10 ms·

Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden in HN guidelines?

• skobes 11mo ago
  I hate these too, but I'm worried that a ban just incentivizes being more sneaky about it.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • llm_nerd 11mo ago
    I think people are just presuming that others are regurgitating AI pablum regardless. People are seeing AI / LLMs everywhere — swinging at ghosts — and declaring that everyone are bots that are recycling LLM output. While the "this is what AI says..." posts are obnoxious (and a parallel to the equally boorish lmgtfy nonsense), not far behind are the endless "this sounds like AI" type cynical jeering. People need to display how world-weary and jaded they are, expressing their malcontent with the rise of AI. And yes, I used an em dash above. I've always been a heavy user of the punctuation (being a scattered-brain with lots of parenthetical asides and little ability to self-edit) but suddenly now it makes my comments bot-like and AI-suspect. I've been downvoted before for making this obvious, painfully true observation, but HNers, and people in general, are much less capable at sniffing out AI content than they think they are. Everyone has confirmation-biased themselves into thinking they've got a unique gift, when really they are no better than rolling dice.
    • nottorp 11mo ago
      Thing is, the comments that sound "AI" generated but aren't have about as much value as the ones that really are. Tbh the comments in the topic shouldn't be completely banned. As someone else said, they have a place for example when comparing LLM output or various prompts giving different hallucinations. But most of them are just reputation chasing by posting a summary of something that is usually below the level of HN discussion.
      • llm_nerd 11mo ago
        >the comments that sound "AI" generated but aren't have about as much value as the ones that really are When "sounds AI generated" is in the eye of the beholder, this is an utterly worthless differentiation. I mean, it's actually a rather ironic comment given that I just pointed out that people are hilariously bad at determining if something is AI generated, and at this point people making such declarations are usually announcing their own ignorance, or alternately they're pathetically trying to prejudice other readers. People now simply declare opinions they disagree with as "AI", in the same way that people think people with contrary positions can't possibly be real and must be bots, NPCs, shills, and so on. It's all incredibly boring.
        • nottorp 11mo ago
          I mean verbose for no good reasons, not contributing meaningfully to the discussion in any way. Just like those StackOverflow answers - before "AI" - that came in 30 seconds on any question and just regurgitated in a "helpful" sounding way whatever tutorial the poster could find first that looked even remotely related to the question. "Content" where the target is to trick someone into an upvote instead of actually caring about the discussion.
  • bawolff 11mo ago
    I would consider that an https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/ situation. My objection to AI comments is not that they are AI per se, but they are noise. If people are sneaky enough that they start making valuable AI comments, well that is great.
• stevenalowe 11mo ago
  I think the AIs should post directly
• JohnFen 11mo ago
  I find such replies to be worthless wastes of space on par with "let me google that for you" replies. If I want to know what genAI has to say about something, I can just ask it myself. I'm more interested in what the commenter has to say. But I don't know that we need any sort of official ban against them. This community is pretty good about downvoting unhelpful comments, and there is a whole spectrum of unhelpful comments that have nothing to do with genAI. It seems impractical to overtly list them all.
  • Scene_Cast2 11mo ago
    There is friction to asking AI yourself. And a comment typically means that "I found the AI answer insightful enough to share".
    • codechicago277 11mo ago
      The problem is that the AI answer could just be wrong, and there’s another step required to validate what it spit out. Sharing the conversation without fact checking it just adds noise.
    • ben_w 11mo ago
      Unfortunately it's easier to train an AI to be convincing than to be correct, so it can look insightful before it's true. Like horoscopes, only they're not actually that bad so roll a D20 and on a set of numbers known only to the DM (and varying with domain and task length) you get a textbook answer and on the rest you get convincing nonsense.
      • D13Fd 11mo ago
        > Unfortunately it's easier to train an AI to be convincing than to be correct, so it can look insightful before it's true. This nails it. This is the fundamental problem with using AI material. You are outsourcing thinking in a way where the response is likely to look very correct without any actual logic or connection to truth.
    • ManlyBread 11mo ago
• shishy 11mo ago
  People are probably copy pasting already without that disclosure :(
  • coffeecat 11mo ago
    I'm sure there are people who spend their time doing this, but I don't understand the motive. Doesn't one post in comment threads because one wishes to share their thoughts with other humans?
    • D13Fd 11mo ago
      That's one reason why I post comments (and none of my comments are AI-generated). But I think some people cut-and-paste AI responses because they like winning upvotes and running up an upvote counter.
• chemotaxis 11mo ago
  This wouldn't ban the behavior, just the disclosure of it.
  • xivzgrev 11mo ago
    Agreed - in fact these folks are going out of their way to be transparent about it. It's much easier to just take credit for a "smart" answer
    • muwtyhg 11mo ago
      So those folks must be doing it because they think it's helpful, right? They are explicitly trying not to take credit for the words. Do you think, after a ban of these kinds of posts are implemented, that those posters would start hiding their use of AI to create replies, or would they just stop using AI to reply at all?
  • AlwaysRock 11mo ago
    I guess... That is the point in my opinion. If you just say, "here is what llm said" if that turns out to be nonsense you can say something like, "I was just passing along the llm response, not my own opinion" But if you take the llm response and present it as your own, at least there is slightly more ownership over the opinion. This is kind of splitting hairs but hopefully it makes people actually read the response themselves before posting it.
    • Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
      Taking ownership isn't the worst instinct, to be fair. But that's a slightly different formulation. "People are responsible for the comments that they post no matter how they wrote them. If you use tools (AI or otherwise) to help you make a comment, that responsibility does not go away"
  • sfink 11mo ago
    That was my immediate thought too, but I'm still in favor of banning it in order to make it a community norm. Right now, people generally seem to think that such comments are adding some sort of signal, and I don't think they're stupid to think that. Not stupid, just wrong. And people feel personally attacked and so get defensive and harden their position, so it would be better to just make it against the guidelines with some justification there rather than trying to control it with individual arguments (with a defensive person!) or downvoting alone. (And the guidelines would be the place to put the explanation of why it's disallowed.) People will still do it, but now they're doing it intentionally in a context where they know it's against the guidelines, which is a whole different situation. Staying up late to argue the point (and thus add noise) is obviously not going to work. I'd prefer the guideline to allow machine translation, though, even when done with a chatbot. If you are using a chatbot intentionally with the purpose of translating your thoughts, that's a very different comment than spewing out the output from a prompt about the topic. There's some gray area where they fuzz together, but in my experience they're still very different. (Even though the translated ones set off all the alarm bells in terms of style, formatting, and phrasing.)
• gortok 11mo ago
  While we will never be able to get folks to stop using AI to “help” them shape their replies, it’s super annoying to have folks think that by using AI that they’re doing others a favor. If I wanted to know what an AI thinks I’ll ask it. I’m here because I want to know what other people think. At this point, I make value judgments when folks use AI for their writing, and will continue to do so.
  • sbrother 11mo ago
    I strongly agree with this sentiment and I feel the same way. The one exception for me though is when non-native English speakers want to participate in an English language discussion. LLMs produce by far the most natural sounding translations nowadays, but they imbue that "AI style" onto their output. I'm not sure what the solution here is because it's great for non-native speakers to be able to participate, but I find myself discarding any POV that was obviously expressed with AI.
    • justin66 11mo ago
      As AIs get good enough, dealing with someone struggling with English will begin to feel like a breath of fresh air.
    • tensegrist 11mo ago
      one solution that appeals to me (and which i have myself used in online spaces where i don't speak the language) is to write in a language you can speak and let people translate it themselves however they wish i don't think it is likely to catch on, though, outside of culturally multilingual environments
      • internetter 11mo ago
        > i don't think it is likely to catch on, though, outside of culturally multilingual environments It can if the platform has built in translation with an appropriate disclosure! for instance on Twitter or Mastodon. https://blog.thms.uk/2023/02/mastodon-translation-options https://blog.thms.uk/2023/02/mastodon-translation-options
• tpxl 11mo ago
  I think they should be banned, if there isnt a contribution besides what the llm answered. It's akin to 'I googled this', which is uninteresting.
  • mattkrause 11mo ago
    I do find it useful in discussions of LLMs themselves. (Gemini did this; Claude did it too but it used to get tripped up like that). I do wish people wouldn’t do it when it doesn’t add to the conversation but I would advocate for collective embarrassment over a ham-fisted regex.
    • MBCook 11mo ago
      That provides value as you’re comparing (and hopefully analyzing) output. It’s totally on topic. In a discussion of RISC v5 and if it can beat ARM someone just posting “ChatGPT says X” adds absolutely nothing to the discussion but noise.
    • autoexec 11mo ago
      It's always fun when people point out an LLMs insane responses to simple questions that shatter the illusion of them having any intelligence, but besides just giving us a good laugh when AI has a meltdown failing to produce a seahorse emoji, there are other times it might be valuable to discuss how they respond, such as when those responses might be dangerous, censored, or clearly being filled with advertising/bias
  • Ekaros 11mo ago
    I think "I googled this" can be valid and helpful contribution. For example looking up some statistic or fact or an year. If that is also verified and sanity checked.
    • sejje 11mo ago
      Yes, while citing an LLM in the same way is probably not as useful. "I googled this" is only helpful when the statistic or fact they looked up was correct and well-sourced. When it's a reddit comment, you derail into a new argument about strength of sources. The LLM skips a step, and gets you right to the "unusable source" argument.
