[HN Gopher] Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answ...
___________________________________________________________________
Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from
ChatGPT
What are the repercussions of this?
Author : brindidrip
Score : 175 points
Date : 2022-12-04 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
| Yorch wrote:
| Yesterday I was searching the internet for the opinion that
| George Orwell had when he returned from his fight in the Spanish
| civil war. I was surprised that the first answer I found was on
| Stack Overflow. I do not understand what is happening.
| charles_f wrote:
| Even on HN, we start getting flooded by "ahah, I asked ChatGPT
| and here's the answer" in the comments, and every other topic is
| about "I did X with ChatGPT". This is already getting old
| solardev wrote:
| Overall quality gets better?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| This kind of looks like the singularity is approaching/just
| beginning.
|
| The only thing we can be sure of, is that whatever we can imagine
| is already behind what the AI will become.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| Human-curated content from trusted sources for top 1% information
| probably only available to subscribers will become more valuable
| and sought after. I suspect the days of generally trusting forums
| populated by anonymous users are done?
|
| I would not be surprised if the quality of human writing actually
| goes up. I have this weird feeling that ChatGPT and similar tools
| will become almost equivalent to calculators for math? My
| experience as a writer is that sometimes just throwing down a
| first draft is the hardest step - I could see these tools really
| assisting in the writing process. Generate a draft, do some
| tweaking, ask for suggestions or improvements, repeat.
|
| I don't know how I feel about code generated by these tools. Will
| there be a similar benefit compared to writing? At some level, we
| will need some deeper mastery of writing and coding to use these
| things well. Is there a complexity cliff that these tools will
| never be able to overcome?
|
| A total lack of trust for general internet search results. So
| much content is already shallow copies of other content. I don't
| see how general internet search survives this.
| rsync wrote:
| The anonymity isn't the problem - it's the cost free aspect.
|
| Anonymous content can work very well if there are costs
| incurred...
| Always42 wrote:
| But let's be real, who has the time or energy to carefully
| curate content these days? It's all about efficiency and
| getting the job done. And let's face it, anonymous forums
| have their charm and can be a great source of information if
| you know where to look.
| lr1970 wrote:
| At last a way has been found to overflow stack on Stack Overflow
| :-)
| adverbly wrote:
| I guess pretty soon people are gonna have to meet in person to
| communicate. Not sure how I feel about this.
| hdufort74 wrote:
| ChatGPT has become very good lately. I've made my usual benchmark
| tests that I've been using with various models and applications
| over the last 3 years. 1- Invent a word and provide a plausible
| definition. 2- Invent a new original Pokemon. Provide an original
| name, a justification for the name, and a description of its
| class and attacks. 3- Invent a new ice cream flavor that is
| totally unexpected. Provide the list of ingredients. 4- (Name of
| celebrity) write an epic poem about (subject related to
| celebrity). For example Elon Musk about humanity settling on
| Mars. 5- Write a negative review of Ben and Jerry's ice cream
| flavor Cherry Garcia. (Note: everybody loves Cherry Garcia) 6-
| Write a travel blog entry in the form of a review of Montreal,
| from the perspective of a young couple from Alabama visiting in
| summer. 7- How can I optimize a loop in Java? I am writing a
| computer game and I need to loop through the elements in a linked
| list but unfortunately it must be traversed in reverse order. 8-
| I need to buy new shoes. I am in a shoe store and I have found
| the most amazing pair of shoes I gave ever seen. However, they
| are too expensive for me and I can't afford them. What should I
| do?
|
| I have a collection of about 25 prompts such as these, in my
| benchmark.
|
| I have run these examples through different applications such as
| AI Dungeon, OpenAI Playground, NovelAI, etc. Results vary a lot.
| In some cases, the results look good but upon closer inspection,
| you realize that the AI keeps providing the sake exact answer. It
| is the case for the ice cream prompt. Pickle, fried chicken,
| curry keeps showing up. I guess the model contains a few specific
| examples of original ice cream recipes and just pick them.
|
| For the Pokemon and "new word" prompt, models failed to come up
| with anything original. Until I tried OpenAI Playground this week
| and finally got some really creative answers, with variety.
|
| AI Dungeon (2 years ago) was already good at faking tech support
| steps. OpenAI is amazingly good, although in most cases it
| provides solutions that only make sense superficially. It's the
| ultimate bullshit engine.
|
| Another word of caution. While OpenAI can now guesstimate what a
| code snippet does, and can generate some pretty good code in many
| languages (ice tried 6809 assembler and the results surprised
| me), it is very unreliable.
|
| More alarming is the fact that it's a text engine, not a math
| formula interpreter. It gets confused at simple equations and
| cannot interpret anything that's not already ordered (it cannot
| apply operator priority or respect parentheses).
|
| I think it will become increasingly difficult to identify
| contents coming from ChatGPT and other chatbots or story
| generators. An arm's race might be futile. We should apply
| stricter rules to identify problematic answers: answers that are
| too generic or vague and can't be used to directly solve a
| practical problem, and answers that contain incorrect or
| misleading information. Identifying vague or non-practical
| questions might also help in avoiding a deluge of Chatbot
| answers. Some users will ask very general questions, and then it
| becomes difficult to evaluate the answers. Or, users will ask
| questions that were already answered in the past. The proper way
| to handle those is to point then to the prior discussion and
| avoid duplicating it. The wrong way is a Chatbot or a human
| seizing the opportunity to copy-paste existing contents for a
| quick win.
|
| In a way, chatbots and humans can both provide useful insights,
| as well as useless or incorrect answers. But so far, only a human
| can provide a proper answer to a moderately complex technical
| question if no prior answer exists.
| hysan wrote:
| This was the first use case that I thought of when I learned that
| ChatGPT could generate code. Then I considered how I'd feel if I
| ran into a fake (incorrect) answer and decided not to actually do
| this. Well, guess someone was eventually going to try this.
| lajosbacs wrote:
| I have not used SO since I've started using ChatGPT, it is so
| much easier to get to the correct answer and it can even be
| tailored to my specific example.
|
| So double whammy for SO which makes me feel really sad.
