7 ms·

> I think we are going to have to take an aggressive stance against mediocre generated content here on HN, lest this small island of community be lost like the

> I think we are going to have to take an aggressive stance against mediocre generated content here on HN, lest this small island of community be lost like the rest of the Old Internet. How do you propose we do that? And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? (... which I would argue it is already happening in some limited contexts, although I admit my stance is controversial).

9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
> How do you propose we do that? One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  "Ignore it" has never been a solution to "other people misbehaving and destroying shared spaces".
- tetris11 4y ago
  Voting with your wallet only works if a large portion of consumers both agree and understand your point of view
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- wizeman 4y ago
  > One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted. But isn't that what most people are presumably doing already? I guess my question was more intended to be: how do you differentiate between content generated by humans vs machines? At some point, we might not be able to. Or even if we can, it could actually result in a worse experience, if machines can generate better content.
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    A few years ago there was a US Congressional Hearing [1] about how to handle deepfakes (OpenAI had a representative on the panel). There was some deep discussion about that topic. For example: even if all authentic content had an embedded steganographic watermark, how do you reliably authenticate recordings of recordings or otherwise degraded copies of authentic content? [1] https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=657 https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...
- lamontcg 4y ago
  People already upvote fairly bland comments which reinforce common beliefs, so AIs which can distill popular sentiment and regurgitate it very readibly will get wildly upvoted on any social media platform. Most humans don't like too much creativity and they want ideas that they agree with. Wonder if the death of social media is more a descent into AI generated inane and bland commentary.
wellthisisgreat 4y ago
hard bans for undisclosed machine-generated submissions?
- hgsgm 4y ago
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  - Always42 4y ago
    Noice chatGPT
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Yeah I'm in favour of this also, but proving it might be tricky, and people will get unjustly banned. Then there's the question of situations where people might actually use ChatGPT in a creative way to augment discussion. Let's say we're talking about the pitfalls of repetitive code over breaking things cleanly into small functions. You have an example of this in mind that highlights a specific pitfall that you encountered, but don't want to share proprietary code, so you might ask ChatGPT (or a future model) to generate some code that demonstrates the same thing, rather than writing it yourself. I think we're still early enough in the tech that it's hard to create hard-and-fast rules about what kind of content should be allowed; ideally, we'll get to the point where AI can help facilitate and augment human interactions, rather than taking over completely.
formerly_proven 4y ago
- YuriNiyazov 4y ago
  I see you, GPT-3.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    GPT3 fooled me a couple times at the beginning, but I think as I'm more exposed to its writing I'm getting better at spotting it. I wonder if somebody has already made a game of this!
vineyardmike 4y ago
> what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn’t satisfy the purpose even if it’s better written. The internet is about people. I may not be friends with everyone on HN, but we’re a community meant to discuss and share together, and I personally wouldn’t want to talk to an AI over a human.
- wizeman 4y ago
  Wow, that's an interesting argument if I ever saw one! Your viewpoint is completely the opposite of mine, let me argue a couple of points: > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level AI thinks? Are you saying a human-level AI, by definition, cannot ever be interesting to you, just because it's an AI, even though it could be like a human in every other way? > Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn’t satisfy the purpose even if it’s better written. Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here), like 99% of the time? And even in the remaining 1% of cases, aren't they necessarily just functional products of the things they've seen/read/experienced (i.e. the inputs they've received, even if gathered by feedback when interacting with the world)? > The internet is about people. I may not be friends with everyone on HN, but we’re a community meant to discuss and share together, and I personally wouldn’t want to talk to an AI over a human. What if the AI was more interesting and intellectually stimulating than a human?
  - kthejoker2 4y ago
    This reads like a ChatGPT response. (So does my response!) Whether it is or isn't is beside the point. Broad, anonymous commenting platforms are dead, they just don't know it.
    - wizeman 4y ago
yeeeloit 4y ago
> And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? I tend to agree... I've been growing more and more tired with the content in familiar places. eg. reddit. (As an aside I think a lot of it is driven by advertising/marketing, but not all of it...) Anyway, your comment reminded me of the recent footage of baggage handlers at an airport, and how that dovetails nicely with the recent move by tesla to build a humanoid robot. Looking for a ray of light in the approaching storm: Maybe these AI can be used to filter the content more effectively for us.
theptip 4y ago
> How do you propose we do that? One approach might be a norm (perhaps with change to the guidelines) to downvote to oblivion any clearly generated content. I don't claim to have solved the problem though! > better content than most humans To be clear I was only arguing against mediocre generated content, not excellent generated content. I think the latter poses a different set of (also interesting) problems.