• syockit 11mo ago
  You can add the guideline, but then people would skip the "I asked" part and post the answer straight away. Apart from the obvious LLMesque structure of most of those bot answers, how could you tell if one has crafted the answer so much that it looks like a genuine human answer? Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/
  • card_zero 11mo ago
    15 years ago ... needs updating in regard of how things panned out.
• gruez 11mo ago
  What do you think about other low quality sources? For instance, "I checked on infowars.com, and this is what came up"? Should they be banned as well?
  • everdrive 11mo ago
    It depends on if you're saying "Infowars has the answer, check out this article" vs "I know this isn't a reputable source, however it's a popular source and there's an interesting debate to be had about Infowars' perspective, even if we can agree it's incorrect."
    • gruez 11mo ago
      >I know this isn't a reputable source, however it's a popular source and there's an interesting debate to be had about Infowars' perspective, even if we can agree it's incorrect." You can make the same argument for AI output as well, but to be clear, I'm referring to the case of someone bringing up a low quality source as the answer.
      • everdrive 11mo ago
        Definitely agreed, I think the exact same would apply -- if there's an insightful conversation to be had about LLMs or their responses, then I think we'd all welcome it. If it's just someone saying "I asked the LLM and it said X" then we're better off without it. Not sure how easy that would actually be to moderate, of course.
  • newsoftheday 11mo ago
    Your point is conflating a potential low quality source with AI output while also making the judgement that <fill in the blank site> is a low quality source and to be disregarded 100% of the time; ignoring that the potential exists that an informative POV may be present, even on a potential low quality source site.
  • Aachen 11mo ago
    If you plagiarise text from a source that is objectively (measurably, systematically) unreliable, without vetting, adding commentary, or doing anything else to add value, then 100% yes that's the same issue
• ben_w 11mo ago
  Depends on the context. I find myself downvoting (flagging) them when I see them as submissions, and I can't think of any examples where they were good submission content; but for comments? There's enough discussion where the AI is the subject itself and therefore it's genuinely relevant what the AI says. Then there's stuff like this, which I'd not seen myself before seeing your question, but I'd say asking people here if an AI-generated TLDR of 74 (75?) page PDF is correct, is a perfectly valid and sensible use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360
• LeoPanthera 11mo ago
  Banning the disclosure of it is still an improvement. It forces the poster to take responsibility for what they have written, as now it is in their name.
• AdamH12113 11mo ago
  To me, the valuable comments are the ones that share the writer's expertise and experiences (as opposed to opinions and hypothesizing) or the ones that ask interesting questions. LLMs have no experience and no real expertise, and nobody seems to be posting "I asked an LLM for questions and it said...". Thus, LLM-written comments (whether of the form "I asked ChatGPT..." or not) have no value to me. I'm not sure a full ban is possible, but LLM-written comments should at least be strongly discouraged.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• michaelcampbell 11mo ago
  Related: Comments saying "this feels like AI". It's this generation's "Looks shopped" and of zero value, IMO.
  • whimsicalism 11mo ago
    Disagree, find these comments valuable - especially if they are about an article that I was about to read. It's not the same as sockpuppeting accusations, which I think are right to be banned.
    • duskwuff 11mo ago
      Yes. Especially on articles - the baseline assumption is that most articles are written by humans, and it's nice to know when that expectation may have been violated.
    • sfink 11mo ago
      Yeah, I haven't used AIs enough to be that good at immediately spotting generated output, so I appreciate the chance to reconsider my assumption that something was human-written. I'm sure people who did NOT use an AI find it insulting to be so accused, but I'd rather normalize those accusations and shift the norm to see them as suspicions rather than accusations. I do find it more helpful when people specify why they think something was AI-generated. Especially since people are often wrong (fwict).
  • sbrother 11mo ago
    Fair, but then that functionality should be built into the flagging system. Obvious AI comments (worse, ones that are commercially driven) are a cancer that's breaking online discussion forums.
    • criddell 11mo ago
      I think Slashdot still has the best moderating system. Being able to flag a comment as insightful, funny, offtopic, redundant, etc... adds a lot of information and gives more control to readers over the types, quantity, and quality of discussion they see. For example, some people seem to be irritated by jokes and being able to ignore +5 funny comments might be something they want.
• masfuerte 11mo ago
  Does it need a rule? These comments already get heavily down-voted. People who can't take a hint aren't going to read the rules.
  • rsync 11mo ago
    This is my view. I tend to dislike these type of posts but a properly designed and functioning vote mechanism should take care of it. If not, it is the voting mechanism that should be tuned - not new rules.
  • eskori 11mo ago
    If HN mods think the rule should be applied whatever the community thinks (for now), then yes, it needs a rule. As I see it, down-voting is an expression of the community posture, rules are an expression of the "space" posture. It's up to the space to determine if there is something relevant enough to include it in the rules. And again, as I see it, community should also have a way to at least suggest modifications of the rules. I agree with you in "People who can't take a hint aren't going to read the rules". But as they say: "Ignorance of the law does not exempt one from compliance."
    • tptacek 11mo ago
      Again: there already is a rule against this.
      • eskori 11mo ago
        Hi! Yup, I didn't know it and your comment talking about this (completely agree btw) was made later, so sorry if it felt repetitive to you but thanks for coming here to let us know :)
  • dormento 11mo ago
    > These comments already get heavily down-voted. Can't find the link right now (cause why would i save a thread like that..) but I've seen more than once situations where people get defensive of others that post AI slop comments. Both times it was people in YC companies that have personal interest related to AI. Both times it looked like a person defending sockpuppets.
• 63stack 11mo ago
  Yes
• ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  I don't think they should be banned, I think they should be encouraged: I'm always appreciative when people who can't think for themselves openly identify themselves so that it costs me less effort to spot them.
• tehwebguy 11mo ago
  It should be allowed and downvoted
• lproven 11mo ago
  I endorse this. Please do take whatever measures are possible to discourage it, even if it won't stop people. It at least sends a message: this is not wanted, this is not helpful, this is not constructive.
• testdelacc1 11mo ago
  Maybe I remember the Grok ones more clearly but it felt like “I asked Grok” was more prevalent than the others. I feel like the HN guidelines could take inspiration from how Oxide uses LLMs. (https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576 https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576). Specifically the part where using LLMs to write comments violates the implicit social contract that the writer should put more care and effort and time into it than the reader. The reader reads it because they assume this is something a person has put more time into than they need to. LLMs break that social contract. Of course, if it’s banned maybe people just stop admitting it.
• josefresco 11mo ago
  As a community I think we should encourage "disclaimers" aka "I asked <AIVENDOR>, and it said...." The information may still be valuable. We can't stop AI comments, but we can encourage good behavior/disclosure. I also think brevity should still be rewarded, AI or not.
  • superfishy 11mo ago
    I agree. The alternative is prohibiting this practice and having these posters not disclose their use of LLMs, which in many cases cannot really be easily detected.
    • TulliusCicero 11mo ago
      No, most don't think they're doing anything wrong, they think they're actually being helpful. So, most wouldn't try to disguise it, they'd just stop doing it, if it was against the rules.
      • abustamam 11mo ago
        Agreed with them not thinking they're doing anything wrong. Disagree with them not wanting to disguise it. If they don't think they're doing anything wrong, then they likely don't think it's against the rules. If they knew it were against the rules, they'd probably disguise it better. This may actually be a good thing because it'd force them to put some thought into dissecting the comment from AI instead of just pasting it in wholesale. Depending on how well they try to disguise it, of course.
  • sinuhe69 11mo ago
    I still want to read what the poster understood from the output of the AI, though. I don’t need reciting an answer from an AI because I (and everybody else) can do it, too. On Firefox and other browsers, it’s now integrated so asking an AI is no more than 1 click away. Actually, not even away, Grok can even answer right in the context on X. So merely an answer from AI had no value today, whatsoever.
• AlwaysRock 11mo ago
  Yes. Unless something useful is actually added by the commenter or the post is about, "I asked llm x and it said y (that was unexpected)". I have a coworker who does this somewhat often and... I always just feel like saying well that is great but what do you think? What is your opinion? At the very least the copy paster should read what the llm says, interpret it, fact check it, then write their own response.
  • Arainach 11mo ago
    I keep this link handy to send to such coworkers/people: https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/ https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-...
    • staticman2 11mo ago
      Starting a blog post with a lengthy science fiction novel excerpt without setup is annoying.
  • exasperaited 11mo ago
    I have a client who does this — pastes it into text messages! as if it will help me solve the problem they are asking me to solve — and I'm like "that's great I won't be reading it". You have to push back.
  • dylan604 11mo ago
    > At the very least the copy paster should read what the llm says, interpret it, fact check it, then write their own response. then write their own response using an AI to improve the quality of the response? the implication here is that an AI user is going to do some research when using the AI was their research. to do the "fact check" as you suggest would mean doing actual work, and clearly that's not something the user is up for indicated by use of the AI. so, to me, your suggestion is fantasy level thinking
• 0x00cl 11mo ago
  This is what DeepSeek said: > 1. Existing guidelines already handle low-value content. If an AI reply is shallow or off-topic, it gets downvoted or flagged. > > 2. Transparency is good. Explicitly citing an AI is better than users passing off its output as their own, which a ban might encourage. > > 3. The community can self-regulate. We don't need a new rule for every type of low-effort content. > > The issue is low effort, not the tool used. Let downvotes handle it.