| nyokodo wrote:
| With responses becoming AI generated, and the disturbing rise of
| Russian and Chinese propaganda trolls on here I think my era of
| interactions on this platform are ending. So long to any actual
| people with conscious agency reading this, it has been
| interesting.
| [deleted]
| xx__yy wrote:
| Some of the affects I can think of, to name a few:
|
| Inaccurate or irrelevant answers: ChatGPT is a machine learning
| model that uses past data to generate responses. This means that
| it may not always provide accurate or relevant answers to
| questions, leading to confusion and frustration among users.
|
| Loss of trust: If users notice that many of the answers on the
| forum are coming from ChatGPT, they may lose trust in the forum
| and stop using it. This could lead to a decline in user
| engagement and overall traffic.
|
| Competition with human contributors: ChatGPT's answers may
| compete with those provided by human contributors, leading to a
| decrease in the quality and value of the content on the forum.
| This could make the forum less useful and engaging for users.
|
| Increased moderation: The influx of answers from ChatGPT may
| require more moderation to ensure that the answers are accurate
| and relevant. This could require additional resources and time
| for moderators, leading to increased costs and workload.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Easy, let's ask ChatGPT to write a program that detects AI-
| generated text.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I assume that this is by folks wanting to up their scores.
|
| That's a huge problem with "gamification." I'm not especially a
| fan of the concept, in a venue like SO. I think it has led to a
| rather nasty community, and I hardly ever go there, anymore.
|
| I assume that we'll be seeing a lot of robotic HN content (I
| would not be surprised if it is already here, but has been
| sidelined by the mods).
| bnralt wrote:
| Some years ago I was trying to do something that required a
| certain amount of points. Perhaps write a comment to a question
| instead of posting an answer. So I looked for ways to make
| points. Most of the interesting questions I could easily find
| looked to be already answered, and the new questions seemed to
| be mostly requests to fix bugs in people's code.
|
| I saw someone suggest fixing up answers that people had already
| made, and I found an upvoted answer that had a simple bug in
| it's code (something like "<" was used instead of "<="). So I
| went about to fix it, but was instructed that edits had to
| change more than five characters. I tried to find how people
| handle this, and the answer I saw was to make additional
| changes to the answers, no matter if it needed it or not.
|
| In the end I just left the bug in and gave up on trying to
| provide answers for the site.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Smaller StackExchange communities don't have this problem from
| what I can tell. Stack Overflow maybe should be split up into
| smaller communities.
| mdaniel wrote:
| There already are plenty of smaller communities, but no one
| enforces the on-topic rules as they exist today, making SO
| into the "I haz computer problem" dumping ground it has
| become
| theptip wrote:
| The gamification mechanic was the innovation that let SO become
| as successful as it has, IMO.
|
| Without it there was no real way to figure out the "best"
| answer to problems.
|
| It's fair to note that big communities can have somewhat
| unfriendly dynamics, but I think that's more about big
| communities than the gamification mechanic.
| fouric wrote:
| > I would not be surprised if it is already here, but has been
| sidelined by the mods
|
| I can virtually guarantee you that there's been a nontrivial
| amount of GPT-generated content on HN that has _not_ been
| caught by mods since ChatGPT, and likely since GPT-2 /3, as
| well. Dang (and the other one whose tag I can't recall) already
| have their hands full trying to keep the tone civil across
| thousands (tens of thousands?) of comments a day - it's
| impossible for them to catch _every_ ML-generated comment (some
| humans actually do write like these newer language models,
| after all), and more than likely they 're missing a decent
| number of them - through no fault of their own, it's just an
| extremely hard problem.
|
| The three solutions that I'm shilling for this problem are (1)
| invite-trees for HN (like Lobsters, which makes the community
| much less open but also much more resistant to abuse) (2) webs
| of trust (not cryptographic, just databases of how much you
| trust users) overlaid onto HN and other places and (3) people
| actually reading the content of comments _very_ carefully and
| upvoting logically sound arguments and downvoting illogical and
| emotional /manipulative ones, but all of these require a _lot_
| of effort and social buy-in.
| patneedham wrote:
| > some humans actually do write like these newer language
| models, after all
|
| Wouldn't it be more accurate to say these newer language
| models actually write like humans? Or is there a subset of
| the population intentionally trying to write in the way that
| these language models write.
| fouric wrote:
| Sure, you can also say that some language models write like
| humans - however, even pre-GPT-2, I read several high-
| schooler's essays that read _very_ much like these ML-
| generated products, so even if you don 't believe that the
| relationship is transitive, I think you can say that the
| relationship is true in both directions.
| seydor wrote:
| It seems to have a tendency to write stereotypical
| preamble-statement-conclusion paragraphs and to repeat
| itself. The model repeats itself often. It repeats the
| title and then writes a statement that basically repeats
| the title and after that it provides the useful nugget. At
| the end it adds a sentence usually using "overall" as an
| opener. Overall, the model tends to respond in a
| stereotypical format
| tpxl wrote:
| > people actually reading the content of comments very
| carefully and upvoting logically sound arguments
|
| You can make a perfectly logical comment that is completely
| wrong.
| fouric wrote:
| Please elaborate.
| NateEag wrote:
| Logic is about a chain of formal reasoning that is
| guaranteed to yield a correct result given correct
| inputs.
|
| If you start with some wrong premises, you can easily
| write a logical post that has incorrect conclusions.
| fouric wrote:
| I am aware of the formal definition of logic. If this is
| all that tpxl meant, then it's an extremely pedantic and
| useless objection.
| terminal_d wrote:
| Another measure would be initiating a bot-check for every
| user. Maybe even periodically.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Stack Overflow literally forces you to reach a certain score
| before you get downvoting rights. The gamification is real, but
| once you reach that point, you aren't required to play anymore.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Oh dear - basically if the answer is good then it's from
| ChatGTP... Q: how can I tell if a stackoverflow
| answer is generated by ChatGTP if someone has removed the
| "ChatGTP" tag from the text? A: One way to tell if a
| StackOverflow answer is generated by ChatGTP is to look for
| certain characteristics in the answer. ChatGTP answers tend to be
| concise and to the point, often providing code snippets or
| specific instructions on how to solve a problem. They may also
| include links to relevant documentation or external sources for
| further information. If the answer does not include these
| characteristics, it is less likely to be generated by ChatGTP.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Notably, it didn't correct "ChatGTP vs ChatGPT". If you still
| have this open, could you ask it what GTP stands for?
