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This debate reminds me a lot of early-Quora moderation discussions over anonymous users. People wanted to mass-ban any answers from "anonymous" because they wer

This debate reminds me a lot of early-Quora moderation discussions over anonymous users. People wanted to mass-ban any answers from "anonymous" because they weren't from "real people". I argued that, in a public forum, questions/answers should be judged on their content, rather than "who" wrote them. People disagreed. Anonymous functionality on Quora has since been gutted. AI-generated content seems similar. If a comment is good, who cares whether it was written by Alice, Bob, or an AI? ChatGPT has already proven it can write better answers to some queries than most humans do; I'd rather read the better-quality answer, no matter who wrote it. I'm on HN for the comments, not the people.

makeworld 4y ago
I disagree, I care. I believe if something is written by a human it has inherent value. This belief seems to be held by a minority of tech people unfortunately.
- CapsAdmin 4y ago
  Can you expand on this? Is it similar to how when we recite answers from Wikipedia without seeming to know why it's seen as less valuable? I guess you also think the same about AI generated art?
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  What inherent value does this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951443 have? (It says "From the ChatGPT-generated stuff I've seen just in the last week, I think we're already there. Most humans these days are incredibly stupid.") I have read low quality internet comments saying "people are dumb" over and over and over, year in, year out. I argue that wherever they are, they have no inherent positive value. And negative contribution to the internet, the world, the thread they are posted in.
gkoberger 4y ago
Anonymous and AI are very different (at least currently). Take the following statement: "The CEO of ACME Co is abusive and you should avoid him at all costs. Do not work there." If it's an anonymous poster on Quora, that's a (potentially) valuable response and a good reason for that person to stay anonymous. But if it's AI, it can't possibly reflect any actual first-hand experience. At best it's a regurgitation of something out there already and at worst is a AI hallucination based on a mishmash of fact and fiction.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  There’s no reason to trust said anonymous comment on Quora.
  - gkoberger 4y ago
    Agreed, that's why I said potentially. I completely understand why a platform might want to ban anonymous comments, and I also understand why it might welcome them. Both come with risks and rewards. (Same for for AI, btw. Some places will embrace it and some places will ban it, and both will have their valid reasons.)
- dragonmost 4y ago
  I think long term having AI comments on forums will erode people's trust in each other even more than it is right now. I dread the day the "default" commenter turns from "white american male" to "AI generated" with no way to know while still conserving some level of anonymity.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Answer: Because AI-generated content is (frequently) lower quality while maintaining the appearance of high quality.
- folbec 4y ago
  Artificial Inanity ? https://englishwotd.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/artificial-inanity-systems/ https://englishwotd.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/artificial-inan...
- tobtahcia 4y ago
  It is not true that AI-generated content is lower quality that it appears. Training on large amounts of high quality data will result in generated text that is indistinguishable from human writing.
hdhejenennd 4y ago
Quora didn't gut anonymous functionality because it was bad for the product, but rather because there was a substantial cost involved in preventing privacy leaks (code changes that could accidentally reveal information about an anonymous poster) as well as a huge risk to the company and to users sharing confidential information if there was ever a data leak. The anonymous contributions themselves were a clear positive.
ehsankia 4y ago
Meanwhile quality of Quora answers these days are basically as bad as it gets, so bad that I have it blocked from my Google results. Not once have I been to Quora and actually found an answer I was looking for.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  > so bad that I have it blocked from my Google results What did you use to do this? Would love to never have Quora spam ever again.
  - seusscat 4y ago
    There are browser extensions that help with this. I use a adlist for ublock-origin that uses the cosmetic filters to remove some offending sites from search results. For me this includes Wikipedia and StackOverflow clones, Quora and a few others
  - devjam 4y ago
    I'm using uBlacklist [1]. [1] https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs
phonebucket 4y ago
This answer feels generated by ChatGPT. No human would side with ChatGPT so strongly.
- drusepth 4y ago
  I wrote the above answer with my brain and fingers without including ChatGPT. I think you'd find that, in a lot of contexts, a lot of humans care more about reading quality content than concerning themselves with who wrote that content, which is effecively "siding with ChatGPT" here, I guess.
kobalsky 4y ago
the obvious problems is that it looks good because it's well written. doesn't mean that the answer is comprehensible or correctly personally I develop a fatigue reading chatgpt answers, there's some fluff I have problems parsing, I don't know how to describe it.

makeworld 4y ago

I disagree, I care. I believe if something is written by a human it has inherent value. This belief seems to be held by a minority of tech people unfortunately.