  • debo_ 11mo ago
    I was hoping someone did this.
• dominotw 11mo ago
  i asked chatgpt and it said no its not a good idea to ban
• yomismoaqui 11mo ago
  I think disclosing the use the AI is better than hiding it. The alternative is people using it but not telling for fear of a ban.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• gAI 11mo ago
  I asked AI, and it said yes.
• exasperaited 11mo ago
  No, don't ban it. It's a useful signal for value judgements.
• bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  What is annoying about them is that they tend to be long with a low signal/noise ratio. I'd be fine with a comment saying. "I think the ChatGPT answer is informative: [link]". It'd still likely get downvoted to the bottom of the discussion, where it likely belongs.
• moomoo11 11mo ago
  Honestly I judge people pretty harshly. I ask people a question in honest good faith. If they’re trying to help me out and genuinely care and use AI fine. But most of the time it’s like they were bothered that I asked and copy paste what an AI said. Pretty easy. Just add their name to my “GFY” list and move on in my life.
• Mistletoe 11mo ago
  I don’t see how it is much different than using Wikipedia. They are usually about the same answer and at least in Gemini it is usually a correct answer now.
• breckinloggins 11mo ago
  If it’s part of an otherwise coherent post making a larger point I have no issue with it. If it’s a low effort copy pasta post I think downvotes are sufficient unless it starts to obliterate the signal vs noise ratio on the site.
• sans_souse 11mo ago
  There be a thing called Thee Undocumented Rules of HN, aka etiquette, in which states - and I quote: "Thou shall not post AI generated replies" I can't locate them, but I'm sure they exist...
  • tastyfreeze 11mo ago
    I've seen that document. It also has a rule that states "Thou shall not be a bot." Unfortunately, I can't find them. Its a shame. Everybody should read them.
    • warkdarrior 11mo ago
      It's a great doc, I've been training my HN bot on it.
• Zak 11mo ago
  I don't think people should post the unfiltered output of an LLM as if it has value. If a question in a comment has a single correct answer that is so easily discoverable, I might downvote the comment instead. I'm not sure making a rule would be helpful though, as I think people would ignore it and just not label the source of their comment. I'd like to be wrong about that.
• prpl 11mo ago
  were lmgtfy links ever forbidden?
• PeterStuer 11mo ago
  For better or worse, that ship has sailed. LLM's are now as omnipresent as websearch. Some people will know how to use it in good taste, others will try to abuse it in bad taste. It might not be universally agreed which is which in every case.
  • collinmcnulty 11mo ago
    I think the ship very much has not sailed on how different spaces treat LLM responses. Are LLMs something that you can use if you want, but are considered rude and banned from being blatantly posted without human ownership? “You can’t use an LLM” would be an impossible rule, but “You can use an LLM to write your response but you have to take responsibility for the output” is feasible.
• whimsicalism 11mo ago
  I think comments like this should link their generation rather than C+P it. Not sure if this should be a rule or we can just let downvoting do the work - I worry that a rule would be overapplied and I think there are contexts that are okay.
• zoomablemind 11mo ago
  There's hardly a standard for a 'quality' contribution to discussion. Many styles, many opinions, many ways to react and support one's statements. If anything, it had been quite customary to supply references for some important facts. Thus letting readers to explore further and interpret the facts. With AI in the mix the references become even more important, in the view of hallucinations and fact poisoning. Otherwise, it's a forum. Voting, flagging, ignoring are the usual tools.
  • wswope 11mo ago
    > There's hardly a standard for a 'quality' contribution to discussion. Many styles, many opinions, many ways to react and support one's statements. My brain-based LLM would like you to know there’s a set of standard guidelines for contribution linked on the footer of this page.
• stego-tech 11mo ago
  Formalizing it within the community rules removes ambiguity around intent or use, so yes, I do believe we should be barring AI-generated comments and stories from HN in general. At the very least, it adds another barometer of sorts to help community leaders do the hard work of managing this environment. If you didn’t think it, and you didn’t write it, it doesn’t belong here.
• a_wild_dandan 11mo ago
  No. I like being able to ignore them. I can’t do that if people chop off their disclaimers to avoid comment removal.
• ruined 11mo ago
  you got a downvote button
• ilc 11mo ago
  No, I put them with lmgtfy. You are being told that your question is easy to research and you didn't do the work, most of the time. Also heaven forbid, AI can be right. I realize this is a shocker to many here. But AI has use, especially in easy cases.
  • watwut 11mo ago
    1.) They are not replies to people asking questions. 2.) Posting AI response has as much value as posting random reddit comment. 3.) AI has value where you are able to factually verify it. If someone asks a question, they do not know the answer and are unable to validate ai.
  • emaro 11mo ago
    I don't think LLM responses mean a question is easy to research - they will always give an answer.
  • bigstrat2003 11mo ago
    "I asked AI and it said" is far worse than lmgtfy (which is already rude) because it has zero value as evidence. AI can be right, but it's wrong often enough that you can't actually use it to determine the truth of something.
    • zepolen 11mo ago
      How is lmgtfy rude?
      • filoeleven 11mo ago
        Do you respond to every comment with a question in it? No? Then why would you respond to a question in a comment with a useless reply?
        • zepolen 11mo ago
          You didn't answer the question, it's your reply that is useless.
• mindcandy 11mo ago
  Is the content of the comment productive to the conversation? Upvote it. Is the content of the comment counter-productive? Downvote it. I could see cases where large walls of text that are generally useless should be downvoted or even removed. AI or not. But, the first example > faced with 74 pages of text outside my domain expertise, I asked Gemini for a summary. Assuming you've read the original, does this summary track well? to be frank, is a service to all HN readers. Yes it is possible that a few of us would benefit from sitting down with a nice cup of coffee, putting on some ambient music and taking in 74 pages of... whatever this is. But, faced with far more interesting and useful content than I could possibly consume all day every day, having a summary to inform my time investment is of great value to me. Even If It Is Imperfect
  • filoeleven 11mo ago
    > having a summary to inform my time investment is of great value to me. Even If It Is Imperfect No one is stopping you from doing that for yourself. There is no need to copypasta it.
• mistrial9 11mo ago
  the system of long-lived nicks on YNews is intended to build a mild and flexible reputation system. This is valuable for complex topics, and to notice zealots, among other things. The feeling while reading that it is a community of peers is important. AI-LLM replies break all of these things. AI-LLM replies must be declared as such, for certain IMHO. It seems desirable to have off-page links for (inevitable) lengthy reply content. This is an existential change for online communications. Many smart people here have predicted it and acted on it already. It is certainly trending hard for the forseeable future.
• ManlyBread 11mo ago
  I think that the whole point of the discussion forum is to talk to other people, so I am in favor of banning AI replies. There's zero value in these posts because anyone can type chatgpt.com in the browser and then ask whatever question they want at any time while getting input from an another human being is not always guaranteed.
  • Aachen 11mo ago
    You're like the 9th out of the 10 top-level replies I've read so far that says this, with the 10th one saying it in a different way (without suggesting they could have asked it themselves). What I find interesting is that everyone agrees and nobody argues about prompt engineering, as in, nobody says it's helpful that a skilled querier shares responses from the system. Apparently there's now the sentiment that literally anybody else could have done the same without thought Whether prompt engineering is a skill is perhaps a different topic. I just found this meta statistic in this thread interesting to observe
    • alwa 11mo ago
      I do think it would be useful to normalize pasting a link to the full transcript if you’re going to quote an LLM. Both because I do find it useful to examine others’ prompting techniques, and because that gives me the context to gauge the response’s credibility. What did we used to call it? Google-fu?
    • ManlyBread 11mo ago
      This is probably the first time I see the term "prompt engineer" mentioned this year. I though that this joke has ran its' course back in 2023 and is largely forgotten nowadays.
      • alwa 11mo ago
        A silly name, but I’ve definitely watched peers coax sensible results out of braggadocious LLMs… and also watched friends say “make me an app that enters the TPS report data for me” (or “make fully playable Grand Theft Auto, but on Mars”) and be surprised that the result is trash.
• pembrook 11mo ago
  No, this is not a good rule. What AI regurgitates about about a topic is often more interesting and fact/data-based than the emotionally-driven human pessimists spewing constant cynicism on HN, so in fact I much prefer having more rational AI responses added in as context within a conversation.
  • zug_zug 11mo ago
    Ironic that your comment downvoted... gosh darn emotional humans
• nlawalker 11mo ago
  No, just upvote or downvote. I think the site guidelines could take a stance on it though, encouraging people to post human insights and discouraging comments that are effectively LLM output (regardless of whether they actually are).
• WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
  Yes. If I wanted an LLM’s opinion, I would have asked it myself.
  • newsoftheday 11mo ago
    Would your prompt have been identical and produced identical results, today, tomorrow, which version of AI would you have used, were there bugs present that made the post or comment interesting that would have been absent in your response because the bug had been fixed already?
    • WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
      In any case, it should have some more thought to it, some summary, some highlight, what you find useful/insightful about it. Just dumping the response is lazy and disrespectful. And if two people can get two opposite results by giving the same prompt which asks a very specific question to the same model, it looks like bunk anyway. LLMs don't care if they are correct.