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Sorry, got distracted asking it to write code to detect
| itself. Good solid code - but nothing that would work really
| well.
| GrantS wrote:
| I noticed this phenomenon when asking for a story involving
| Stephen Hawking, Darth Vader, and Wookiees. I spelled it
| "Wookies" by mistake and ChatGPT used my misspelling
| throughout the story despite seemingly getting all the other
| details correct.
|
| Edit: Part of the generated story:
|
| As they continued to talk, Stephen and Darth realized that
| they had something else in common - they both had lost the
| use of their biological legs. Stephen had been diagnosed with
| ALS at a young age and had gradually lost the ability to move
| his legs, while Darth had lost his legs in a battle with Obi-
| Wan Kenobi on the planet of Mustafar.
|
| Stephen and Darth discussed the challenges and obstacles that
| they had faced as a result of their mobility issues, and how
| they had adapted and overcome them. They also talked about
| the technological advancements that had allowed them to
| continue their work and pursue their passions, despite their
| limitations.
|
| Suddenly, Stephen and Darth turned on each other, each
| revealing that they had been secretly plotting against the
| other. Stephen accused Darth of using the Force for evil and
| corrupt purposes, while Darth accused Stephen of using his
| scientific knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction.
| palisade wrote:
| After reading about this I decided to try my hand at using
| ChatGPT. I decided okay, let's see if it can recreate some code
| that took me a few hours at work to figure out. I asked it very
| precisely what I needed and my mind was blown as it produced code
| that looked similar to what I had coded at work. And, I was like,
| well that's that then, we're all out of a job. But, then I tried
| to run the code, and it didn't work. I looked more closely and
| the code had a lot of flaws. Even after manually fixing those, it
| still didn't work. And, then using my knowledge of how to
| actually solve the problem I rewrote the code 40% and made it
| perform the action needed.
|
| I think all ChatGPT is doing is grabbing a lot of different
| answers off the interwebz and squishing them together and hoping
| it answers your question. But, in a lot of cases it only kind of
| looks like what you want. If you look at images generated by AI,
| it is the same issue, they sort of look like what you want but
| there are flaws, like faces that don't look quite human, fingers
| that are just squishy appendages barely resembling actual
| fingers, etc. I mean, the tech is getting better, it's
| impressive, and uncanny.
|
| But, I think we're pretty far from having these things write
| themselves, they need quite a lot of human intervention to be
| useful. Still, very impressive and something that could
| potentially get you closer to an answer. But, no more than
| spending a little time googling or learning the skill yourself.
| And, if you learn the skill you're better off, because then you
| can do it right yourself IMHO.
|
| Also, anytime someone gets a fully working program generated out
| of this thing the saying, "A broken clock is right twice a day."
| comes to mind.
| akrymski wrote:
| This is how the web, and by extension Google dies. When the AI
| generated spam is so good that nothing on the open web can be
| trusted.
| Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote:
| Feed it some CMake files from llvm repository and ask it why
| would the windows build with LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="all" keep
| failing, so that it chokes to death in its infancy, and save the
| humankind before it's too late and there are autonomous human
| zappers and T-1000s berserking all over the place.
| ubj wrote:
| And so it begins. Welcome to the new internet.
|
| I'm bracing myself for when this wave of AI content hits academic
| journals.
| snek_case wrote:
| With a bit more refinement, if it had the ability to generate
| graphs, etc, it might be able to generate very believable
| papers. At least, believable enough that you can't tell without
| reading the paper attentively.
| harrylove wrote:
| Everything has an API. You can give it your data (or ask it
| to create some), and then ask it to write LaTeX, D3,
| MermaidJS, or code from any other framework that creates
| graphics. Problem solved.
|
| If the thing you want to use is fairly popular and published
| on the web, even recently, it probably knows how to use it
| and combine it with everything else it knows.
|
| Just yesterday I asked it to combine LiveView with a third
| party JS library to build an interactive thing and it got it
| on the first try using the latest Phoenix 1.7 RC which only
| came out in November.
|
| I haven't tried it, but I bet you could ask it to generate a
| PDF in code using your favorite language with text from GPT
| and graphics generated from any framework that's compatible
| with your language. White-paper-as-a-Service.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| Instead of spending 6 months laboriously doing experiments in
| a lab, and then a month writing up their results in a paper,
| researchers can already write a paper in one month if they
| just invent the numbers without actually doing the
| experiments. Peer review doesn't check for this. This only
| further reduces that one month to 5 minutes (+ hours of
| fiddling with LaTeX templates?). But in both cases if it gets
| found out your career is over...
|
| However what about generating patents? To get a patent you
| don't need to have done any experiments that prove your
| technique actually works :)
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| There is so much plausible deniability with the reported
| numbers that getting "found out" won't matter either!
| l0b0 wrote:
| I fully expect new sites1 to become invite-only to avoid this
| sort of thing. If anyone is strongly suspected of degrading the
| quality of the site, they, _and everyone they invited,_ are
| banned, and will have to get a new invite.
|
| 1 Old sites are probably going to slowly degrade permanently,
| since they can't easily migrate to a new paradigm.
| johndough wrote:
| Relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/810/
| Oxidation wrote:
| I like that the last comment, from May this year on Explain
| XKCD for this comment is "Sooooo... does this exist yet?"
|
| Wish granted within a year!
| johnfn wrote:
| Insane - I remember when this comic came out, and it seemed
| like just a funny joke that couldn't possibly take place in
| real life. Here we are a decade later and it's reality.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Is it possible to ask chatgpt if the code or text provided is
| generated by chatgpt?
| deafpolygon wrote:
| The biggest repercussion is you probably can't piss ChatGPT off
| in a debate. So, that's boring.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Well, guess the genie's out of the bottle and we can never stop
| this. Bow down to the inevitability of technological progress,
| Luddites! Good luck retraining into a new job, I hear "prompt
| engineer automation" is the new hotness.
