Ask HN: Time to discourage "I asked ChatGPT" comments?
There is a trend of people on HN responding to posts by asking ChatGPT and putting its response. I don’t think this adds much to the conversation since anyone who cares to can easily do this themselves.
Is it time to discourage such posts in the HN rules?
Note: this is a different problem to people posting generated content for astroturfing purposes etc. The author is not hiding the fact that ChatGPT has been used.
Note 2: please don’t ask ChatGPT for me.
15 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] thread- People declare that they used ChatGPT/et al for commenting.
- People who hide that they used ChatGPT/et al for commenting.
You expressly want to go after the former group with new rules that would punish them for those declarations, essentially forcing them into the second group? And you think this will somehow improve the site?
I don't understand this at all. You're suggesting punishing honesty and rewarding people who misattribute their contributions. Talk about a perverse incentive.
As we are all capable of using ChatGPT, what does regurgitating a ChatGPT response add to any conversation?
It is often used as a way for those who don't understand a topic to participate, and is nearly always self-evident, whether declared or not. It usually results in a downvote from me, but I can appreciate why others would want a rule that can be pointed at.
1. Add their own commentary, or
2. Don’t post at all
I don’t think they would move to the latter group since they have already gone to the effort of signposting their usage of ChatGPT.
I myself have been victim of this, I used to post high quality bullet summaries of articles that took quite a while to create (I did the unthinkable: read the articles), I was doing this pre-LLMs for years but then got banned from three different popular subreddits within a few months after ChatGPTs initial release for posting "AI generated content" in spite of my account history. There is no way to prove something is hand-created.
So you can create a rule to ban it, which you cannot enforce, and then you can create a rule to injure people who declare its usage but all you'll end up with is ChatGPT/et al generated content anyway and the honest dealers being pushed underground/replaced by dishonest ones.
I'm sure HN will have a rule against AI generated content eventually. But except in cases where they outright admit it, it won't be possible to enforce, or they'll enforce it incorrectly on human content.
- Don’t tell lies. - Don’t post in bad faith. - Don’t cut and paste from Wikipedia as if it is your own writing. - Don’t post ChatGPT responses as if you wrote them. - Don’t post ChatGPT “opinions” even labeled as such.
ChatGPT answers confidently 100% of the time, but if you know that, it is an amazing heuristic to get work done. It can give you 80% of a job instantly; say you are writing a script or some email, it will do that for you.
Every once in awhile it will output a nonsensical answer, which then if you question it, it will fix or admit it gave a nonsensical answer.
For example, it said I should connect modules together to create a graph to import, but this would clearly be an incorrect result, you have to be able to spot this kind of crazy in the result.
Otherwise, it is amazing for outlining ideas and getting started on projects, and for revising text.
I don't know, probably no. Just like AI-generated images were everywhere for a while, and now they have a negative impact on the reputation of anyone using them.
I don't know how many would agree with me, but I would equate "I consulted an LLM and it said/spewed..." with a low-effort post by a human who didn't use an intermediary.