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Would your answer have been different if I'd quoted from — and approved of — say, Wikipedia? or Cornell Law's Legal Information Institute? If not, then your bee

Would your answer have been different if I'd quoted from — and approved of — say, Wikipedia? or Cornell Law's Legal Information Institute? If not, then your beef is that the comment was drafted by an AI, and only humans should be involved in producing any text that's to appear on HN?

aspenmayer 2y ago
I think that’s consistent with my views and my understanding of HN Guidelines and clarifications by Dang, though I don’t speak for HN. The issue to my mind is that AI doesn’t perform reasoning and may give different answers entirely depending on prompts and on sources the AI references, sources that may not be clear to the user or secondary readers. Other sources have the benefit of having had more eyes on the same content. With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow kind of thinking.
- dctoedt 2y ago
  So it'd have been OK with you if I'd just posted the Perplexity.ai output — which I thought was a very good summary of the law, and I claim to have at least modest knowledge in this area — without identifying it as an AI output.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dctoedt 2y ago
      > You'd be posting in bad faith, knowing that posting AI output as your own on HN is frowned upon First, you haven't proved up your "frowned upon" premise. It'd be misguided to peremptorily condemn the posting AI-generated answers when they're initiated, and vouched for, by knowledgeable humans. I've been around HN for awhile and am quite skeptical that this is HN policy — if it is, I'd like to hear it from someone official, or at least to get a link to an HN posting. Those who don't like AI-assisted comments are of course free to downvote them. Second, the alternative might be that the original questioner doesn't get an answer, or at least not one with any indicia of reliability — how many responses have you seen that are prefaced by "IANAL"? As I've said, I am a lawyer, I use my real name, and I'm vouching for the AI-generated answer as a general explanation. > Your responses now seem like sealioning. It's not sealioning, it's Socratic method — looking ahead on the chessboard, examining an assertion's logical implications N moves out. That's what lawyers are trained to do from the first day of law school, because it's how legislators, judges, administrators, and their staffs (try to) achieve scalable, sustainable policies and decisions. It's one form of critical thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
      - aspenmayer 2y ago
        > The alternative might be that the original questioner doesn't get an answer, or at least not one with any indicia of reliability That would be preferable to AI output on HN. That's the stance that HN and dang have taken, so I'll ask him to chime in in this thread for everyone's benefit. > IMHO, your peremptory condemnation of posting AI-generated answers — when initiated, and vouched for, by knowledgeable humans — is short-sighted. It's not my policy. I'm only going off of what I've seen dang say to others, so interpret that accordingly. > You're of course free to express your opinion by downvoting my comments. I can't downvote comments that are replies to me, yours or anyone else's. You can't either. No one on HN can. The interface doesn't allow it. I didn't flag your comments either for that matter, because I didn't want to derail our discussion, as you can't reply to a comment that is dead. And that's all I'll say on that matter, because: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

aspenmayer 2y ago

I think that’s consistent with my views and my understanding of HN Guidelines and clarifications by Dang, though I don’t speak for HN. The issue to my mind is that AI doesn’t perform reasoning and may give different answers entirely depending on prompts and on sources the AI references, sources that may not be clear to the user or secondary readers. Other sources have the benefit of having had more eyes on the same content. With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow kind of thinking.

dctoedt 2y ago
So it'd have been OK with you if I'd just posted the Perplexity.ai output — which I thought was a very good summary of the law, and I claim to have at least modest knowledge in this area — without identifying it as an AI output.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dctoedt 2y ago
    > You'd be posting in bad faith, knowing that posting AI output as your own on HN is frowned upon First, you haven't proved up your "frowned upon" premise. It'd be misguided to peremptorily condemn the posting AI-generated answers when they're initiated, and vouched for, by knowledgeable humans. I've been around HN for awhile and am quite skeptical that this is HN policy — if it is, I'd like to hear it from someone official, or at least to get a link to an HN posting. Those who don't like AI-assisted comments are of course free to downvote them. Second, the alternative might be that the original questioner doesn't get an answer, or at least not one with any indicia of reliability — how many responses have you seen that are prefaced by "IANAL"? As I've said, I am a lawyer, I use my real name, and I'm vouching for the AI-generated answer as a general explanation. > Your responses now seem like sealioning. It's not sealioning, it's Socratic method — looking ahead on the chessboard, examining an assertion's logical implications N moves out. That's what lawyers are trained to do from the first day of law school, because it's how legislators, judges, administrators, and their staffs (try to) achieve scalable, sustainable policies and decisions. It's one form of critical thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      > The alternative might be that the original questioner doesn't get an answer, or at least not one with any indicia of reliability That would be preferable to AI output on HN. That's the stance that HN and dang have taken, so I'll ask him to chime in in this thread for everyone's benefit. > IMHO, your peremptory condemnation of posting AI-generated answers — when initiated, and vouched for, by knowledgeable humans — is short-sighted. It's not my policy. I'm only going off of what I've seen dang say to others, so interpret that accordingly. > You're of course free to express your opinion by downvoting my comments. I can't downvote comments that are replies to me, yours or anyone else's. You can't either. No one on HN can. The interface doesn't allow it. I didn't flag your comments either for that matter, because I didn't want to derail our discussion, as you can't reply to a comment that is dead. And that's all I'll say on that matter, because: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.