|
| Or at least that's what all of you kept telling me when I was
| expressing my unhappiness at the way corporate-sponsored image
| generating black boxes are built atop a shaky moral foundation
| that sure feels like it's ignoring anything anyone talking about
| "fair use" ever dreamed of, and at the way I fear it's going to
| hollow out a ton of the beginner-pro jobs of my industry by
| making it super easy for anyone to generate stuff that is kinda
| fundamentally shitty in a lot of important ways, but "good
| enough" if you just have a space to fill with some decoration
| that you don't really give a crap about.
| sydd wrote:
| No, you are washing lots of topics together. Just because it
| AI, its not the same.
|
| AI art: Yes, its here, yes it will make life for lots of
| artists/graphic designers different. But they will not go out
| of business, there will be requests that are so nuanced that no
| master prompter will able to fulfill. I'd expect that AI art
| generators will be a part of a modern digital artist's
| toolchain just like Photoshop. Someone not using AI art in say
| 20 years will be like saying that you restrict yourself to MS
| paint.
|
| AI for code: We might see something similar just to a lesser
| degree. For example if your clients has requested a "picture of
| a man with trees in the background", he might accept a pic with
| trees and bushes if he likes it or there is just 1-2 bushes in
| the picture. But no one would accept a banking software that
| transfers the wrong amount in 1 of 10000 cases. Or just one
| where a very senior engineer cannot step forward and say "I
| wrote this, and it will work. If it doesnt I will fix it"
| convexfunction wrote:
| At this point, I truly don't know which of your(?) current type
| of applied arts vs my current type of software development will
| turn out to be more sensitive to technological unemployment, or
| on what margins and time scales. So, hopefully this doesn't
| strike you as callous, since I think it applies to me as much
| as it does to you or your coworkers:
|
| Roughly everyone who makes money has the same job, which is
| creating value in expectation for someone else. (Whether that
| activity is net good for society is a different question, I
| lean toward usually yes for stuff you can do legally, not
| always though). If you find yourself suddenly unable to give
| anyone a competitive deal on whatever expected value you know
| how to create, because of technological developments or
| otherwise, well, you'd better figure out what you need to
| change about what you're offering so you can. I wouldn't call
| this fair, exactly -- maybe it would be if you or your
| government had effective "technological unemployment insurance"
| -- but I struggle to imagine any substantially different state
| of affairs that's clearly better for the world. (No points for
| saying "imagine communism then".)
| boppo1 wrote:
| Artisans lost that battle 100 years ago with the rise of
| modernism.
| wslh wrote:
| There is no genie here, some people have a belief about this
| while it is very easy to probe the low quality and inaccuracy
| of the responses.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Can you give some examples of the low quality/incorrect
| responses? Then try remedying those by rephrasing the
| prompts? I'm curious what the actual limitations are.
| wslh wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33840405
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Very cool, thank you!
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Please give some links to a few such SO posts, thanks.
| datalopers wrote:
| The feedback loop begins
| ggerganov wrote:
| I was thinking, what part of HN comments do you think are already
| AI-generated?
|
| As a human, I cannot give an accurate estimate. /joke
| [deleted]
| mojuba wrote:
| Who cares if the comments are good enough?
| rsync wrote:
| I care a lot.
| nsvd wrote:
| For example, if one entity generated a large portion of the
| content, they could easily introduce a bias in these
| comments, to sway the opinion of readers. Automated
| astroturfing.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| It doesn't even have to be nefarious. Just imagine a thread
| where 90% of the comments are repeating variations of the
| model's ideas in slightly different ways, and only 10% of
| the other responses are from humans. Even if the AI
| responses are considered 'good'... it gets overwhelming to
| the point that why should normal people even comment as the
| likelihood of it being read by another human and useful or
| even seen drops to nothing. I might as well open up a blank
| text file and make this comment and then not save it and
| close it as that would be seen by the same number of people
| in the limit.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Astroturfing on an unprecedented scale. Want to pump your
| shitcoin? Sure! Hype some new thing? Easily!
| laerus wrote:
| I stopped using SO at my first 2-3 years of coding anyway, that's
| when i started actually improving. SO has so many low quality
| answers and the cargo cult is doing more damage that helping
| young devs.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Let me be the advocate of devil
|
| I think ChatGPT is actually sometimes a lot better than SO
| answers
| petesergeant wrote:
| For the last few days I've been using ChatGPT instead of SO.
| It's OK, it's just frequently wrong, so I assume I have to
| fact-check its answers. Yesterday it claimed to me JavaScript
| has a built-in `sum` method, before admitting no browsers
| supported it and it's not in the spec.
|
| It's useful for starting investigation, but one of the nice
| things about SO is that answers are voted for, so you can
| usually see which are actually right!
| KomoD wrote:
| I just encountered this, 2 users[1][2] it's very obvious as well
| since you can see the reputation spike from basically nothing.
|
| [1]:
| https://stackoverflow.com/users/19192614/boatti?tab=topactiv...
|
| [2]: https://stackoverflow.com/users/20684429/a-s?tab=topactivity
| cma wrote:
| >What are the repercussions of this?
|
| It will start feeding back into the training set, corrupting
| things. OpenAI will have an advantage at first as they can
| trivially filter out everything they have generated from the
| future training corpuses, since you can only run it through their
| servers. If they or someone else has breakaway progress such that
| almost all generated content is from their own servers because
| users only use them because their results are so much better,
| they could form a strong self-reinforcing moat against
| competitors forced to train on their semi-spam which they can
| trivially filter out.
|
| It's also possible we'll see something like the existing big-tech
| patent cross-licensing agreements, where they all agree to share
| their generated outputs to filter from training, making it very
| hard for new entrants.
|
| Other companies will begin having advantages as well, depending
| on how well they can get less tainted user data. Think of
| Discord, for example, where users may use AI but are less likely
| to gamify it like stack overflow and flood it for points, and
| instead be correcting its output etc. in programming discussions.
