3 ms·

I feel a little bit of irony in this post of a company/forum that is asking its users to not use AI while simultaneously trying to fund countless companies that

by meiuqer 7mo ago

I feel a little bit of irony in this post of a company/forum that is asking its users to not use AI while simultaneously trying to fund countless companies that are responsible for ruining the internet as we speak.

jacquesm 7mo ago
The mods here have quite a bit of leeway in how they run the site, YC funds it but effectively Dan is lord & master here and I suspect if the mods were to call it quits YC would lose their funnel pretty quickly. There is some balance, fortunately. But yes, there is some irony there.
tenahu 7mo ago
Yes a bit ironic, but I am glad they can see that there are times to use AI, and times for human interaction.
- deleted 7mo ago
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dang 7mo ago
We aren't asking people to not use AI. (We use it ourselves.) What we're asking is not to post AI-generated comments to Hacker News. (We don't do that ourselves.) By all means make good use of LLMs and other AI. What counts as good use? The world is figuring that out, it will take years, and HN is no exception (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20immune%20macro%20trend&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We just don't want it to interfere with the human conversation and connection that this site has always been for. For example, it has always been a bad idea and against HN's rules when users post things that they didn't write themselves, or do bulk copy-pasting into the threads, or write bots to post things. As I mentioned, the HN mods (who are also the HN devs) use AI extensively and will be doing so a lot more. The limits on that are not technical; they have to do with (1) how much work we still do manually—the classic "no time to do things that would make the things that take all our time take less of it"; and (2) the amount of psychic rewiring that's required—there's a limit to the RoA (rate of astonishment) that any human can absorb. (It's fascinating how technical people are suffering the most from that this time. Less technical people have longer experience being hit by disorienting changes, so for them the current moment is somewhat less skull-cracking.) Getting this right doesn't mean replacing human-to-human interaction, it means we should have more time for that, and do a better job of supporting HN users generally, as well as YC founders who want to launch on HN, and so on. The goal is to enhance human relatedness, not diminish it.
- skort 7mo ago
  I'm not quite sure what the correct term is for this scenario, in which LLMs are being forced upon people in many places that previously had human-to-human interaction, some of it coming from YC backed companies, while HN tries to insist that it's discussions should continue be human-to-human. Having your cake and eating it too? NIMBYism? If anything it reeks of privilege. It says that it's okay to spread slop on the world at large, just so long as it doesn't soil the precious orange website.
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  - ishouldstayaway 7mo ago
    > Having your cake and eating it too? NIMBYism? Hypocrisy.
  - pixl97 7mo ago
    What's worse about all of this is dang is going to be in the middle of a religious war between the AI accusers and defenders on who is using AI to post. People that speak well because they sound like AI will be pissed. AI will just keep sounding more human. And the self-righteous that feel good when they call out a comment are going to be annoying as hell.
  - mitchdoogle 7mo ago
    You're painting this as some sort of hypocrisy but I don't think that's the case. AI has infinite legitimate uses outside of creating slop. Lots of tools are used in the creation and distribution of slop - do we criticize all those other tools too? Do you like slop? Do you want it on the platforms you visit? Personally, I would prefer for AI companies to take the attitude that YCombinator has here and do their best to remove slop from their platforms. It's not hypocrisy - it's ethical business practice.
- meiuqer 7mo ago
  Thanks for the context! I hope HN will stay a place for knowledge sharing and deep conversations
ericmcer 7mo ago
No one will ever think that lying that AI output is your own unique creation is a good thing.

by meiuqer 7mo ago

jacquesm 7mo ago

The mods here have quite a bit of leeway in how they run the site, YC funds it but effectively Dan is lord & master here and I suspect if the mods were to call it quits YC would lose their funnel pretty quickly. There is some balance, fortunately. But yes, there is some irony there.

tenahu 7mo ago

Yes a bit ironic, but I am glad they can see that there are times to use AI, and times for human interaction.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

dang 7mo ago

We aren't asking people to not use AI. (We use it ourselves.) What we're asking is not to post AI-generated comments to Hacker News. (We don't do that ourselves.) By all means make good use of LLMs and other AI. What counts as good use? The world is figuring that out, it will take years, and HN is no exception (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20immune%20macro%20trend&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We just don't want it to interfere with the human conversation and connection that this site has always been for. For example, it has always been a bad idea and against HN's rules when users post things that they didn't write themselves, or do bulk copy-pasting into the threads, or write bots to post things. As I mentioned, the HN mods (who are also the HN devs) use AI extensively and will be doing so a lot more. The limits on that are not technical; they have to do with (1) how much work we still do manually—the classic "no time to do things that would make the things that take all our time take less of it"; and (2) the amount of psychic rewiring that's required—there's a limit to the RoA (rate of astonishment) that any human can absorb. (It's fascinating how technical people are suffering the most from that this time. Less technical people have longer experience being hit by disorienting changes, so for them the current moment is somewhat less skull-cracking.) Getting this right doesn't mean replacing human-to-human interaction, it means we should have more time for that, and do a better job of supporting HN users generally, as well as YC founders who want to launch on HN, and so on. The goal is to enhance human relatedness, not diminish it.

skort 7mo ago
I'm not quite sure what the correct term is for this scenario, in which LLMs are being forced upon people in many places that previously had human-to-human interaction, some of it coming from YC backed companies, while HN tries to insist that it's discussions should continue be human-to-human. Having your cake and eating it too? NIMBYism? If anything it reeks of privilege. It says that it's okay to spread slop on the world at large, just so long as it doesn't soil the precious orange website.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- ishouldstayaway 7mo ago
  > Having your cake and eating it too? NIMBYism? Hypocrisy.
- pixl97 7mo ago
  What's worse about all of this is dang is going to be in the middle of a religious war between the AI accusers and defenders on who is using AI to post. People that speak well because they sound like AI will be pissed. AI will just keep sounding more human. And the self-righteous that feel good when they call out a comment are going to be annoying as hell.
- mitchdoogle 7mo ago
  You're painting this as some sort of hypocrisy but I don't think that's the case. AI has infinite legitimate uses outside of creating slop. Lots of tools are used in the creation and distribution of slop - do we criticize all those other tools too? Do you like slop? Do you want it on the platforms you visit? Personally, I would prefer for AI companies to take the attitude that YCombinator has here and do their best to remove slop from their platforms. It's not hypocrisy - it's ethical business practice.
meiuqer 7mo ago
Thanks for the context! I hope HN will stay a place for knowledge sharing and deep conversations

ericmcer 7mo ago

No one will ever think that lying that AI output is your own unique creation is a good thing.