    • nobody9999 11mo ago
      >Would your prompt have been identical and produced identical results, today, tomorrow, which version of AI would you have used, were there bugs present that made the post or comment interesting that would have been absent in your response because the bug had been fixed already? Why is that relevant to GP's point? I can't speak for anyone else, but I come to HN to discuss stuff with other humans. If I wanted an LLM's (it's not AI, it's a predictive text algorithm) regurgitations, I can generate those myself and don't need "helpful" HNers to do it for me unasked. When I come here I want to have a discussion with other sentient beings, not the gestalt of training data regurgitated by a bot. Perhaps that makes me old-fashioned and/or bigoted against interacting with large language models, but that's what I want. In discussion, I want to know what other sentient beings think, not an aggregation of text tokens based on their probability of being used in a particular sequence determined by the data fed to model. The former can (but may well not be) a creative, intellectual act by a sentient being. The latter will never be so, as it's an aggregation of existing data/information as a sequence of tokens cobbled together based on the frequency with which such tokens are used in a particular order in the model's corpus. That's not to say that LLM are useless. They are not. But their place is not in "curious conversation," IMNSHO.
• jpease 11mo ago
  I asked AI if “I asked AI, and it said” replies should be forbidden, and it said…
• AnonC 11mo ago
  Are you a new HN mod (with authority over the guidelines) and are asking for opinions from readers (that’d be new)? Or are you just another normal user and are loudly wondering about this so that mods get inputs (as opposed to writing a nice email to hn@ycombinator.com)? I think just downvoting by committed users is enough. What matters is the content and how valuable it seems to readers. There is no need to do any gate keeping by the guidelines on this matter. That’s my opinion.
• jdoliner 11mo ago
  I've always liked that HN typically has comments that are small bits of research relevant to the post that I could have done myself but don't have to because someone else did it for me. In a sense the "I asked $AI, and it said" comments are just the evolved form of that. However the presentation does matter a little, at least to me. Explicitly stating that you asked AI feels a little like an appeal to authority... and a bad one at that. And makes the comment feel low effort. Often times comments that frame themselves in this way will be missing the "last-mile" effort that tailors the LLMs response to the context of the post. So I think maybe the guidelines should say something like: HN readers appreciate research in comments that brings information relevant to the post. The best way to make such a comment is to find the information, summarize it in your own words that explain why it's relevant to the post and then link to the source if necessary. Adding "$AI said" or "Google said" generally makes your post worse. --------- Also I asked ChatGPT and it said: Short Answer HN shouldn’t outright ban those comments, but it should culturally discourage them, the same way it discourages low-effort regurgitation, sensationalism, or unearned certainty. HN works when people bring their own insight, not when they paste the output of a stochastic parrot. A rule probably isn’t needed. A norm is.
• MBCook 11mo ago
  Yes, please. It’s extremely low effort. If you’re not adding anything of value (typing into another window and copying and pasting the output are not) then it serves no purpose. It’s the same as “this” of “wut” but much longer. If you’re posting that and ANALYZING the output that’s different. That could be useful. You added something there.
• satisfice 11mo ago
  Only if they also do a google search, provide the top one hundred hits, and paste in a relevant Wikipedia page.
• incanus77 11mo ago
  Yes. This is the modern equivalent of “I searched the web and this is what it said”. If I could do the same thing and have the same results, you’re not adding any value. Though this is unlikely a scenario that happened, I’d equate this with someone asking me what I thought about something, and me walking them over to a book on the shelf to show them what that author thought. It’s just an aggregated and watered-down average of all the books. I’d rather hear it filtered through a brain, be it a good answer or bad.
• leephillips 11mo ago
  Posting this kind of slop should be a banning offense. Also: https://hn-ai.org/ https://hn-ai.org/
• newsoftheday 11mo ago
  If someone is going to post like that, I feel they should post their prompt ver batim, the exact AI and version used and the date they issued the prompt to receive the response they're posting. There are far too many replies in this thread saying to drop the ban hammer, for this to be seriously taken as Hacker News. What has happened to this audience?
• Tiberium 11mo ago
  I'm honestly grateful to those who disclose their use of AI in replies, because lately I've noticed more and more of clearly LLM-generated comments on HN with no disclaimers whatsoever. And the worst part is that most people don't notice and still engage with them.
• rsynnott 11mo ago
  They should be forbidden _everywhere_. Absolutely obnoxious.
• renewiltord 11mo ago
  [dead]
• phoe-krk 11mo ago
  Yes. I'd prefer comments that have intent, not just high statistical probability.
• createaccount99 11mo ago
  Forbidden? They should be mandatory.
• sodapopcan 11mo ago
  That and replies that start with "No"
  • Aachen 11mo ago
    Now I'm curious what kinds of comments you mean
    • sodapopcan 11mo ago
      haha, you've never seen any? It's pretty classic HN. If someone thinks a comment is false the reply will look something like: "No. What you really meant to say is..." and often times the "No." will be its own paragraph.
      • Aachen 11mo ago
        Not a lot, but yeah I guess I've seen it. A bit harsh but I don't remember enough specific instances to say whether it's typically warranted or not (The nerd joke btw is that both of my replies so far started with "No", since you didn't specify whitespace after the two characters o:) )
• theLegionWithin 11mo ago
  how are you going to enforce it? if someone does that & reformats the text a bit it'll look like a unique response
• bbor 11mo ago
  large LLM-generated texts just get in the way of reading real text from real humans In terms of reasons for platform-level censorship, "I have to scroll sometimes" seems like a bad one.
  • muwtyhg 11mo ago
    This feels like an oversimplification of the issue. Why moderate at all? Spam posted here would only require you to "have to scroll sometimes".
• TulliusCicero 11mo ago
  I'd like it to be forbidden, yes. Sure, I'll occasionally ask an LLM about something if the info is easy to verify after, but I wouldn't like comments here that were just copy-pastes of the Google search results page either.
• jeffbee 11mo ago
  If it was my personal site I would instantly ban all such accounts. They are basically virus-carrying individuals from outer space, here to destroy the discourse. Since that isn't likely to happen, perhaps the community can develop a browser extension that calls attention to or suppresses such accounts.
• RiverCrochet 11mo ago
  Yes. LLM copy/paste strongly indicates karma/vote farming, because if I wanted an LLM's output I could just go there myself. Someone below mentions using it for translation and I think that's OK. Idea: Prevent LLM copy/pasting by preempting it. Google and other things display LLM summaries of what you search for after you enter your search query, and that's frequently annoying. So imagine the same on an HN post. In a clearly delineated and collapsible box underneath or beside the post. It is also annoying, but it also removes the incentive to run the question through an LLM and post the output, because it was already done.
• tptacek 11mo ago
  They already are against the rules here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generated%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (This is a broader restriction than the one you're looking for). It's important to understand that not all of the rules of HN are on the Guidelines page. We're a common law system; think of the Guidelines as something akin to a constitution. Dan and Tom's moderation comments form the "judicial precedent" of the site; you'll find things in there like "no Internet psychiatric diagnosis" and "not owing $publicfigure anything but owing this community more" and "no nationalist flamewar" and "no hijacking other people's Show HN threads to promote your own thing". None of those are on the Guidelines page either, but they're definitely in the guidelines here.
  • Rendello 11mo ago
    This is the correct answer. If you're curious about what other sorts of things are disallowed by common law, look at dang and tomhow's comments that say "please don't": dang: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Please%20don%27t%20author%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... tomhow: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Please%20don%27t%20author%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    • Akronymus 11mo ago
      > This is the correct answer. Where does that saying come from? I keep seeing it in a lot of different contexts but it somehow feels off to me in a way I can't really explain.
      • Rendello 11mo ago
        It's the first time I've ever commented that, and I was trying to figure out a way to omit it. I don't like that sort of phrase either, I especially hate comments that just go "This.", but they're rare on HN so I'm in good company. Ultimately, I put it because: - It was the most directly informative comment on the thread; - It had been downvoted (greyed out) to the very bottom of the thread; and - I wanted to express my support before making a fairly orthogonal comment without whiplashing everyone. The whiplashing concern is the problem I run into most generally. It can be hard to reply to someone with a somewhat related idea without making it seem like you're contradicting them, particularly if they're being dogpiled on with downvotes or comments. I'd love to hear other ways to go about this, I'm always trying to improve my communication.
• cm2012 11mo ago
  These comments are in the top 10% of usefulness of all comments in those threads. Clear, legible information that is easy to read and relevant. Keep!
• qustrolabe 11mo ago
  HN have very primitive comments layout that gives too big of an focus to large responses and first most upvoted post with all its replies. I think just because of that it's better to do something about large responses with little value. I'd rather they just share conversation link
• Rebelgecko 11mo ago
  This is not just about banning a source; it is about preserving the core principle of substantive, human-vetted content on HN. Allowing comments that are merely regurgitations of an LLM's generic output—often lacking context, specific experience, or genuine critical thought—treats the community as an outsourced validation layer for machine learning, rather than an ecosystem for expert discussion. It's like allowing a vending machine to contribute to a Michelin-starred chef's tasting menu: the ingredients might be technically edible, but they completely bypass the human skill, critical judgment, and passion that defines the experience. Such low-effort contributions fundamentally violate the "no shallow dismissals" guideline by prioritizing easily manufactured volume over unique human insight, inevitably degrading the platform's high signal-to-noise ratio and displacing valuable commentary from those who have actually put in the work.
  • yellow_lead 11mo ago
    Please stop
  • teach 11mo ago
    slow clap A tip of the hat for this performance art
    • UncleEntity 11mo ago
      One has to wonder if this is how the next generation of kids are going to write after being raised exclusively on AI generated content?