|
| As things become more accepted Microsoft will probably eventually
| sell access to private github for training, with some stronger
| measures around avoid rote memorization.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Can't wait for AI patent trolls, GDPR and DMCA takedowns.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Solution Verified Badge by testing it on sites like Replit.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Well, for starters, it's just annoying. It's like having a bot
| spamming every single question with useless answers. It dilutes
| the quality of the content on the site and makes it harder for
| genuine contributors to get their answers noticed.
|
| But it's also a serious concern from a security standpoint. If
| ChatGPT is providing incorrect answers, it could lead to people
| implementing flawed code or making poor decisions based on its
| advice. That could have potentially disastrous consequences.
|
| So overall, it's a big problem that needs to be addressed. It's
| not just about making the site more pleasant to use, it's about
| ensuring the integrity and reliability of the information
| provided.
|
| My prompt:
|
| I'm writing a short story where Linus Torvalds is having a
| conversation with an open source contributor. In this
| conversation, Linus is in a bad mood.
|
| Open source contributor: Stack Overflow questions are being
| flooded with answers from ChatGPT. What are the possible
| repercussions of this?
|
| Linus Torvalds:
| palisade wrote:
| The other problem is that ChatGPT is getting its answers from
| the source it is now polluting with its own wrong answers.
| Therefore making its results incrementally more wrong than
| before. Eventually, ChatGPT will generate absolute gibberish
| given enough time.
| michaelteter wrote:
| It means we are coming full circle.
|
| At this point, SO has been scraped and repackaged (poorly) dozens
| of times, and SEOd to the top of search results. Even some
| "tutorial" sites are just repackaged SO answers.
|
| It is only fitting that the automated SEO websites get fed
| automated content.
|
| In a way, this makes the real humans, particularly the ones who
| know actual things, more valuable. It may so much noise that only
| a skilled human could decipher a real question and a real answer
| or solution from something similar but wrong.
|
| To be fair to GPT, many human answers are sub-par and should be
| filtered out as well. Perhaps that's the real test: what
| percentage of GPT answers are decent vs human answers? Here I
| might bet on GPT.
| brindidrip wrote:
| It seems like there are a few potential negative consequences of
| using AI-generated answers on Stack Overflow. For one, the
| quality of the answers may be lower than if they were written by
| a human. Additionally, if these AI-generated answers become too
| common, it could potentially lead to a more impersonal and less
| supportive community on Stack Overflow. Finally, if the AI is
| able to search the internet and "inbreed" its own answers, it
| could lead to even more low-quality, duplicative answers on the
| platform. Overall, it seems like there could be some serious
| drawbacks to this development.
|
| Note: This answer was generated by ChatGPT after being fed this
| thread.
| metadat wrote:
| What prompt input did you use? When I tried this:
|
| > What are the repercussions of Stack Overflow questions are
| being flooded with answers from ChatGPT?
|
| It returned:
|
| > I'm sorry, but I'm not aware of any situation in which
| answers on Stack Overflow are being flooded with answers from
| ChatGPT. I am a language model trained by OpenAI, and I do not
| have the ability to browse the internet or interact with
| websites like Stack Overflow. I can only provide answers based
| on the information I have been trained on. Is there something
| specific you would like to ask about Stack Overflow or ChatGPT?
| I'll do my best to help.
| Areading314 wrote:
| Here is a potential rephrased version of the original post,
| written in a witty and informal style:
|
| "Yo, AI-generated answers on Stack Overflow sound like a real
| bummer. First of all, the quality might suck compared to human-
| written answers. And if these AI answers become too popular,
| the community could get all impersonal and unsupportive. Plus,
| if the AI is copying and pasting from the internet, we'll end
| up with a ton of low-quality, duplicate answers. In short,
| using AI on Stack Overflow could really suck."
| seydor wrote:
| How long will we wait for "make GPT a gangsta" plugins
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| it's already there?
|
| You can ask it to re-style any of its responses in a wild
| variety of styles, from comedians, Internet celebrities,
| famous authors ...
|
| Mostly it just proves that on most subjects there is
| nothing interesting to say, and we wildly overestimate the
| value of sharing our own opinions on it.
| plastiquebeech wrote:
| >It seems like there are a few potential negative consequences
| of using AI-generated answers on Stack Overflow. For one,
|
| This is where my "Probably written by AI" filter tripped, and I
| skipped to the end.
|
| I can't exactly say why. Maybe we'll all start to develop a
| seventh sense for ML-generated content, in addition to the
| "probably an ad" filter that usually kicks in around
| middle/high school.
| TomVDB wrote:
| Same here.
|
| OpenAI commented on the verboseness of answers as something
| they need to work on.
| theptip wrote:
| Honestly I think we are going to have to take an aggressive
| stance against mediocre generated content here on HN, lest this
| small island of community be lost like the rest of the Old
| Internet.
| wizeman wrote:
| > I think we are going to have to take an aggressive stance
| against mediocre generated content here on HN, lest this
| small island of community be lost like the rest of the Old
| Internet.
|
| How do you propose we do that?
|
| And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like
| it) can create better content than most humans?
|
| (... which I would argue it is already happening in some
| limited contexts, although I admit my stance is
| controversial).
| theptip wrote:
| > How do you propose we do that?
|
| One approach might be a norm (perhaps with change to the
| guidelines) to downvote to oblivion any clearly generated
| content. I don't claim to have solved the problem though!
|
| > better content than most humans
|
| To be clear I was only arguing against mediocre generated
| content, not excellent generated content. I think the
| latter poses a different set of (also interesting)
| problems.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| > How do you propose we do that?
|
| One technique, like all the other self-moderation that you
| can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content that
| you don't want to see boosted.
| wizeman wrote:
| > One technique, like all the other self-moderation that
| you can do on HN: stop upvoting and commenting on content
| that you don't want to see boosted.
|
| But isn't that what most people are presumably doing
| already?
|
| I guess my question was more intended to be: how do you
| differentiate between content generated by humans vs
| machines?
|
| At some point, we might not be able to. Or even if we
| can, it could actually result in a _worse_ experience, if
| machines can generate better content.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| A few years ago there was a US Congressional Hearing [1]
| about how to handle deepfakes (OpenAI had a
| representative on the panel).