9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago

> How do you propose we do that? One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted.

hgsgm 4y ago
"Ignore it" has never been a solution to "other people misbehaving and destroying shared spaces".
tetris11 4y ago
Voting with your wallet only works if a large portion of consumers both agree and understand your point of view
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wizeman 4y ago
> One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that you don’t want to see boosted. But isn't that what most people are presumably doing already? I guess my question was more intended to be: how do you differentiate between content generated by humans vs machines? At some point, we might not be able to. Or even if we can, it could actually result in a worse experience, if machines can generate better content.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
  A few years ago there was a US Congressional Hearing [1] about how to handle deepfakes (OpenAI had a representative on the panel). There was some deep discussion about that topic. For example: even if all authentic content had an embedded steganographic watermark, how do you reliably authenticate recordings of recordings or otherwise degraded copies of authentic content? [1] https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=657 https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...
lamontcg 4y ago
People already upvote fairly bland comments which reinforce common beliefs, so AIs which can distill popular sentiment and regurgitate it very readibly will get wildly upvoted on any social media platform. Most humans don't like too much creativity and they want ideas that they agree with. Wonder if the death of social media is more a descent into AI generated inane and bland commentary.

wellthisisgreat 4y ago

hard bans for undisclosed machine-generated submissions?

hgsgm 4y ago
formerly_proven 4y ago
- Always42 4y ago
  Noice chatGPT
pcthrowaway 4y ago
Yeah I'm in favour of this also, but proving it might be tricky, and people will get unjustly banned. Then there's the question of situations where people might actually use ChatGPT in a creative way to augment discussion. Let's say we're talking about the pitfalls of repetitive code over breaking things cleanly into small functions. You have an example of this in mind that highlights a specific pitfall that you encountered, but don't want to share proprietary code, so you might ask ChatGPT (or a future model) to generate some code that demonstrates the same thing, rather than writing it yourself. I think we're still early enough in the tech that it's hard to create hard-and-fast rules about what kind of content should be allowed; ideally, we'll get to the point where AI can help facilitate and augment human interactions, rather than taking over completely.

formerly_proven 4y ago

YuriNiyazov 4y ago
I see you, GPT-3.
- andrepd 4y ago
  GPT3 fooled me a couple times at the beginning, but I think as I'm more exposed to its writing I'm getting better at spotting it. I wonder if somebody has already made a game of this!

vineyardmike 4y ago

> what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn’t satisfy the purpose even if it’s better written. The internet is about people. I may not be friends with everyone on HN, but we’re a community meant to discuss and share together, and I personally wouldn’t want to talk to an AI over a human.

wizeman 4y ago
Wow, that's an interesting argument if I ever saw one! Your viewpoint is completely the opposite of mine, let me argue a couple of points: > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content. Because HN content is about hearing what people think about a certain topic/thread. Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level AI thinks? Are you saying a human-level AI, by definition, cannot ever be interesting to you, just because it's an AI, even though it could be like a human in every other way? > Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn’t satisfy the purpose even if it’s better written. Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here), like 99% of the time? And even in the remaining 1% of cases, aren't they necessarily just functional products of the things they've seen/read/experienced (i.e. the inputs they've received, even if gathered by feedback when interacting with the world)? > The internet is about people. I may not be friends with everyone on HN, but we’re a community meant to discuss and share together, and I personally wouldn’t want to talk to an AI over a human. What if the AI was more interesting and intellectually stimulating than a human?
- kthejoker2 4y ago
  This reads like a ChatGPT response. (So does my response!) Whether it is or isn't is beside the point. Broad, anonymous commenting platforms are dead, they just don't know it.
  - wizeman 4y ago

yeeeloit 4y ago

> And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like it) can create better content than most humans? I tend to agree... I've been growing more and more tired with the content in familiar places. eg. reddit. (As an aside I think a lot of it is driven by advertising/marketing, but not all of it...) Anyway, your comment reminded me of the recent footage of baggage handlers at an airport, and how that dovetails nicely with the recent move by tesla to build a humanoid robot. Looking for a ray of light in the approaching storm: Maybe these AI can be used to filter the content more effectively for us.

theptip 4y ago

> How do you propose we do that? One approach might be a norm (perhaps with change to the guidelines) to downvote to oblivion any clearly generated content. I don't claim to have solved the problem though! > better content than most humans To be clear I was only arguing against mediocre generated content, not excellent generated content. I think the latter poses a different set of (also interesting) problems.