      • WorldPeas 11mo ago
        In this digital world, the core components of writing can feel overwhelming, by leveraging crutches learned by reading hundreds of dead internet comments, the core principles of writing in an ever-shifting landscape can be more crucial than ever. (written by a human with help from https://aiphrasefinder.com/common-chatgpt-phrases/ https://aiphrasefinder.com/common-chatgpt-phrases/)
• myst 11mo ago
  I remember times when this sentiment was being expressed about “According to Wikipedia...” As much as I am pro implementing this rule, I’m afraid we are losing this fight.
• legohead 11mo ago
  Lots of old man yelling at clouds energy in here. This is new territory, you don't ban it, you adapt with it.
• m-hodges 11mo ago
  I feel like this won't eliminate AI-generated replies, it'll just eliminate disclosing that the replies are AI-generated.
  • danielbln 11mo ago
    Personally, I don't care about AI generated replies, but if it's a wall of text of unedited first-try output, then it's just slop, and that's just rude. If I don't notice it's AI because it's succinct and without GPTisms, well, I don't love it either, but neither will I recognize it nor will it therefore bother me.
  • venturecruelty 11mo ago
    Good. The more we can shame this behavior into the shadows, the better. Eventually, people will stop altogether.
• TomasBM 11mo ago
  Yes. The pre-LLM equivalent would be: "I googled this, and here's what the first result says," and copying the text without providing any additional commentary. Everyone should be free to read, interpret and formulate their comments however they'd like. But if a person outsources their entire thinking to an LLM/AI, they don't have anything to contribute to the conversation themselves. And if the HN community wanted pure LLM/AI comments, they'd introduce such bots in the threads.
  • christoff12 11mo ago
    Good point
• srcreigh 11mo ago
  The guidelines are just fine as they are. Low effort LLM crap is bad. Flame bait uncurious mob pile-ons (this thread) are also bad. Use the downvote button.
• ycosynot 11mo ago
  As a brain is made of small pebbles, a LLM is made of small pebbles. If it wants to talk, let it be. I am arguing metaphysically. Not only did it evolve partially out of randomness (and so with a kind of value as an enlighted POV on existence), but it is still evolving to be human, and even more than human. I believe LLM should not be banned, "they" should be willfully, and cheerfully, included in the discourse. I asked Perplexity, and Perplexity said: ""Your metaphysical intuition is very much in line with live debates: once “small pebbles” are arranged into agents that talk, coordinate, and co-shape our world, there is a strong philosophical case that they should be brought inside our moral and political conversations rather than excluded by fiat.""
• FromOmelas 11mo ago
  rather then ban, I would prefer posts/comments are labeled as such. with features: - ability to hide AI labeled replies (by default) - assign lower weight when appropriate - if a user is suspected to be AI-generated, retroactively label all their replies as "suspected AI" - in addition to downvote/upvote, a "I think this is AI" counter
• tekacs 11mo ago
  Based on other HN rules thus far, I tend to think that this just results in more comments pointing out that you're violating a rule. In many threads, those comments can be just as annoying and distracting as the ones being replied to. I say this as someone who to my recollection has never had anyone reply with a rule correction to me -- but I've seen so many of them over the years and I feel like we would fill up the screen even more with a rule like this.
• etchalon 11mo ago
  Yes.
• Aloha 11mo ago
  I also endorse this - maybe not outright ban but at least highly discourage.
• flkiwi 11mo ago
  I read comments citing AI as essentially equivalent to "I ran a $searchengine search and here is the most relevant result." It's not equivalent, but it has one identical issue and one new-ish one: 1. If I wanted to run a web search, I would have done so 2. People behave as if they believe AI results are authoritative, which they are not On the other hand, a ban could result in a technical violation in a conversation about AI responses where providing examples of those responses is entirely appropriate. I feel like we're having a larger conversation here, one where we are watching etiquette evolve in realtime. This is analogous to "Should we ban people from wearing bluetooth headsets in the coffee shop?" in the 00s: people are demonstrating a new behavior that is disrupting social norms but the actual violation is really that the person looks like a dork. To that end, I'd probably be more for public shaming, potentially a clear "we aren't banning it but please don't be an AI goober and don't just regurgitate AI output", more than I would support a ban.
  • charcircuit 11mo ago
    >If I wanted to run a web search, I would have done so While true, many times people don't want to do this because they are lazy. If they just instead opened up chatgpt they could have instantly gotten their answer. It results in a waste of everyone's time.
    • droopyEyelids 11mo ago
      Well put. There are two sides of the coin: the lazy questioner who expects others to do the work researching what they would not, and the lazy/indulgent answerer who basically LMGTFY's it. Ideally we would require people who ask questions to say what they've researched so far, and where they got stuck. Then low-effort LLM or search engine result pages wouldn't be such a reasonable answer.
      • WorldPeas 11mo ago
        I haven't thought about LMGTFY since stackoverflow. Usually though I see responses with people thrusting forth AI answers that provide more reasoning, back then LMGTFY was more about rote conventions(e.g. "how do you split a string on ," and ai is used more for "what are ways that solar power will change grid dynamics")
• monknomo 11mo ago
  I do not think so. If I wanted an ai's opinion, I'd ask the ai. Should we allow 'let me google that for you' responses?
• snayan 11mo ago
  I would say it depends, from your examples: 1) borderline. Potentially provides some benefit to the thread for readers who also don't have time or expertise to read an 83 page paper. Although it would require someone to acknowledge and agree that the summary is sound. 2) Acceptable. Dude got grok to make some cool visuals that otherwise wouldn't exist. I don't see what the issue is with something like this. 3) borderline. Same as 1 mostly. The more I think about this, the less bothered I am by it. If the problem were someone jumping into a conversation they know nothing about, and giving an opinion that is actually just the output of an LLM, I'd agree. But all the examples you provided are transformative in some way. Either summarizing and simplifying a long article or paper, or creating art.
• Akronymus 11mo ago
  I'd love to say yes, but it's basically unenforcable if the comment doesnt disclose it itself.
• hooverd 11mo ago
  Yes please. I don't care if somebody did their own research via one, but it's just so low effort.
• djoldman 11mo ago
  The current upvote/downvote mechanism seems more than adequate to address these concerns. If someone thinks an "I asked $AI, and it said" comment is bad, then they can downvote it. As an aside, at times it may be insightful or curious to see what an AI actually says...
• mattnewton 11mo ago
  1 and 3, straight to jail. 2 is fine
• markus_zhang 11mo ago
  It’s fine as long as ppls took effort to double check the answers.
• 827a 11mo ago
  This is a way of attributing where the comment is coming from, which is better than responding with what the AI says and not attributing it. I would support a guideline that discourages posting the output from AI systems, but ultimately there's no way to stop it.
• trenchgun 11mo ago
  Permaban from first strike
• neom 11mo ago
  Not addressing your question directly, but when I got flagged last year I emailed Dan and this was the reply: " John Edgar <je@h4x.club> Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:08 AM to Hacker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735275 Just curious if chatGPT is actually formally banned on HN? Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 4:12 PM to me Yes, they're banned. I don't know about "formally" because that word can mean different things and a lot of the practice of HN is informal. But we've definitely never allowed bots or generated comments. Here are some old posts referring to that. dang https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35984470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35984470 (May 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35869698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35869698 (May 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35210503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35210503 (March 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206303 (March 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33911426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33911426 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32571890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32571890 (Aug 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27558392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27558392 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693590 (April 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22744611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22744611 (April 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427782 (Feb 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774797 (Dec 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325914 (March 2019)" (Edit: oh, it's not 2024 anymore. How time flies!)
• amelius 11mo ago
  Can't we have a unicode escape sequence for anything generated by AI? Then we can just filter it at the browser level. In fact why don't we have glyphs for it? Like special quote characters.
• popalchemist 11mo ago
  Absolutely. Any of us could ask AI if we wanted to hear random unsubstantiated opinions. Why should that get in the way of what we all come here for, which is communication with humans?
• ok123456 11mo ago
  yes
• mrguyorama 11mo ago
  Umm, just to be clear; HN is not actually a democracy. The rules are not voted on. They are set by the people who own and run HN. Please tell me what you think those people think of this question.
• stack_framer 11mo ago
  I'm here to learn what other people think, so I'm in favor of not seeing AI comments here. That said, I've also grown exceedingly tired of everyone saying, "I see an em dash, therefore that comment must have come from AI!" I happen to like em dashes. They're easy to type on macOS, and they're useful in helping me express what I'm thinking—even if I might be using them incorrectly.
  • anotherevan 11mo ago
    I have actually been using em dashes more mainly because of everyone whinging about them.
    • lillecarl 11mo ago
      I asked an LLM and he said that antisocial behavior is the coolest thing in 2025
• submeta 11mo ago
  While I agree that we should be genuinely engaging with each other on this platform, trying to disallow all AI generated content reminds me of the naysayers when it comes to letting llms write code. Yes, if you wanted to ask an llm, you’d do so, but someone else asks a specific question to the llm, and generates an answer that’s specific to his question. And that might add value to the discussion.