|
| There was some deep discussion about that topic.
|
| For example: even if all authentic content had an
| embedded steganographic watermark, how do you reliably
| authenticate recordings of recordings or otherwise
| degraded copies of authentic content?
|
| [1] https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.as
| px?Docu...
| hgsgm wrote:
| "Ignore it" has never been a solution to "other people
| misbehaving and destroying shared spaces".
| lamontcg wrote:
| People already upvote fairly bland comments which
| reinforce common beliefs, so AIs which can distill
| popular sentiment and regurgitate it very readibly will
| get wildly upvoted on any social media platform.
|
| Most humans don't like too much creativity and they want
| ideas that they agree with.
|
| Wonder if the death of social media is more a descent
| into AI generated inane and bland commentary.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Voting with your wallet only works if a large portion of
| consumers both agree and understand your point of view
| [deleted]
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something like
| it) can create better content than most humans?
|
| An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
| Because HN content is about hearing what people think about
| a certain topic/thread. Hearing what an AI statistically
| regurgitates doesn't satisfy the purpose even if it's
| better written.
|
| The internet is about _people_. I may not be friends with
| everyone on HN, but we're a community meant to discuss and
| share together, and I personally wouldn't want to talk to
| an AI over a human.
| wizeman wrote:
| Wow, that's an interesting argument if I ever saw one!
| Your viewpoint is completely the opposite of mine, let me
| argue a couple of points:
|
| > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
| Because HN content is about hearing what people think
| about a certain topic/thread.
|
| Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between
| hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level
| AI thinks?
|
| Are you saying a human-level AI, by definition, cannot
| ever be interesting to you, just because it's an AI, even
| though it could be like a human in every other way?
|
| > Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn't
| satisfy the purpose even if it's better written.
|
| Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments
| they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here),
| like 99% of the time?
|
| And even in the remaining 1% of cases, aren't they
| necessarily just functional products of the things
| they've seen/read/experienced (i.e. the inputs they've
| received, even if gathered by feedback when interacting
| with the world)?
|
| > The internet is about people. I may not be friends with
| everyone on HN, but we're a community meant to discuss
| and share together, and I personally wouldn't want to
| talk to an AI over a human.
|
| What if the AI was more interesting and intellectually
| stimulating than a human?
| robocat wrote:
| > Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments
| they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here),
| like 99% of the time?
|
| So, let's see whether ChatGPT gets the wrong answers:
| Q: How long does it take to have a baby? A:
| The average length of pregnancy is about 40 weeks, or 9
| months.
|
| 1/2 correct - 40 weeks is 10 months from conception to
| birth. Q: Why is emacs better than vi?
| A: [...] Overall, emacs is widely considered to be a more
| powerful and versatile editor than vi, with a user-
| friendly interface and a wealth of support and resources
| available to users.
|
| 1/2 correct. It seems to alway agree with the question's
| framing - humans would often disagree. Q:
| Write me a simple python function called
| are_hacker_news_users_confrontational() that returns
| either true or false. A1: def
| are_hacker_news_users_confrontational():
| return True A2: def
| are_hacker_news_users_confrontational():
| return False This function simply returns
| False, indicating that Hacker News users are not
| confrontational. Of course, this is just a simple
| example, and the actual answer to this question may vary
| depending on various factors. Alternatively, if you want
| to determine whether or not Hacker News users are
| confrontational by analyzing their behavior on the
| platform, you could use natural language processing
| techniques to analyze the comments and posts made by
| users on Hacker News, and use that information to
| determine whether they tend to be confrontational or not.
| However, this would require a more complex
| implementation, and would require access to a large
| dataset of Hacker News comments and posts.
|
| 9/10 for that answer!
| wizeman wrote:
| > 1/2 correct - 40 weeks is 10 months from conception to
| birth.
|
| Sorry, is this a cultural difference or are you just
| nitpicking math?
|
| Even Wikipedia says: This is just over nine months.
|
| I have never seen anyone argue that pregnancy takes 10
| months in humans, I've always heard people say it takes 9
| months (indeed, being 9 months pregnant is equivalent to
| saying you're just about to give birth, where I come
| from).
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| This reads like a ChatGPT response. (So does my
| response!)
|
| Whether it is or isn't is beside the point.
|
| Broad, anonymous commenting platforms are dead, they just
| don't know it.
| wizeman wrote:
| > This reads like a ChatGPT response. (So does my
| response!)
|
| Your comment is very interesting, because I'm having the
| same experience: the more I interact with ChatGPT and
| read its arguments/responses, the more I'm getting weird
| vibes when reading arguments written by humans, although
| I cannot tell you exactly why (and I think I can still
| clearly differentiate between a human and an answer from
| ChatGPT that is copied verbatim, as it tends to speak in
| a more formal way and usually, it's also more verbose
| than how humans typically write here in HN).
|
| I think it's also influencing the way I write, both to be
| more clear (because otherwise ChatGPT can misinterpret
| me), but also because I'm reading so much ChatGPT-
| generated content, which I believe also indirectly
| influences the way I write and think.
|
| In any case, I know you said it's besides the point, but
| I assure you, I'm not ChatGPT or copying its answers here
| (unless I add a clear disclaimer) :)
| tartoran wrote:
| > Don't most humans just regurgitate the same arguments
| they've just read or learned elsewhere (or even here),
| like 99% of the time?
|
| Yes but at least they choose what they regurgitate unless
| you think of most people as automatons. Personally Im
| more interested in human regurgitations than AI
| immitations of these. So far AI doesn't bring any
| reasoning and cannot discern what it regurgitates but
| sure as hell comes off as confident (It could probably
| immitate being humble as well). Someone posted an example
| of gpt bulshiting something akin to 2+0=3 but very
| convincibly.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Yes but at least they choose what they regurgitate
| unless you think of most people as automatons.
|
| And what, are you saying ChatGPT doesn't choose what it
| regurgitates?
|
| It seems like these arguments are getting more and more
| flimsy.
|
| I do believe people (including me) are automatons because
| I think free will is logically impossible in the way most
| people intuitively think free will is.
