4 ms·

If everyone used LLMs like that, there would be no problem. The thing is, few do, and with the new policy, moderators are not in a position to do anything abou

If everyone used LLMs like that, there would be no problem. The thing is, few do, and with the new policy, moderators are not in a position to do anything about it.

sebstefan 3y ago
The thing that I also don't get, is that I haven't seen an example of that being an issue on stackexchange yet I also don't see the end goal making a bot that answers questions on SE. It doesn't make money. Maybe to get points? But once you're past their thresholds there's no reason to keep doing it, and you get there quick. Accounts don't get sold to advertisers like on reddit. You'd at most do it once. And who would even do that? The very narrow niche of people who'd want to boost their SE points? Maybe you're shooting for the leaderboard but if that's the case... you'd get noticed, wouldn't you? I could see some kids doing it, if that's the big threat they're facing... then they're over-reacting and it still doesn't warrant blanket bans on LLMs
- cratermoon 3y ago
  > I also don't see the end goal making a bot that answers questions on SE. A tip I learned long ago: Never ask a geek "why?", just nod your head and back away slowly.
lolinder 3y ago
Why not? If an answer is wrong it's wrong. Why does a GPT ban prevent removing wrong answers? What a GPT ban does do is give moderators an extremely subjective tool for removing answers. The GPT detectors are unreliable, so that leaves the moderators doing a gut check on whether this particular case is a false positive. Instead, why don't they just use the GPT detectors to detect answers that might be wrong and then moderate based on existing policies?
- Ajedi32 3y ago
  [dead]
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
  In short: moderators do not remove answers based on (their perception of) technical merit, non-moderators cannot remove answers as long as the score is non-negative, and GPT drivel sounds convincing enough to get upvotes from credulous newbies, so the answers have positive score.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    So fix the first one. Provide a process for removing answers that are demonstrably false. Convincing-sounding drivel that gets upvotes isn't a new problem on SO, it's just amplified by the new tech.
    - MauranKilom 3y ago
      But this is a problem of scale. If I wrote a bot that posted 10k AI generated questions and answers per hour, you would surely agree that it would be unreasonable to require every answer to be human-reviewed before it can be removed - it would be an incredible waste of time and effort. (Also note that filling SO with LLM-generated content is entirely pointless - someone who wants LLM-generated answers can just go ask an LLM). Now spread that one bot over hundreds of users and you have the same end result. That's why the communities of different SE sites all ended up with a similar policy.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        I get that, but the problem of scale is one that you have no matter what. Either you have to detect and filter out AI posts at scale, or you have to detect and filter out bad content at scale. I'm not suggesting either problem is easy, but taking the "ban AI" approach is harmful for several reasons. Detecting AI without false positives is extremely hard and puts too much decision-making power in the gut reactions of moderators. Additionally, banning it has the negative side effect of making the tool unavailable to people who might legitimately benefit from it when producing good content, such as ESL speakers using it to polish their English. We need to moderate based on the effect of the user's content on the community, not the technology used to produce the content. If you're dealing with a bot posting 10k questions and answers per hour, it wouldn't matter if that bot were using GPT or just re-posting content scraped from the web—the abuse isn't in the use of AI, it's in the spam. So make a rule against spam and auto-ban people who do it.

If everyone used LLMs like that, there would be no problem. The thing is, few do, and with the new policy, moderators are not in a position to do anything about it.

sebstefan 3y ago

The thing that I also don't get, is that I haven't seen an example of that being an issue on stackexchange yet I also don't see the end goal making a bot that answers questions on SE. It doesn't make money. Maybe to get points? But once you're past their thresholds there's no reason to keep doing it, and you get there quick. Accounts don't get sold to advertisers like on reddit. You'd at most do it once. And who would even do that? The very narrow niche of people who'd want to boost their SE points? Maybe you're shooting for the leaderboard but if that's the case... you'd get noticed, wouldn't you? I could see some kids doing it, if that's the big threat they're facing... then they're over-reacting and it still doesn't warrant blanket bans on LLMs

cratermoon 3y ago
> I also don't see the end goal making a bot that answers questions on SE. A tip I learned long ago: Never ask a geek "why?", just nod your head and back away slowly.

lolinder 3y ago

Why not? If an answer is wrong it's wrong. Why does a GPT ban prevent removing wrong answers? What a GPT ban does do is give moderators an extremely subjective tool for removing answers. The GPT detectors are unreliable, so that leaves the moderators doing a gut check on whether this particular case is a false positive. Instead, why don't they just use the GPT detectors to detect answers that might be wrong and then moderate based on existing policies?

Ajedi32 3y ago
[dead]
pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
In short: moderators do not remove answers based on (their perception of) technical merit, non-moderators cannot remove answers as long as the score is non-negative, and GPT drivel sounds convincing enough to get upvotes from credulous newbies, so the answers have positive score.
- lolinder 3y ago
  So fix the first one. Provide a process for removing answers that are demonstrably false. Convincing-sounding drivel that gets upvotes isn't a new problem on SO, it's just amplified by the new tech.
  - MauranKilom 3y ago
    But this is a problem of scale. If I wrote a bot that posted 10k AI generated questions and answers per hour, you would surely agree that it would be unreasonable to require every answer to be human-reviewed before it can be removed - it would be an incredible waste of time and effort. (Also note that filling SO with LLM-generated content is entirely pointless - someone who wants LLM-generated answers can just go ask an LLM). Now spread that one bot over hundreds of users and you have the same end result. That's why the communities of different SE sites all ended up with a similar policy.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      I get that, but the problem of scale is one that you have no matter what. Either you have to detect and filter out AI posts at scale, or you have to detect and filter out bad content at scale. I'm not suggesting either problem is easy, but taking the "ban AI" approach is harmful for several reasons. Detecting AI without false positives is extremely hard and puts too much decision-making power in the gut reactions of moderators. Additionally, banning it has the negative side effect of making the tool unavailable to people who might legitimately benefit from it when producing good content, such as ESL speakers using it to polish their English. We need to moderate based on the effect of the user's content on the community, not the technology used to produce the content. If you're dealing with a bot posting 10k questions and answers per hour, it wouldn't matter if that bot were using GPT or just re-posting content scraped from the web—the abuse isn't in the use of AI, it's in the spam. So make a rule against spam and auto-ban people who do it.