• steveBK123 11mo ago
  Ban it. It is the "let me google that for you" of the 2020s
• alwa 11mo ago
  I tend to trust the voting system to separate the wheat from the chaff. If I were to try and draw a line, though, I’d start at the foundation: leave room for things that add value, avoid contributions that don’t. I’d suggest that line might be somewhere like “please don’t quote LLMs directly unless you can identify the specific value you’re adding above and beyond.” Or “…unless you’re adding original context or using them in a way that’s somehow non-obvious.” Maybe that’s part of tracing your reasoning or crediting sources: “this got me curious about sand jar art, Gemini said Samuel Clemens was an important figure, I don’t know whether that’s historically true but it did lead me to his very cool body of work [0] which seems relevant here.” Maybe it’s “I think [x]. The LLM said it in a particularly elegant way: [y]” And of course meta-discussion seems fine: “ChatGPT with the new Foo module says [x], which is a clear improvement over before, when it said [y]” There’s the laziness factor and also the credibility factor. LLM slop speaks in the voice of god, and it’s especially frustrating when people post its words without the clues we use to gauge credibility. To me those include the model, the prompt, any customizations, prior rounds in context, and any citations (real or hallucinated) the LLM includes. In that sense I wonder if it makes sense to normalize linking to the full session transcript if you’re going to cite an LLM. [0] https://americanart.si.edu/blog/andrew-clemens-sand-art https://americanart.si.edu/blog/andrew-clemens-sand-art
• bakugo 11mo ago
  While I do think such comments are pointless and almost never add anything to the discussion, I don't believe they're anywhere near as actively harmful as comments and (especially) submissions that are largely or entirely AI generated with no disclosure. I've been seeing more and more of these on the front page lately.
• novok 11mo ago
  IMO you shouldn't put a large amount of quoted text, that is just annoying. You should link out at that point. I think if we ban people from citing sources, they will just stop citing sources and that is even worse. It's the new "I googled that for you" and that is fine IMO.
  • swiftcoder 11mo ago
    "I googled that for you" is generally deployed when you know better than the other person (and likely wish to rub it in their face that they should know better too). I feel like the LLM equivalent here sort of demonstrates the exact opposite (I don't know enough about this topic to even doubt the accuracy of the machine...)
    • novok 11mo ago
      I often get to a point where it's faster to tell a person to just look at the output of the ai agent than to write it out myself. "I googled that for you" can also be done from a position of ignorance too. This is just a new thing that new cultural norms are developing from.
• WithinReason 11mo ago
  That's what the upvote/downvote system is for.
• amatecha 11mo ago
  Yes. If I wanted an LLM-generated response I'd submit my own query to such a service. I never want to see LLM-generated content on HN.
• sebastiennight 11mo ago
  Most comments I've seen are comparing this behavior to "I googled it and..." but I think this misses the point. Someone once put it as, "sharing your LLM conversations with others is as interesting to them as narrating the details of your dreams", which I find eerily accurate. We are here in this human space in the pursuit of learning, edification, debate, and (hopefully) truth. There is a qualitative difference between the unreliability of pseudonymous humans here vs the unreliability of LLM output. And it is the same qualitative difference that makes it interesting to have some random poster share their (potentially incorrect) factual understanding, and uninteresting if the same person said "look, I have no idea, but in a dream last night it seemed to me that..."
• Jimmc414 11mo ago
  Banning, no. proper citations and disclosure, yes. Sometimes an AI response is noteworthy and it is the point of the post.
• kylehotchkiss 11mo ago
  It's karma fishing, so yes, please ban it. While we're at it, just automatically add the archive.is link to any news article or don't allow voting on those comments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• bawolff 11mo ago
  Yes, they are almost always low value comments.
• BrtByte 11mo ago
  Maybe a good middle ground would be: if you're referencing something an LLM said, make it part of your thinking...
• zby 11mo ago
  What is banned here? I can only find guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html not rules.
• maerF0x0 11mo ago
  I see it equivalently helpful to the folks who paste archive.is/ph links for paywalled content. It saves me time to do something I may have wanted to do regardless, and it's easy enough to fold if someone does post a wall of response. IMO hiding such content is the job of an extension. When I do "here's what chatgpt has to say" it's usually because I'm pretty confident of a thing, but I have no idea what the original source was, but I'm not going to invest much time in resurrecting the original trail back to where I first learned a thing. I'm not going to spend 60 minutes to properly source a HN comment, it's just not the level of discussion I'm willing to have though many of the community seem to require an academic level of investment.
• TRiG_Ireland 11mo ago
  As Tom Scott has said, people telling you what AI told them is worse than people describing their dreams. It definitely does not usefully contribute to the conversation. Small exception if the user is actually talking about AI, and quoting some AI output to illustrate their point, in which case the AI output should be a very small section of the post as a whole.
• HPsquared 11mo ago
  It's nice that they warn others, though. Better to let them label it as such rather than banning the label. I'd rather it be simply frowned upon.
• cdelsolar 11mo ago
  nah
• Havoc 11mo ago
  I'd say it's annoying & low value but doesn't quite warrant a ban per se. Plus if you ban it people will just remove the "AI said" part, post it as is without reading and now you're engaging with an AI without even the courtesy of knowing. That seems even worse
• lonelyasacloud 11mo ago
  TL;DR; Until we are sure we have the moderation systems to assist surfacing the good stuff I would be in favour of temporary guidelines to maintain quality. Longer ... I am here for the interesting conversations and polite debate. In principle I have no issues with either citing AI responses in much the same way we do with any other source. Or with individual's prompting AI's to generate interesting responses on their behalf. When done well I believe it can improve discourse. Practically though, we know that the volume of content AI's can generate tends to overwhelm human based moderation and review systems. I like the signal to noise ratio as it is; so from my pov I'd be in favour of a cautious approach with a temporary guidelines against it's usage until we are sure we have the moderation tools to preserve that quality.
• buellerbueller 11mo ago
  I agree and think the solution is to get rid of the LLMs.
• TZubiri 11mo ago
  In my experience with managing teams, you want to encourage and not forbid this because the alternative is people will use llms without telling, which is 100 times worse than disclosed LLM use.
• ahmadtbk 11mo ago
  ai writing should be rewritten or polished at least as a form of respect for others.
• ahmadtbk 11mo ago
  AI slop is very exhausting to understand. If it's well written maybe not. If its obviously AI then that should be flagged.
• MetaWhirledPeas 11mo ago
  > Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden in HN guidelines? This should be restated: Should people stop admitting to AI usage out of shame, and start pretending to be actual experts or doing research on their own when they really aren't? Be careful what you wish for.
• hermannj314 11mo ago
  HN does not and has not ever valued human input, it has always valued substantive, clever, or interesting thought. I am a human and more than half of what I write here is rejected. I say bring on the AI. We are full of gatekeeping assholes, but we definitely have never cared if you have a heart (literally and figuratively).
• bloppe 11mo ago
  I don't think this needs to be banned, particularly because it wouldn't be very effective (people would just get rid of the "AI said" part), and also because anybody who actually writes a comment like that would probably get downvoted out of the conversation anyway. Why introduce an unnecessary and ineffective regulation.
• freejazz 11mo ago
  Yes.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• whitehexagon 11mo ago
  >Personally, I'm on HN for the human conversation Agreed. It's hard enough dealing with the endless stream of LLM marketing stories, please lets at least try to keep the comments a little free of this 'I asked...' marketing spam.
• kreck 11mo ago
  Yes. Saying “ChatGPT told me …” is a fast track to getting your input dismissed on our team. That phrasing shifts accountability from you to the AI. If we really wanted advice straight from the model, we wouldn’t need a human in the loop - we’d ask it ourselves.
  • abustamam 11mo ago
    We use AI heavily in our product and development flow. Sometimes we'd encounter a problem none of us can figure out at the moment so some of us would use ChatGPT to brainstorm some solutions. We'd present the solutions, poke holes into them, and go forward from there. Sometimes we don't use the actual ideas from GPT but ideas that were inspired by the generated ideas. The intent isn't to shift accountability, it's to brainstorm. A shitty idea gets shot down quickly, whereas a good idea gets implemented. Edit: sentence
• mx7zysuj4xew 11mo ago
  Yes, ounequivocally yes
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• fortran77 11mo ago
  Sometimes AI gives such a surprising or unusual answer to a question that it's worth a discussion. I think it should be discouraged but not "forbidden".
• Projectiboga 11mo ago
  With the exception if careful language translation I would say yes. Otherwise follow the breadcrumbs and click through to the source and go from there, as far as search engine derived AI snippets go.
• Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
  But what [if the llms generate] constructive and helpful comments? https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/ For obvious(?) reasons I won't point to some recent comments that I suspect, but they were kind and gentle in the way that Opus 4.5 can be at times; encouraging humans to be good with each other. I think the rules should be similar to bot rules I saw on wikipedia. It ought to be ok to USE an AI in the process of making a comment, but the comment needs to be 'owned' by the human/the account posting it. Eg. if it's a helpful comment, it should be upvoted. If it's not helpful, downvoted; and with a little luck people will be encouraged/discouraged from using AI in inappropriate ways. "I asked gemini, and gemini said..." is probably the wrong format, if it's otherwise (un)useful, just vote it accordingly?
• alienbaby 11mo ago
  This will be fine, until You can't tell the difference and people forgo the 'i asked' part.
• alienbaby 11mo ago
  This will be fine, until you can't tell the difference and they forgo the 'i asked'
• shaftoe444 11mo ago
  Yes
• seizethecheese 11mo ago
  No, because this is self correcting behavior. If the comments are annoying, people will downvote them. In the rare case this is appropriate, they should be allowed. Guidelines are for things that will naturally be upvoted but shouldn’t be.