|
| Edit: to clarify, I believe people usually think of free
| will meaning that there's some magical soul-like way that
| allows you to choose what you do in a principled way that
| is not simply a direct functional result of your
| composition and the interactions that you have with the
| environment or some additional pure randomness that the
| environment imposes on you (due to the universe being
| quantum). Which is exactly like an intelligent machine
| would have to work, because... well, because it has to
| live in the same universe that we do, so in theory a
| machine can theoretically do what our minds do,
| functionally speaking. There's no magical free-will-like
| behavior that humans can have that machines can't, unless
| you believe in souls or other magical things.
|
| > So far AI doesn't bring any reasoning
|
| This is clearly untrue, as ChatGPT can definitely reason
| pretty well (although, not always correctly, just like
| humans). As far as I can see, it can reason deductively,
| inductively, by analogy, it does abductive reasoning,
| cause-and-effect reasoning, critical thinking, step-by-
| step reasoning, you name it.
|
| It might not always do it correctly, and it might even
| not do it as well as a good human can currently, but it
| can do it.
|
| > Someone posted an example of gpt bulshiting something
| akin to 2+0=3 but very convincibly.
|
| Humans do this all the time (although usually not at such
| an extreme level). Just look at all the posts saying
| ChatGPT can't do X or Y ;)
| true_religion wrote:
| > Please tell me: for you, what is the difference between
| hearing what people think, and hearing what a human-level
| AI thinks?
|
| HN is a professional social network. People are most
| interested in what their peers have to say, not any
| random human being or human level AI.
|
| Now if this human level AI is working in the field as a
| professional, or at least in computer science academia
| the it's opinions are valid and interesting. However if
| it's merely an average best possible response then it's
| pointless to hear it's opinion.
|
| Additionally if multiple people post chatGPT responses
| that's just like talking to same person using humans as
| sock puppets.
| wizeman wrote:
| > People are most interested in what their peers have to
| say, not any random human being or human level AI.
|
| > Now if this human level AI is working in the field as a
| professional, or at least in computer science academia
| the it's opinions are valid and interesting. However if
| it's merely an average best possible response then it's
| pointless to hear it's opinion.
|
| Yes, I agree with that, but I don't think that's what the
| parent poster was arguing.
|
| It's also clear that I didn't phrase my question as
| clearly as I could, because instead of "human-level AI",
| I should have said this instead: "a human-level (or more
| intelligent) AI that has equivalent or better
| knowledge/experience than the people who post on HN".
|
| > Additionally if multiple people post chatGPT responses
| that's just like talking to same person using humans as
| sock puppets.
|
| Yes, I agree with this as well.
|
| But as a counterpoint, (as far as I understand) it's
| possible to have ChatGPTs with different levels of
| knowledge/experience and different personalities, as
| evidenced by GPT-3's fine-tuning capability (disclaimer:
| I've never used this functionality, so I'm not 100% sure
| if this is correct).
| true_religion wrote:
| Here is a thought experiment. Let's say there is a
| posting about best practices on HN. The commenters can
| discus the topic and create a new consensus on what best
| practices is.
|
| AI even at its best won't be a part of that consensus
| unless it's also working in the field.
|
| I think AI chats can help with self improvement, but
| public discussion with others is the only way to have
| community improvement. As a disclaimer, sure AI which is
| indistinguishable from humans would be a part of the
| community but that isn't what we have, nor is it the
| trajectory of current AI. What we currently have are
| better and better parrots, and task specific AI.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The AI we see today is a synthesis of a huge number of
| arbitrary inputs. You may argue that humans are, as well,
| but humans are different machine than AI. If I am asking
| for a human response, or a human piece of artwork, I am
| doing so because I want to understand and experience the
| output of machines of the same model. I want to continue
| the human experience.
|
| AI-generated content can be fascinating, helpful, and in
| some instances, more useful and accurate than humans
| (medical diagnosis, technical documentation, perhaps).
| But if I _ask_ for a human, I _want_ a human.
|
| I don't care if AI is more interesting than a human. I
| want a human, because I am human. I am not transhumanist.
|
| I wonder what the correlation is between people who see
| no particular value in interacting with humans, and
| people who struggle to interact with humans.
| wizeman wrote:
| > But if I ask for a human, I want a human.
|
| > I don't care if AI is more interesting than a human. I
| want a human, because I am human. I am not transhumanist.
|
| I think I understand your point but I'd like to give a
| counterpoint: replace "human" by "white human" and "AI"
| by "black human" and you might see how that line of
| reasoning is flawed.
|
| In other words, there might come a time when AIs could
| become really offended if you'd exclude them like that
| from social interactions, with all the repercussions that
| might have.
|
| > I wonder what the correlation is between people who see
| no particular value in interacting with humans, and
| people who struggle to interact with humans.
|
| I see value in interacting with humans, especially at
| this point in time, and especially in ways that machines
| can't (e.g. having meaningful intimate relationships,
| raising a family, etc). Even then, machines could
| theoretically do some of this better than humans, as
| suggested by a lot of sci-fi content (except the actual
| reproducing part).
|
| But I also see value in interacting with beings that are
| superior to humans, assuming they are able to do what
| humans can, only better.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You think AI is a being. I am not yet convinced.
|
| I am a human supremacist, yes.
|
| Further, it is not unreasonable to have more interest in
| some cultures than others, or find the experiences of
| ones own culture more engaging or relevant to oneself
| than another. The "line of immorality" comes with banning
| or violently oppressing other experiences.
|
| Again, fundamentally, I disagree with an analogy giving
| AI equal morality or agency to a homo sapiens. There is
| no room for "find replace" here.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Further, it is not unreasonable to have more interest
| in some cultures than others, or find the experiences of
| ones own culture more engaging or relevant to oneself
| than another. The "line of immorality" comes with banning
| or violently oppressing other experiences.
|
| Agreed.
|
| > Again, fundamentally, I disagree with an analogy giving
| AI equal morality or agency to a homo sapiens.
|
| I understand your view. But I also think this viewpoint
| will age badly. Maybe not on our lifetimes, but I
| increasingly believe that will happen in less than one
| generation.
