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Take it the other way. What is the point of a human q/a site when you can get good enough answers from an AI? It's their business model that is threatened, and

by benob 2y ago

Take it the other way. What is the point of a human q/a site when you can get good enough answers from an AI? It's their business model that is threatened, and they need to pivot in order to survive.

ale42 2y ago
The thing is, you currently can't. Sure an AI can answer relatively complex technical questions, but sometimes doesn't do it properly. And when it fails, you don't know. I had cases where AI was clearly inventing calls to APIs that didn't actually exist although they were legitimately looking; such content would just be downvoted enough on SE that you'd be very careful before even considering it. If I ask an AI, I might either get a good answer or a bad one, but without a vote count nearby telling me how good it might actually be.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  > And when it fails, you don't know. This can be addressed in some cases with actual code verification. It’s how DeepSeek was trained. But it is hard in the general case.
assimpleaspossi 2y ago
What if you're not in the "good enough" business? I've tried many times to get an answer from these AI engines. They have always been just "good enough", to help me find a direction for more research to get a good answer, or flat out wrong.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  The paid version of ChatGPT has had built in web search for over two years. It’s easy enough to just say “verify your answer” and it will search the web. Even with code - albeit most of my experience is with having it write AWS automation scripts in Python using the AWS SDK (Boto3), I’ll either give it the link to the API in question or tell it to “verify Boto3 calls on the web”. The worse thing it usually does is have code where it wants you to include your credentials in code (don’t do that). But even most people on SO do the same
janalsncm 2y ago
It gets harder though. Even before AI, a lot of the low hanging fruit “how do I sleep for 2 seconds in JavaScript” are already answered. Beginner Qs are often marked as duplicate. So you’re left with long tail difficult or obscure questions that take a lot more effort to answer.

by benob 2y ago

Take it the other way. What is the point of a human q/a site when you can get good enough answers from an AI? It's their business model that is threatened, and they need to pivot in order to survive.

ale42 2y ago

The thing is, you currently can't. Sure an AI can answer relatively complex technical questions, but sometimes doesn't do it properly. And when it fails, you don't know. I had cases where AI was clearly inventing calls to APIs that didn't actually exist although they were legitimately looking; such content would just be downvoted enough on SE that you'd be very careful before even considering it. If I ask an AI, I might either get a good answer or a bad one, but without a vote count nearby telling me how good it might actually be.

janalsncm 2y ago
> And when it fails, you don't know. This can be addressed in some cases with actual code verification. It’s how DeepSeek was trained. But it is hard in the general case.

assimpleaspossi 2y ago

What if you're not in the "good enough" business? I've tried many times to get an answer from these AI engines. They have always been just "good enough", to help me find a direction for more research to get a good answer, or flat out wrong.

scarface_74 2y ago
The paid version of ChatGPT has had built in web search for over two years. It’s easy enough to just say “verify your answer” and it will search the web. Even with code - albeit most of my experience is with having it write AWS automation scripts in Python using the AWS SDK (Boto3), I’ll either give it the link to the API in question or tell it to “verify Boto3 calls on the web”. The worse thing it usually does is have code where it wants you to include your credentials in code (don’t do that). But even most people on SO do the same

janalsncm 2y ago

It gets harder though. Even before AI, a lot of the low hanging fruit “how do I sleep for 2 seconds in JavaScript” are already answered. Beginner Qs are often marked as duplicate. So you’re left with long tail difficult or obscure questions that take a lot more effort to answer.