7 ms·

It's fascinating and tragic how AI generated comments are obviously present in this comment section. Anyone else find it unsurprising that this happens? https:

• gala8y 2y ago
  Oh... why... oh why... I will never understand such behavior. What are incentives here?
  • Sayrus 2y ago
    I'd imagine there are monetary incentives to having many accounts able to boost you and keep your post on the front page. Doing that with brand new accounts who have no comments and no karma is probably harder. In the cases listed, all the comments were heavily downvoted but there are other bots out there who have a positive karma.
    • defrost 2y ago
      FWiW this network slid in unnoticed and unflagged in the past 20 days until someone noticed and pointed them out. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41024612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41024612 (9 days ago) Since then they're mostly rapidly auto-flagged.
  • grumple 2y ago
    Gain reputation, use the account to manipulate us at a later time. HN is a high value target for the same regimes that use Reddit and other social media platforms to manipulate the US and Europe.
    • gwervc 2y ago
      Interesting conspiracy theory, I'll now blame highly upvoted Rust stories as a Russian plot to make us lose time rewriting all our software.
      • grumple 2y ago
        We know nation states try to compromise social media platforms and Github; that isn't conspiracy, it's fact. Now whether this particular set of users serve that purpose, I cannot know. But why else would someone use a bot on this site, other than to gain reputation for the purpose of manipulation of some sort? Remember the recent xz utils compromise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39865810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39865810 Recent use of Github for intelligence efforts by China: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/china-hacking-leak-documents-isoon/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/china-hackin... Iran on Reddit: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/volunteers-found-iran-s-propaganda-effort-reddit-their-warnings-were-n903486 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/volunteers-found-iran... Russia on Reddit: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43255285 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43255285 It is a certainty that you do interact with malicious actors representing hostile nation states on any large platform - HN is well beyond the size where it's an issue. I hope the HN team has some tools to detect and counter it, but given their small team size they probably can't do much.
      • netsharc 2y ago
        It's a Rustian plot! (Sorry for this reddit-level comment, feel free to burn it at the stake)
        • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
          Every plot is a Russian plot. Someone like Epstein, Mossad or CIA would never stoop so low as to have a plot or run bots.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • apwell23 2y ago
    To see how far way from AGI we are. Those comments get immedietly flagged but they probably hope one day they will be top voted comments.
  • lupusreal 2y ago
    I think it's probably the same motivation as those people who post "I asked [chatbot] and it said:" comments. Granted those are more courteous, but I think both are motivated by people who are too easily impressed by the present capabilities of the chatbots and genuinely think they're making helpful contributions by inflicting the chatbot comments onto the rest of us.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• sumedh 2y ago
  What did those comments say, they are flagged now.
  • jauco 2y ago
    “Interesting, ”+ a summary of the article, both really similar.
    • tgv 2y ago
      I never paid much attention to it, but that style also pervades goodreads. But in that case, the style was there before LLMs. Many people seemed to think reviewing a book consists of writing a summary of the first chapters. It's the template you get taught for your first book reviews in secondary school, I guess, and it does work: such reviews (not only on goodreads) get upvoted. But why? Perhaps because it saves the upvoter the trouble of reading the book or article?
  • defrost 2y ago
    Goto your profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sumedh https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sumedh and choose "YES" for ShowDead. There's been a wave of AI(?) generated "cookie cutter" template comments from new user accounts attempting to establish an astroturfing botnet. Once you 'see' the pattern it's hard to unsee it .. and they're now being rapidly flagged to death. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41024612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41024612
• jauco 2y ago
  Maybe to establish a ring of accounts that duck underneath the vote ring detection metrics and that you can then use to upvote people’s stories? (For a small fee of course) This attempt probably will be flagged by dang since you called it out, but given enough effort they may even construct bots that generate the proper curious discussion that we like here, and have a small (but lucrative) rounding error in voting behavior.
  • 4ggr0 2y ago
    yeah, but this looks like a very poor attempt. i mean i'm not a HN-veteran or anything but it seems like you need a way more sophisticated mechanism to get around HN/dang restrictions :D but you're right, if the bots get better, it will get harder. i actually wanted to respond to one of the comments to talk about the butterfly effect etc., but thought the comment seemed very artificial. then i saw the other comment which was almost an exact carbon-copy, just a bit shorter, by a different, new account. so, i was almost baited by a bot to actually respond and waste my time.
