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Seems like a non problem. If it's a dull comment or just inane it'll get downvoted out of existence. If the bot actually produces something interesting about th

by bragr 4y ago

Seems like a non problem. If it's a dull comment or just inane it'll get downvoted out of existence. If the bot actually produces something interesting about the topic, what's the problem?

ALittleLight 4y ago
I think it's a capacity problem. Right now, the "system" (legit HN users) have the capacity to deal with dull and inane comments currently provided by dull and inane human commenters. If the dull and inane comments become automated they can arbitrarily increase their number until the system lacks the capacity to deal with them. If there was one or ten bad comments on this thread - no problem. What if there were ten thousand bad comments?
- pulvinar 4y ago
  But it has always been easy for simple bots to mass-produce bad comments. Nothing changes if they're still bad. I'm concerned that too-well-written posts will be thrown out-- a race to the bottom in legibility and grammar just to make posts more human-like, even if written by bots.
- bragr 4y ago
  >What if there were ten thousand bad comments? The thread collapse "[–]" already exists.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  To what benefit? HN karma is pretty worthless outside of enabling a few capabilities here, and it's rather easy to attain those thresholds with some thoughtful participation. What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments?
  - Trouble_007 4y ago
    Maybe adding a few more hay bails to your Stylometry fingerprint?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments? Malice.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Aachen 4y ago
Not to take a side, but to answer the question: imbalance. It takes less than thirty seconds for a computer to generate basically any amount of text, faster than anyone else can formulate a response, faster even than anyone can read. It could theoretically swamp a topic. Is that realistic? No idea. I haven't made up my mind on this topic yet.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Your concern seems to imply that you have to be the last one to get a word in to win an internet argument, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. On the internet and in real life, replying a lot and quickly is more often a sign of weakness.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    These replies won’t come from a single account, so humans will still be drowned out by bots.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    Never said that the bots would be posting the last word. Also I don't deal in "signs of weakness" but try to look at arguments' contents instead. Which is what takes time to evaluate and argue about. Which would waste my time if I'm talking to a (semi-)automated system.
rtkwe 4y ago
The biggest issue is GPT is often confidently incorrect about things but is good enough to sound confident/authoritative so if people got into the habit of using it the signal to noise ratio would degrade.
- romanhn 4y ago
  Doesn't sound all that different from human comments, to be honest
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    Human incorrect comments are at least written by people and if the person isn't actually knowledgeable about a subject it's likely to show more in the response than it does in gpt which can mimic all the right forms to appear smarter/more correct. Beyond anything else though at least when it's a person writing the wrong answer they spent the time to write it vs the copy paste it automation of using chatgpt. That little bit of effort is a speed bump well worth having since at the very least getting tons of people to spam confidently incorrect things is more work than having a dozen instances of a bot do the same a hundred times faster.
    - js8 4y ago
      I have seen firsthand the effect of wrong comments (I have written them) being upvoted more than the correcting responses that came afterwards. So yeah, it can happen with humans too, on occasion.
      - rtkwe 4y ago
        Sure and there's no real way around that other than community norms to downvote/whatever corrected replies and upvoting the correction. HN makes that a bit hard by locking voting away from so many people but I think it works better than open voting probably.
- turmeric_root 4y ago
  imo you have described HN in a nutshell
wpietri 4y ago
Because this places the burden on users to sort it out. And you're ignoring a third category of comments: bad ones that are glib enough to garner upvotes.
bongoman37 4y ago

by bragr 4y ago

Seems like a non problem. If it's a dull comment or just inane it'll get downvoted out of existence. If the bot actually produces something interesting about the topic, what's the problem?

ALittleLight 4y ago

I think it's a capacity problem. Right now, the "system" (legit HN users) have the capacity to deal with dull and inane comments currently provided by dull and inane human commenters. If the dull and inane comments become automated they can arbitrarily increase their number until the system lacks the capacity to deal with them. If there was one or ten bad comments on this thread - no problem. What if there were ten thousand bad comments?

pulvinar 4y ago
But it has always been easy for simple bots to mass-produce bad comments. Nothing changes if they're still bad. I'm concerned that too-well-written posts will be thrown out-- a race to the bottom in legibility and grammar just to make posts more human-like, even if written by bots.
bragr 4y ago
>What if there were ten thousand bad comments? The thread collapse "[–]" already exists.
SoftTalker 4y ago
To what benefit? HN karma is pretty worthless outside of enabling a few capabilities here, and it's rather easy to attain those thresholds with some thoughtful participation. What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments?
- Trouble_007 4y ago
  Maybe adding a few more hay bails to your Stylometry fingerprint?
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > What would be the point of flooding HN with tens of thousands of bot comments? Malice.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Aachen 4y ago

Not to take a side, but to answer the question: imbalance. It takes less than thirty seconds for a computer to generate basically any amount of text, faster than anyone else can formulate a response, faster even than anyone can read. It could theoretically swamp a topic. Is that realistic? No idea. I haven't made up my mind on this topic yet.

cwkoss 4y ago
Your concern seems to imply that you have to be the last one to get a word in to win an internet argument, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. On the internet and in real life, replying a lot and quickly is more often a sign of weakness.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  These replies won’t come from a single account, so humans will still be drowned out by bots.
- Aachen 4y ago
  Never said that the bots would be posting the last word. Also I don't deal in "signs of weakness" but try to look at arguments' contents instead. Which is what takes time to evaluate and argue about. Which would waste my time if I'm talking to a (semi-)automated system.

rtkwe 4y ago

The biggest issue is GPT is often confidently incorrect about things but is good enough to sound confident/authoritative so if people got into the habit of using it the signal to noise ratio would degrade.

romanhn 4y ago
Doesn't sound all that different from human comments, to be honest
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Human incorrect comments are at least written by people and if the person isn't actually knowledgeable about a subject it's likely to show more in the response than it does in gpt which can mimic all the right forms to appear smarter/more correct. Beyond anything else though at least when it's a person writing the wrong answer they spent the time to write it vs the copy paste it automation of using chatgpt. That little bit of effort is a speed bump well worth having since at the very least getting tons of people to spam confidently incorrect things is more work than having a dozen instances of a bot do the same a hundred times faster.
  - js8 4y ago
    I have seen firsthand the effect of wrong comments (I have written them) being upvoted more than the correcting responses that came afterwards. So yeah, it can happen with humans too, on occasion.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      Sure and there's no real way around that other than community norms to downvote/whatever corrected replies and upvoting the correction. HN makes that a bit hard by locking voting away from so many people but I think it works better than open voting probably.
turmeric_root 4y ago
imo you have described HN in a nutshell

wpietri 4y ago

Because this places the burden on users to sort it out. And you're ignoring a third category of comments: bad ones that are glib enough to garner upvotes.

bongoman37 4y ago