• HeavyStorm 11mo ago
  I think answers should be judged by content, not by the tool used to construct the answer. Also, if you forbid people to tell you they consulted AI, they will just not say that.
  • actionfromafar 11mo ago
    At least they can't paste a wall of text without it looking very weird.
• Gud 11mo ago
  Absolutely. I am blown away by LLMs - now using ChatGPT to help me write some python scripts in seconds, minutes, that used to take me hours, weeks. Yet, when I ask a question, or wish to discuss something on here, I do it because I want input from another meatbag in the hacker news collective. I don’t want some corporate BS.
• GaryBluto 11mo ago
  It's a tad rich to be on HN for such a small amount of time and already be trying to sway the rules to what you wish them to be.
• bjourne 11mo ago
  Yes, please. LLMs are poisoning all online conversions everywhere. It's an epidemic global plague.
• mvdtnz 11mo ago
  AI generated content should be absolutely banned without question. This includes comments and submissions.
• AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  We should probably distinguish between posting AI responses in a discussion of AI vs. posting them in a discussion of something else. If the discussion itself is about AI then what it produces is obviously relevant. If it's about something else, nobody needs you to copy and paste for them.
• uhfraid 11mo ago
  IMO, I don’t think they add any value to HN discussions It’s the HN equivalent to “@grok is this true?”, but worse
• jasomill 11mo ago
  Short answer: Probably not outright forbidden — but discouraged or constrained — because “I asked AI…” posts usually add noise, not insight. (source: ChatGPT)
• razingeden 11mo ago
  I only get upset about it when the AI didn’t read the article either.
• suckler 11mo ago
  Asking a chat bot a question and adding its answer to a public conversation defeats the purpose of the conversation. It's like telling someone to Google their question when your personal answer could have potentially been a lot more helpful than a Google search. If I wanted Grok I'd ask Grok, not the human I chose to speak to instead.
• iambateman 11mo ago
  We should prefer shaming and humiliation over forbiddance––norms beat laws in such situations. Of course I prefer to read the thoughts of an actual human on here, but I don't think it makes sense to update the guidelines. Eventually the guidelines would get so long and tedious that no one would pay attention to them and they'd stop working altogether. (did I include the non-word forbiddance to emphasize the point that a human––not a robot––wrote this comment? Yes, yes I did.)
• cwmoore 11mo ago
  Yes. Embarrassing cringe, whether or not it is noted. But this is a text-only forum and text (to a degree, all digital content) has become compromised. Intent and message is not attributable to real life experience or effort. For the moment I have accepted the additional overhead. As with most, I have a habit of estimating the validity of expertise in comments, and experiential biases, but that is becoming untenable. Perhaps there will soon be transformer features that produce prompts adequate to the task of reproducing the thought behind each thread, so their actual value, informational complexity, humor, and salience, may be compared? Though many obviously human commentors are actually inferior to answers from “let me chatgpt that for you.” I have had healthy suspicions for a while now.
• lkt 11mo ago
  No because it allows you to set the bozo bit on them and completely disregard anything they say in the future
• unsignedint 11mo ago
  I think the real litmus test should be whether the comment adds anything substantive to the conversation. If someone is outsourcing their ideas to AI, that’s a different situation from simply using AI to rephrase or tidy up their own thoughts—so long as they fully understand what they’re posting and stand behind it. Saying "I asked AI" usually falls into the former category, unless the discussion is specifically about analyzing AI-generated responses. People already post plenty of non-substantive comments regardless of whether AI is involved, so the focus should be on whether the remark contributes any meaningful value to the discourse, not on the tools used to prepare it.
• stocksinsmocks 11mo ago
  I already assume everything, and I mean everything, that I read in any comment section, whether here or sewers like Reddit, X, or one of the many Twitter-but-Communist clones, is either: 1. Paid marketing (tech stacks, political hackery, Rust evangelism) 2. Some sociopath talking his own book 3. Someone who spouts off about things he doesn’t know about (see: this post’s author) The internet of real people died decades ago and we can only wander in the polished megalithic ruins of that enlightened age.
• ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
  That's been discussed previously in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628 and dang said in the topmost comment: "They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either! ...". There more to his comment if you're interested. The HN guidelines haven't yet been updated but perhaps if enough people send an email to the moderators, they'll do it.
• tveyben 11mo ago
  If one want’s an opinion from AI, one must ask AI - if on the other hand one want’s an opinion from a human being (those with a real brain thinking real thoughts etc.) then - hopefully - that’s what you get (and will keep getting) when visiting HN. Please don’t pollute responses with made-up machine generated time-wasting bits here…!!!
• ynx0 11mo ago
  You can’t stop peope from using AI, but at least people are being transparent. Doing this will lead to people using AI without mentioning it, making it even harder to parse between human-origin content.
• HackeNewsFan234 11mo ago
  I like the honesty aspect of it so that I can choose to (possibly) ignore the response. If they were forbidden and people posted the same $AI response without the disclaimer, I'd be more easily deceived.
• XorNot 11mo ago
  Yes. Unambiguously. I want this exact behavior to lead to social ostracism everywhere. Edit: I'm happy to add two related categories to that too - telling someone to "ask ChatGPT" or "Google it" is a similar level offense.
• insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  I think AI can be useful to cite in comments as a source of information. I.e., where you might otherwise say "According to Bloomberg, CPI is up 5% in the past 6 months[0]" with [0] linking to a page where you got that info, you could have "According to Claude/GPT/Gemini, CPI is up 5% in the past 6 months" ideally with [0] being the prompt used.
• BiraIgnacio 11mo ago
  HN (and the community here) has a great system for surfacing the most useful information and therefore, pushing the not so good one away. So no, I don't think forbidding anything helps. Let things fall where they should, otherwise.
• WhyOhWhyQ 11mo ago
  I always state when I use AI because I view it to be deceptive otherwise. Since sometimes I'll be using AI when it seems appropriate, and certainly only in direct limited ways, this rule seems like it would force me to be dishonest. For instance, what's wrong with the following: "Here's interesting point about foo topic. Here's another interesting point about bar topic; I learned of this through use of Gemini. Here's another interesting point about baz topic." Is this banned also? I'm only sharing it because I feel that I've vetted whatever I learned and find it worth sharing regardless of the source.
• clearleaf 11mo ago
  I don't see the point of publishing any AI generated content. If I want AIs opinion on something I can ask it. If I want an AI image I can generate it. I've never found it helpful to have someone else's ai output lying around.
• TheAceOfHearts 11mo ago
  I think you shouldn't launder LLM output as your own, but in AI model discussion and new release threads it can be useful to highlight examples of outputs from LLMs. The framing and usage is a key element: I'm interested in what kinds of things people are trying. Using LLM output as a substitute for engagement isn't interesting, but combining a bunch of responses to highlight differences between models could be interesting. I think sometimes it's fine to source additional information from an LLM if it helps advance the discussion. For example, if I'm confused about some topic, I might explore various AI responses and look at the source links they provide. If any of the links seem compelling I'll note how I found the link through an LLM and explain how it relates to the discussion.
• Razengan 11mo ago
  Fighting the zeitgeist never works out. The world's gonna move on whether you move on with it or not. I for one would love to have summary executions for anyone who says that Hello-Fellow-Kids cringe pushed on us by middle-aged squares: "vibe"
• jopsen 11mo ago
  The "I asked $LLM about $X, and here is what $LLM said" pattern is probably most used to: (A) Reticule the AI for giving a dumb answer. (B) Point out how obvious something is.
• thenaturalist 11mo ago
  Yes. Thank you for your attention on this matte.r
• krick 11mo ago
  Sure, everyone wants to "stop silly people replying to my comments by posting LLM-generated garbage", but rules are rules, so you should understand that by introducing a rule like the one you propose, you also automatically forbid discussions about "here's a weird trick to make LLM make stupid mistakes", or "biases of different LLMs" where people reply to each other which prompts they tried and what was the result. Obviously, that's not what you've meant (right?), and everyone understands that, so then it's a judgement call when this applies and when it doesn't, and, congratulations, you've made another stupid rule that no one follows "and that's ok". "A guideline to refrain" seems better. Basically, this should be only slightly more tolerated than "let me google for you" replies: maybe not actively harmful, but rude. But, anyway, let's not be overly pretentious: who even reads all these guidelines (or rules for that matter)? Also, it is quite apparent, that the audience of HN is on average much less technical and "nerdy" than it was, say, 10 years ago, so, I guess, expect these answers to continue for quite some time and just deal with it.
• venturecruelty 11mo ago
  Well yes, of course, but that might interfere with the pump, so unfortunately, you will kindly be asked to report to your nearest re-education center for correction. Thank you for understanding.
• LocalH 11mo ago
  Absolutely, in cases where it's clear that the person asked a chatbot and copypasted the direct LLM response without editing. I usually downvote those (if it's within the window to do so), and flag them.