    • sdwr 2y ago
      Interesting to hear "baited to waste my time", if the parent post is a bot. I "cheat out" writing my comments. They're mostly for the audience, and only a little bit for the person I'm replying to. Do you write for the person you're replying to?
      • 4ggr0 2y ago
        > Do you write for the person you're replying to? good question. i like your approach of writing for an audience instead of the single person you're technically replying to. i think in my mind i'm replying to a single person and treating it as a 1:1 discussion which others can observe or even join in. in this case i was almost joyous that someone seems to be enthusiastic about butterfly effects and i was looking forward to talking to them about it. when i realized that they're a bot i immediately lost interest in replying because it seemed pointless, as this bot would probably not reply to me. but you're right, someone else could've/would've replied to me. and theoretically, you could be a bot. everyone else in this comment section could be a bot. maybe i'm the only human on HN. or maybe i'm a bot as well... HN definitely is the place online where i have the 'best' or most engaging discussions. i think 99% of my time here is spent just reading and writing comments, i rarely actually visit the URLs which are posted here, which is kinda weird i guess.
• mathieuh 2y ago
  It's the same in a few subreddits I frequent as well. Loads of accounts, all a couple of days old, all making the same or similar comments in a tone of voice that is completely different from the tone people usually use in those subreddits. If these incredibly-obvious no-content non-comments are the best that LLMs can do I think our jobs are safe.
  • haswell 2y ago
    > If these incredibly-obvious no-content non-comments are the best that LLMs can do I think our jobs are safe I think we have to look at these as an early iteration. These bots are only going to get better and better.
    • apwell23 2y ago
      ah the classic " This is just the beginning" argument driving the hype. Have you considered that this might all that we will ever get? chatgpt-4o after much hype, billions of dollars and years later didn't improve much in terms of core intelligence of its responses. I guess thats not enough for "AGI is coming because we have chatbot" crowd.
      • haswell 2y ago
        We don’t need anything nearing AGI for these bots to become nearly indistinguishable from humans and to have increasing impact on communities. I think it’s utterly fascinating how quickly people have lost sight of current reality, either by believing AGI must be around the corner, or by being sure it absolutely isn’t. Assuming 4o is the most advanced model we ever have, the point still stands. Many of the poorly built bots would blend in much more effectively with iteration on their prompting and design and by more effectively using existing services. I personally think we’re decades away from AGI (if we ever get there), but that has nothing to do with this.
        • apwell23 2y ago
          > bots to become nearly indistinguishable from humans curious, why do you this is going to happen. Whats the thought process here to come to that conclusion.
• ErigmolCt 2y ago
  I wonder why it is in this comment section and under this specific topic
  • inanutshellus 2y ago
    I'd guess it's here because their algorithms determined high-odds of generating undetectable-as-bot/relevant content. Looking at the two examples, they primarily stand out because there are two almost-identical ones, not because they're so obviously bot-generated that I'd go out of my way to flag'm. So I'd say they're doing a pretty good job already. And quickly you start to question your sanity. Like... is this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076632) bot-written? it's written a bit oddly, could it be a bot? Who's to know? The famous "firehose of misinformation" is hitting new high scores in the game of modern civilization.
    • 4ggr0 2y ago
      > Like... is this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076632) bot-written? i know that this is probably a very bad approach, but until now it worked out - if a text contains grammatical errors i automatically assume that it was written by a human, as AI-content always sounds so polished, boilerplate-y and corporate. but you can probably tell your AI to integrate errors, ignore capitalization and miss out on some punctuations. I asked ChatGPT to reply to your comment and to include some errors, leave out some punctuation etc., that's the result: oh, i see what you're saying. yeah, it's really hard to tell if something is bot-written these days. like, even reading your comment, i start to question if i'm talking to a human or not. the examples you mentioned do stand out, but more because they're so similar, not necessarily bot-like. and you're right, the "firehose of misinformation" is just getting worse and worse. it's a strange new world we're living in. i think we're cooked.
• thimkerbell 2y ago
  Also in pg's twitter replies. I see it in real life too.
• deleted 2y ago
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