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Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#712Thank you! Please also make a separate Show HN for AI-generated/vibe-coded projects (specifically open-source projects) and queue any project that has a .claude/.codex (or whatever flavor of the month) into a slow queue automatically.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#713What if English is my second language? Undoubtedly being well spoken is associated with higher class. Your arguments will come of as stronger to the reader.
> What if English is my second language? Write it broken. Broken and true is more authentic than polished and approximately so. When I see an AI-generated comment or email, I catch myself implicitly assuming it is—best case—bullshit. That isn’t the case if the grammar is off. (If anything, it can be charming.)
> Broken and true is more authentic than polished and approximately so.
From the perspective of someone reading the comment, I'll take “inauthentic” but actually comprehensible over “authentic” but incomprehensible any day.
Also, using bad grammar as a heuristic for humanity will just end with LLMs being prompted to deliberately mess up their grammar, and now we're back to square one, with the state of the written word even worse off than it was before.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#714How 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…
Before chatbots, people used to link to Google search result pages as a passive-agressive way to say “the information is out there, go find it, I don’t care about you enough to explain it to you”
Pasting a chatGPT response into a comment, and labeling it as such, feels the same to me.
It is more, not less, insulting than trying to pass an AI response off as your own.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#715"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…
I caught myself structuring a comment like an LLM on another site. It's expected that people who chat heavily to LLMs will start to mirror their styles.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#716I use AI for the elements I feel are weak or unclear in the transcription. Sometimes I copy-paste a paragraph into ChatGPT or whatever, to ensure my (aging) thoughts are being communicated in a crystal clear manner. I cannot always point out why I think they are unclear or jumbled.
I don't feel this is an imposition on others. I think it's the opposite. It enhances signal by reducing nitpicking, spelling/grammar errors that might muddle intent, and reminds me of proper sentence structure.
Many of us are guilty of run-ons, fragments, overly large blocks of text[1] because it's closer to how people often converse, verbally. Posts on the internet are not casual conversation between humans. They are exchanges of ideas.
[1] This is a classic example where I had to go back and edit it to ensure it was readable. As you do self-review with any commit ^^
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#717[dead]
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#718So is this the AI bubble popping?
I expect Y Combinator to cease and revoke all funding of all companies that leverage LLM technologies that interact with humans.
I wonder if there's an AI-hate movement in China.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#719I'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
to be honest, these little petty attacks bug me more than some ai comments. at least some of the ai comments generate good conversation afterwards.
Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
#720The rule has been around for years, but only in case law, i.e. moderation comments ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). What's new is that we promoted it to the guidelines. Fortunately I found some things we could cut as well, so https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html actually got shorter. --- Edit: here are the bits I cut: Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pic…
Is there a distinction between AI generated and AI edited? I wanted to share some context that might be helpful: I am autistic, and I have often received feedback that my communication is snarky, rude, or tone-deaf. At work, I've found it helpful to run some of my communications through an AI tool to make my messages more accessible to non-autistic colleagues, and this approach has been working well for me.
You can interpret it as: We'd rather you be snarky, rude, and tone-deaf, than bland and unhuman. Your work may rather you act like a soulless corporate drone.