CapsAdmin 4y ago
Can you expand on this? Is it similar to how when we recite answers from Wikipedia without seeming to know why it's seen as less valuable? I guess you also think the same about AI generated art?
jodrellblank 4y ago
What inherent value does this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951443 have? (It says "From the ChatGPT-generated stuff I've seen just in the last week, I think we're already there. Most humans these days are incredibly stupid.") I have read low quality internet comments saying "people are dumb" over and over and over, year in, year out. I argue that wherever they are, they have no inherent positive value. And negative contribution to the internet, the world, the thread they are posted in.

gkoberger 4y ago

Anonymous and AI are very different (at least currently). Take the following statement: "The CEO of ACME Co is abusive and you should avoid him at all costs. Do not work there." If it's an anonymous poster on Quora, that's a (potentially) valuable response and a good reason for that person to stay anonymous. But if it's AI, it can't possibly reflect any actual first-hand experience. At best it's a regurgitation of something out there already and at worst is a AI hallucination based on a mishmash of fact and fiction.

andsoitis 4y ago
There’s no reason to trust said anonymous comment on Quora.
- gkoberger 4y ago
  Agreed, that's why I said potentially. I completely understand why a platform might want to ban anonymous comments, and I also understand why it might welcome them. Both come with risks and rewards. (Same for for AI, btw. Some places will embrace it and some places will ban it, and both will have their valid reasons.)
dragonmost 4y ago
I think long term having AI comments on forums will erode people's trust in each other even more than it is right now. I dread the day the "default" commenter turns from "white american male" to "AI generated" with no way to know while still conserving some level of anonymity.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

Answer: Because AI-generated content is (frequently) lower quality while maintaining the appearance of high quality.

folbec 4y ago
Artificial Inanity ? https://englishwotd.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/artificial-inanity-systems/ https://englishwotd.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/artificial-inan...
tobtahcia 4y ago
It is not true that AI-generated content is lower quality that it appears. Training on large amounts of high quality data will result in generated text that is indistinguishable from human writing.

hdhejenennd 4y ago

Quora didn't gut anonymous functionality because it was bad for the product, but rather because there was a substantial cost involved in preventing privacy leaks (code changes that could accidentally reveal information about an anonymous poster) as well as a huge risk to the company and to users sharing confidential information if there was ever a data leak. The anonymous contributions themselves were a clear positive.

ehsankia 4y ago

Meanwhile quality of Quora answers these days are basically as bad as it gets, so bad that I have it blocked from my Google results. Not once have I been to Quora and actually found an answer I was looking for.

flanked-evergl 4y ago
> so bad that I have it blocked from my Google results What did you use to do this? Would love to never have Quora spam ever again.
- seusscat 4y ago
  There are browser extensions that help with this. I use a adlist for ublock-origin that uses the cosmetic filters to remove some offending sites from search results. For me this includes Wikipedia and StackOverflow clones, Quora and a few others
- devjam 4y ago
  I'm using uBlacklist [1]. [1] https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs

phonebucket 4y ago

This answer feels generated by ChatGPT. No human would side with ChatGPT so strongly.

drusepth 4y ago
I wrote the above answer with my brain and fingers without including ChatGPT. I think you'd find that, in a lot of contexts, a lot of humans care more about reading quality content than concerning themselves with who wrote that content, which is effecively "siding with ChatGPT" here, I guess.

kobalsky 4y ago

the obvious problems is that it looks good because it's well written. doesn't mean that the answer is comprehensible or correctly personally I develop a fatigue reading chatgpt answers, there's some fluff I have problems parsing, I don't know how to describe it.