• DinakarS 11mo ago
  It is fun to use AI however people can write on their own without having to copy-paste LLM content 2026 is great year to watch out for typos. Typos are real humans
• slowmovintarget 11mo ago
  While I'd certainly prefer raw human authorship on a forum like this, I can't help but think this is the wrong question. The labeling up front appears to be merely a disclosure style. That is, commenters say that as a way of notifying the reader that they used an LLM to arrive at the answer (at least here on HN) rather than citing the LLM as an authority. "Banning" the comment syntax would merely ban the form of notification. People are going to look stuff up with an LLM. It's 2025; that's what we do instead of search these days. Just like we used to comment "Well Google says..." or "According to Alta Vista..." Proscribing quoting an LLM is a losing proposition. Commenters will just omit disclosure. I'd lean toward officially ignoring it, or alternatively ask that disclosure take on less conversational form. For example, use quote syntax and cite the LLM. e.g.: > Blah blah slop slop slop -- ChatGippity
• nailer 11mo ago
  Yes. We should also ban citing Wikipedia. If you don't know, Wikipedia itself recommends you don't cite it- quote the sources wikipedia or your AI use, don't quote secondary sources.
• pseudocomposer 11mo ago
  I think it has its place, say, summarizing a large legal document under discussion. That said, if part of what someone says involves citing AI, I’d rather they acknowledge AI as their source. I think making it a “rule” just encourages people to use AI and not acknowledge its use.
• pyuser583 11mo ago
  I recently asked an AI about a very important topic in current events. It gave me a shocking answer, which initially assumed was wrong - but seems correct. The question was something like: “how reliable is the science behind misinformation.” And it said something like: “quality level is very poor and far below what justifies current public discourse.” I ask for a specific article backing this up, and it’s saying “there isn’t any one article, I just analyzed the existing literature and it stinks.” This matters quite a bit. X - formerly Twitter - is being fined for refusing to make its data available for misinformation research. I’m trying to get it to give me a non-AI source, but it’s saying it doesn’t exist. If this is true - it’s pretty important- and something worth discussing. But it doesn’t seem supportable outside the context of “my AI said.”
• erelong 11mo ago
  No: I actually kind of find it surprising that this post and the top comments saying "yes" even exist because I think the answer should be so firmly "no", but I'll explain what I like to post elsewhere using AI (edit: and some reasons why I think LLM output is useful): 1. A unique human made prompt 2. AI output, designated as "AI says:". This saves you tokens and time copying and pasting over to get the output yourself, and it's really just to give you more info that you could argue for or against in the conversation (adds a lot of "value" to consider to the conversation). 3. Usually I do some manual skimming and trimming of the AI output to make sure it's saying something I'd like to share; just like I don't purely "vibe code" but usually kind of skim output to make sure it's not doing something "extremely bad". The "AI says:" disclaimer makes clear that I may have missed something, but usually there's useful information in the output that is probably better or less time consuming than doing lots of manual research. It's literally like citing Wikipedia or a web search and encouraging you to cross-check the info if it sounds questionable, but the info is good enough most of the time such that it seems valuable to share it. Other points: A. The AI-generated answers are just so good... it feels akin to people here not using AI to program (while I see a lot of posts posting otherwise that they have had a lot of positive experiences with using AI to program). It's really the same kind of idea. I think the key is in "unique prompts", that's the human element in the discussion. Essentially I am sharing "tweets" (microblogs) and then AI-generated essays about the topic (so maybe I have a different perspective on why I think this is totally acceptable, as you can always just scroll past AI output if it's labeled as such?). Maybe it makes more sense in context to me? Even for this post, you could have asked an AI "what are the pros and cons of allowing people to use LLM output to make comments" (a unique human prompt to add to the conversation) and then pasted AI output for people to consider the pros and cons of allowing such comments, and I'd anticipate doing this would generate a "pretty good essay to read". B. This is kind of like in schools, AI is probably going to force them to adapt somehow because you could just add to a prompt to "respond in such a way as to be less detectable to a human" or something like that. At some point it's impossible to tell if someone is "cheating" in school or posting LLM output on to the comments here. But you don't need to despair because what's ultimately important on forum comments is that the information is useful, and if LLM output is useful then it will be upvoted. (In other concerning news related to this, I'm pretty sure they're working on how to generate forum posts and comments without humans being involved at all!) So I guess for me the conversation is more how to handle LLM output and maybe for people to learn how to comment or post with AI assistance (much like people are learning to code with AI assistance), rather than to totally ban it (which to me seems very counter-productive). edit: (100% human post btw!)
• kldg 11mo ago
  This website has guidelines? I have a friend who vomits out what an AI's response to something is to current events; drives me mad, but I resist being a dick about it (to their face). I don't recall any instances where I've run into the problem here, maybe because I tend to arrive to threads as a result of them being popular (listed on Google News) which means I'm only going to read the top 10-50 posts. I read human responses for a bit before deciding if I should continue reading, and that's the same system I use for LLMs because sometimes I can't tell just by the formatting; if it's good, it's good - if it's bad, it's bad -- I don't care if a chicken with syphilis wrote it.
• lemper 11mo ago
  yea, mate. definitely. if i want to hear / read some replies by machine, i'd ask them myself. the value of the this site is the lived experience and thought by the users.
• wkat4242 11mo ago
  Forbidden, no. But discouraged unless it really adds something constructive to the discussion.
• appreciatorBus 11mo ago
  Yes. Copying and pasting from chatGPT is no more contributing to discussion than it would be if you pasted the question into Google and submitted the result. Everyone here knows how to look up an answer in Google. Everyone here knows how to look up an answer in ChatGPT. If anyone wanted a Google result for a chat, GPT result, they would have just done that.
• Looveh 11mo ago
  I wrote a short piece on the topic a while back, if anybody's interested. https://niclas-nilsson.com/blog/40f2-empty-sharing https://niclas-nilsson.com/blog/40f2-empty-sharing
• nosklo 11mo ago
  I asked Gemini, and Gemini said: The Case for a New HN Guideline on AI-Generated Content This is a timely discussion. While AI is an invaluable tool, the issue isn't using AI—it's using it to replace genuine engagement, leading to "low-signal" contributions. The Problem with Unfiltered AI Replies Dilution of Human Insight: HN's core value is the unique, experienced human perspective. Unanalyzed LLM-dumps replace original thought with aggregated, generic consensus. Reading Fatigue & Bloat: Long, copy-pasted blocks of LLM text break the flow of discussion and make comments less scannable, forcing users to sift through machine-generated prose to find human analysis. Lack of Authority/Verification: A comment that just says "$AI said X" is essentially an anonymous opinion. It lacks the critical filter, context, and experience of the human poster, making it less trustworthy, especially given LLM hallucination risk. The Value of AI as a Tool Quick Context/Summary: LLMs can quickly provide neutral, accurate definitions, historical context, or a list of arguments, saving users a separate search. Supporting Evidence: When used properly, AI output can be supporting "data" for a human's core argument or analysis. A Proposed Middle Ground Guideline Instead of an outright ban, which punishes useful use cases, a new guideline should focus on human value-add and presentation. The spirit of the guideline should be: If you use an LLM, your contribution must be more than the LLM's output. Mandatory Analysis: The commenter must add their own critical analysis, personal experience, or counter-argument that contextualizes, critiques, or supports the AI's summary. Clear Attribution and Formatting: All LLM-generated text must be clearly attributed (e.g., "I asked ChatGPT-4...") and visually separated (e.g., using a > blockquote) to maintain scannability. Curation over Dumping: Encourage summarizing or excerpting the most relevant parts of the AI output, rather than pasting a lengthy, unedited wall of text. Ultimately, the community downvotes already function to filter low-effort posts, but a clear guideline would efficiently communicate the shared norm: AI is a tool for the human conversation, not a replacement for it.
• coldtea 11mo ago
  >Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden in HN guidelines? If they are, people will still do it, but skip the admission that it's from AI
• tim333 11mo ago
  I think it depends on context. Generally it's a bad idea, but on HN's top story of the day about Gemini predicting HN's front page from ten years in the future, the poster gives Gemini's response which seems OK. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632#46205636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632#46205636
• mguerville 11mo ago
  AI gives you the average of all expected answers (steered a bit to one side or another via prompt), I think people come to HN to hear decidely non-average viewpoints. So from that standpoint I'd say yes forbidding AI answer would go a long way towards preserving the differentiation of HN vs Reddit and other more mainstrean (i.e. average) communities
• tmtvl 11mo ago
  I'd rather people honestly divulge 'I got this from a LLM' than posting an LLM reply without the disclaimer.
• brihati 11mo ago
  I come to HN because it's one of the few places left where you can sill watch people think and present new ideas. The people in the world has done intellectual outsourcing, where instead of grappling with the idea themselves, they ask LLMs to predict the next sentence, which has hollowed the real curiosity. What makes HN valuable to me is the opposite impulse: people trying to understand things for themselves from the community and in the process, maybe, discovering new ideas which LLMs can't supply. Because what LLMs don't know they don't know, LLMs think they know(that's why they predict next sentence) but we know they don't know and still some people think they know Sometimes, I wish, there is no thinking tax: as a reminder of why this place exists & also to reward people who are still curious and thinkers I WANT HN TO REMAIN A PLACE WHERE HUMAN CONVERSATIONS STILL HAPPENS.
• sueraccount 11mo ago
  wow
• rokoss21 11mo ago
  The issue isn't whether people cite AI—it's whether they're adding actual insight. A thoughtful comment like "I tried this approach and X happened because Y" is valuable regardless of source. The real problem is lazy low-effort comments. "ChatGPT says do X" without reasoning is no different from "just trust me bro." Better solution: encourage original thinking, reward substantive contributions, flag low-effort content regardless of origin. Guidelines shouldn't be about the tool, but about discourse quality.