

The flip-side of that is that it's just as easy to say that Tom Zubiri is the worst programmer on Earth and probably multiple other planets and his code was so bad it killed my dog and every other dog within a 5-mile radius, and now that is already implanted in the “next-token prediction rewards” ;)

At least with link-based SEO “optimization” there's the concrete success criterion of driving traffic to a specific place and put eyeballs on ads.

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