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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#821

Post by sph »

vesrah wrote: post #460
SoKamil wrote: post #58

Don’t be afraid to make grammar mistakes or misspell stuff. Others will understand. You’re a human after all. That’s okay to make mistakes and feel uncomfortable with that.

This is going to sound nuts, but I've noticed comments lately with multiple misspellings that seem intentional - it's almost like they're trying to signal that they're human, rather than LLM written. I've started to think it makes them even more likely to be LLM written than not.

Main-fucking-stream LLMs also do not swear, which is nowadays a signal of humanity.

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

#822

Post by lll-o-lll »

dang wrote: post #793
kjuulh wrote: 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…

The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever work…

We need some human based version of “proof of work”.

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

#824

Post by skort »

dang wrote: post #439
meiuqer wrote: post #191

I feel a little bit of irony in this post of a company/forum that is asking its users to not use AI while simultaneously trying to fund countless companies that are responsible for ruining the internet as we speak.

We aren't asking people to not use AI. (We use it ourselves.) What we're asking is not to post AI-generated comments to Hacker News. (We don't do that ourselves.) By all means make good use of LLMs and other AI. What counts as good use? The world is figuring that out, it will take years, and HN is no exception ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). We just don't want it to interfere with…

I'm not quite sure what the correct term is for this scenario, in which LLMs are being forced upon people in many places that previously had human-to-human interaction, some of it coming from YC backed companies, while HN tries to insist that it's discussions should continue be human-to-human.

Having your cake and eating it too? NIMBYism?

If anything it reeks of privilege. It says that it's okay to spread slop on the world at large, just so long as it doesn't soil the precious orange website.

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

#825

Post by prmoustache »

dom96 wrote: post #489
dang wrote: post #386

The 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…

I’m really curious how this will go. I have a suspicion that we will see more and more accounts all over the internet being controlled by AI agents and no amount of moderation will be able to stop it.

I am pretty sure that through daily exposition to LLM output, most people's writing style will evolve and will soon be indistinguishable from LLM output

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

#826

Post by smusamashah »

dang wrote: post #793
kjuulh wrote: 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…

The dynamics of content production are shifting hard right now. Things that used to signal something interesting are being generated in minutes with little thought. It's getting democratized, but also commoditized. It's too soon to know how this is going to shake out, so we should resist the temptation to impose rules prematurely. And we should especially not do so out of resistance to change (when has that ever work…

Will removing the incentive, which is the upvotes, help reduce this spam? You can disable public access to the points gained by a new account (or may be for every account).

Or if the ranking that's attractive to spammer, may be try experimenting with randomizing order of comments in a discussion.

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

#827

Post by booleandilemma »

dang wrote: post #755
uni_baconcat wrote: post #754

For quite a while, I like use LLM to refine and fix my grammar issue, but my colleagues and professors reminds me that it was way too obvious. They said they can tolerate some mistakes in my words, but no tolerance for AI generated content.

Thanks for putting this so nicely! We'd much rather hear you in your own voice, and the cost of a few mistakes is far less than the cost of losing that. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Hi dang, your algolia link doesn't bring up any results.

I get: We found no items matching by:dang "own voice"

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

#829

Post by frm88 »

dang wrote: post #791
caditinpiscinam wrote: post #745

We've all heard the phrase "the sum of all human knowledge". I've been feeling more and more that generative AI represents the average of all human knowledge. Which has its place. But a future in which all thought and creativity is averaged away is a bleak one. It's the heat death of thought.

Thought and creativity won't be averaged away because human beings have a drive for these things. This just raises the bar for it. And why not? We get complacent when not pushed. Dostoevsky said that if all human knowledge could ever be reduced to 2 + 2 = 4, man would stick out his tongue and insist that 2 + 2 = 5. That was a 19th century formulation—he was a contemporary of Boole. I wonder what the equivalent would…

Thought and creativity won't be averaged away because human beings have a drive for these things.

That may or may not be true, but the expression of thought and creativity matters to transfer meaning. If you average that out, it loses momentum. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47346935. Compare the posters first and second, LLM assisted, paragraph. The second one is just bleak. If I had to read several pages like that, my eyes would glaze over. It cannot hold attention.

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

#830

Post by meiuqer »

dang wrote: post #439
meiuqer wrote: post #191

I feel a little bit of irony in this post of a company/forum that is asking its users to not use AI while simultaneously trying to fund countless companies that are responsible for ruining the internet as we speak.

We aren't asking people to not use AI. (We use it ourselves.) What we're asking is not to post AI-generated comments to Hacker News. (We don't do that ourselves.) By all means make good use of LLMs and other AI. What counts as good use? The world is figuring that out, it will take years, and HN is no exception ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). We just don't want it to interfere with…

Thanks for the context! I hope HN will stay a place for knowledge sharing and deep conversations
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