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Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT, I sincerely hope it keeps operating, stays strict (even if it causes collateral
by maxlin 3y ago
Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT, I sincerely hope it keeps operating, stays strict (even if it causes collateral) and keeps ban on LLM-generated content.
The wheels of this kind of stuff turn slowly, but obviously ChatGPT was trained partly with data only gainable from a healthy StackOverflow-kind of site with users actively asking unique questions and enough people answering those unique questions with well-though-out answers. The shittyfuture outcome is that StackOverflow goes out of business and LLM's stagnate on this front, while being capable of answering in fuwwy speawk when prwompted, would still be limited to / biased towards older versions of libraries, software, languages, tools etc.
- azayrahmad 3y agoHopefully so. As I mentioned in my other comment somewhere here, my optimistic prediction would be that StackOverflow will eventually still keep operating, but only by questions that can't be solved by AI, so hopefully leading into a more high quality discussions.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT Claim asserted without evidence.
- maxlin 3y agoIt has for me, and several developer friends, and considering the fame ChatGPT has gotten, and that StackOverflow's fall has accelerated, it's obvious the milkshake's migrating. Not all of it of course, as I stated, "for the common use case"
- zacmps 3y agoTo contrast, I've not once used it where I would have previously used SO (professional developer).
- droopyEyelids 3y agoHave you tried to use it?
- riffraff 3y agoI tried and it didn't work nearly as well. Probably depends on the topic.
- sznio 3y agoI did. It's painfully slow. I can Google the question, click one of the top results, skip to the relevant part and read it faster than GPT can generate two sentences. You also have to build an elaborate prompt instead of throwing two/three keywords into it. It doesn't help that GPT is insistent on replying in the three paragraph format, meaning that the first 30-40 words it creates are just trash to be ignored. I found it useful once - when I had to write an essay about ISO 27001 for college and just wanted it to go away. Took what it generated and spent 20 minutes editing it to look closer to my style. For real work it isn't as useful.
- wokwokwok 3y agoI find it incredible you find a LLM slower and less full of useless chitchat about a question than stack overflow. I don’t even open SO anymore; if it has a direct answer to your question, the LLM almost certainly does too; and asking new questions on SO is basically impossible. If you manage to survive the gauntlet of “too specific, already answered, not general interest, arbitrary moderator activity”, the chances of getting an answer that answers your question can take forever; most likely you’ll get a stupid answer that doesn’t answer it, upvoted by idiots who don’t understand that it not an answer the the actual question, and, ultimately, because it “already has an answer”, ignored, never to receive an answer. Maybe one day, a passing savant will answer in a comment. …and yet, you find it faster and more reliable? You, and I, have had different experiences on stack overflow in the last two years. > For real work it isn't as useful. To you.
- 3y ago
- dools 3y agoYes I spend far less time reading stack overflow answers now that I have GPT4. However GPT4 is occasionally still inadequate so I certainly hope SO sticks around, it is a tremendous resource.
- da39a3ee 3y agoCertainly true for me and the people I know.
- petesergeant 3y agoSure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and for many of us its truth is prima facie because it’s true of both our own usage and the people we work with and talk to.
- svachalek 3y agoI have 110% replaced it with ChatGPT. Perhaps SO would still have a chance back in its glory days but there's no comparison to having a direct, specific, instant answer vs having to fight against SEO or moderators for hours.
- ezconnect 3y agoI always read here ChatGPT is amazing. Can you give a link on how to use it? Every time I tried to google it returns lots of different results and when I tried it it:s not even usable for basic things I want. Is the ChatGPT you:re talking about on their website? Do I have to pay for it?
- osigurdson 3y agohttps://chat.openai.com/ https://chat.openai.com/ I currently pay for it but I'm not sure if it makes any difference.
- p1mrx 3y agohttps://ai.com https://ai.com is easier to type
- osigurdson 3y agoNice! Good to know.
- p1mrx 3y agoLooks like ai.com now redirects to an Elon Musk site. Perhaps OpenAI never controlled the domain?
- Agingcoder 3y agoYes it does - gpt 4 is vastly superior to gpt 3.
- osigurdson 3y agoAdding one datapoint... it certainly has for me.
- Tao3300 3y agoAnecdata: I've started asking Bing these questions instead of SO. E.g., it recently gave me a very helpful answer for debugging a Spring issue and cited its sources. What it didn't do was present me with a whole lot of moderation cruft. I can ask for recommendations for tools and libraries, which IIRC SO disallows. I also don't have to pray my question will get enough vote attention or worry that I posted it at the wrong time of day. On the whole, going the GPT route has been more satisfying in all ways.
- collaborative 3y agoI wonder how you feel aisearch.vip compares to your Bing experience. Send me a message via Side Menu-> Contact and I will give you a grand for free
- redsaber 3y agosmall nitpick but I thought it was just an icon but it turns out to be the button for switching light/dark mode. It would be great if you could replace it.
- collaborative 3y agoThank you. What would you have it replaced with?
- BeetleB 3y ago> I can ask for recommendations for tools and libraries, which IIRC SO disallows. Bing Chat almost always is useless for me with these kinds of queries. A few days ago I asked for a tool that monitors to see if a website is up. I told it I needed the tool to be something I'd run locally - not an online service and not something I need to sign up for. It gave me 3-4 online services. I reminded it about my constraint. It gave me 3-4 more online services. I reminded it about my constraint. It said it didn't want to talk to me any more.
- Tao3300 3y ago
- zer8k 3y agoIf you loosen up your definition of of LLM the moderators and posters are really just LLMs that have been jailbroken to insult you and close your post. Stack Overflow is the programmer's internet bloodsport.
- Gibbon1 3y ago> moderators and posters are really just LLMs that have been jailbroken to insult you and close your post. Better than reddit where you get insulted and banned by an actual LLM.
- josu 3y ago>keeps ban on LLM-generated content. How is this being enforced? It's either bots banning bots in a digital game of whack-a-mole; or humans arbitrarily trying to asses whether something has been written by an LLM or a human.
- bigfishrunning 3y agoIf you read some LLM output, you'll pick up on lots of patterns. LLM generated content isn't terribly difficult to identify.
- josu 3y agoYeah, I've been using chatGPT quite intensively. And while pure LLM output is relatively easy to spot, human edited LLM output is almost impossible to detect. Most of my message above has actually been written by GPT4 (3 prompts + some light editing).
- BoppreH 3y agoIt's human judgement. Definitely not perfect, but something has to be done to prevent SO from being overrun. There are some subjective signs that a post is LLM generated, like being overly verbose and making unrelated assumptions, or mix of horrible and perfect grammar. Those bans are hard to justify because the false positive rate is high. But other signs are pretty obvious. My favorite is the use of APIs that should exist but don't. Passing parameters that neatly solve the problem but have never been accepted, or importing non existent libraries. I'm happy to flag those.
- malfist 3y agoIt's not. That's why the moderators are on strike. See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389811/moderation-strike-stack-overflow-inc-cannot-consistently-ignore-mistreat-an https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389811/moderation-s...
- ho_schi 3y ago+1 And I think Stack Exchange needs a new CEO. Maybe new owners, which is since 2021 Prosus. My impression is that they don’t understand what is the purpose for developers.
- deadeye 3y agoIf the lights are on at SO then they must be in the process of training their own AI with their own dataset and documentation for the topics covered. That is what it would take for me to make SO my first stop again. It should be very doable for that talented group.