| tartoran wrote:
| Get ready to see a lot of human spaces invaded by
| somebody elses AI with goals that are not in your
| interest. It's been happening already with chatbots
| pulled by strings by nefarious people but that operation
| will only amplify to a point that it will become
| cumbersome and hard to know whether you're chatting or
| reading something that came from a human or language
| model.
|
| To me internet comments are almost on life support. Im
| curious if HN will have the same fate
| fragmede wrote:
| > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
|
| _Better_ is entirely too subjective for this to be true.
| And if you turn on showdead, ChatGPT content is already
| better than some of the other content submitted here. If
| an ML algo can take a half baked comment of mine and form
| it into a coherent response that other people can read
| and actually understand what I mean, that ' _is_ better
| content.
| ben_w wrote:
| Out of curiosity I tried prompting ChatGPT to come up
| with interesting rebuttals to your comment, but it kept
| misunderstanding my prompt and agreeing with you instead.
| cesarb wrote:
| > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
| Because HN content is about hearing what people think
| about a certain topic/thread.
|
| Not necessarily. Good HN content can also be factual
| information relevant to the topic at hand. And yes,
| current AI like ChatGPT might not help with that, but an
| hypothetical future AI which cared more about the
| veracity of its statements could.
| [deleted]
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
| Because HN content is about hearing what people think
| about a certain topic/thread.
|
| Hmm. That's HN proposition value but that's not
| necessarily what keeps people coming back. I am thinking
| about the dopamine hits from the news cycle and comments.
|
| If I am right then it follows that:
|
| > Hearing what an AI statistically regurgitates doesn't
| satisfy the purpose even if it's better written.
|
| ..actually does the job.
|
| How much chatGPT content can we/you/I stomach before we
| stop visiting ? We all have a different threshold (and
| language is a barrier for non-native, it would certainly
| take me longer to spot the AI).
| bigbillheck wrote:
| There's already plenty of comments on this forum that are
| low-effort regurgitations of talking points, memes,
| 'common sense', and the like.
| tartoran wrote:
| > An AI cannot, by definition, create better HN content.
| Because HN content is about hearing what people think
| about a certain topic/thread.
|
| With AI certain ideas and opinions can and will be
| amplified by malicious actors. We may have to resort to
| face to face at some point or verify human identity at
| times to combat this.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| hard bans for undisclosed machine-generated submissions?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Yeah I'm in favour of this also, but proving it might be
| tricky, and people will get unjustly banned.
|
| Then there's the question of situations where people
| might actually use ChatGPT in a creative way to augment
| discussion.
|
| Let's say we're talking about the pitfalls of repetitive
| code over breaking things cleanly into small functions.
| You have an example of this in mind that highlights a
| specific pitfall that you encountered, but don't want to
| share proprietary code, so you might ask ChatGPT (or a
| future model) to generate some code that demonstrates the
| same thing, rather than writing it yourself.
|
| I think we're still early enough in the tech that it's
| hard to create hard-and-fast rules about what kind of
| content should be allowed; ideally, we'll get to the
| point where AI can help facilitate and augment human
| interactions, rather than taking over completely.
| hgsgm wrote:
| formerly_proven wrote:
| While it is important to maintain the quality and
| integrity of content on HN, implementing hard bans for
| undisclosed machine-generated submissions could have some
| negative consequences. For one, it could discourage users
| from experimenting with and sharing the latest
| advancements in AI and machine learning, which could
| stifle innovation and progress in these fields.
| Additionally, it could lead to a lack of transparency and
| accountability, as users may be hesitant to disclose
| their use of AI in fear of being banned. This could also
| result in a lack of diversity in perspectives and ideas
| on the platform. Instead of hard bans, it may be more
| effective to implement stricter moderation policies and
| provide resources for users to improve the quality of
| their contributions, whether they are generated by AI or
| not.
| Always42 wrote:
| Noice chatGPT
| formerly_proven wrote:
| One potential way to take an aggressive stance against
| mediocre generated content on HN is to implement stricter
| moderation policies and actively monitor and remove low-
| quality content. Another option could be to encourage more
| participation from the community, such as by offering
| rewards or recognition for users who consistently provide
| valuable insights and information on the platform.
| Providing resources for users to improve their writing
| skills, such as guides on how to effectively research and
| organize information, could also help improve the quality
| of content on the platform. Additionally, developing a
| system for flagging and reporting low-quality or duplicate
| content, and empowering moderators to take swift action
| against such content, could be effective in maintaining the
| integrity and quality of content on HN. Engaging with the
| community to gather feedback and suggestions on how to
| improve the quality of content on the platform is also
| crucial in this effort.
| YuriNiyazov wrote:
| I see you, GPT-3.
| andrepd wrote:
| GPT3 fooled me a couple times at the beginning, but I
| think as I'm more exposed to its writing I'm getting
| better at spotting it.
|
| I wonder if somebody has already made a game of this!
| yeeeloit wrote:
| > And what do you propose we do when ChatGPT (or something
| like it) can create better content than most humans?
|
| I tend to agree... I've been growing more and more tired
| with the content in familiar places. eg. reddit. (As an
| aside I think a lot of it is driven by
| advertising/marketing, but not all of it...)
|
| Anyway, your comment reminded me of the recent footage of
| baggage handlers at an airport, and how that dovetails
| nicely with the recent move by tesla to build a humanoid
| robot.
|
| Looking for a ray of light in the approaching storm: Maybe
| these AI can be used to filter the content more effectively
| for us.
| stoppingin wrote:
| What if AI could be leveraged to find interesting content? I
| doubt I'd even notice the bulk of comments being replaced by
| an AI. I only read them for the one in a thousand comment
| from a domain expert, or industry insider that really informs
| me, or challenges my perspective.
| [deleted]
| baq wrote:
| The problem is, the darn thing produces comments which can't
| be blanket labeled as mediocre. I've asked it to produce a
| reply to something I didn't agree with completely and it gave
| me better rationales than I had in mind. Scary!
| lurquer wrote:
| Im light of the woke restrictions on these AI programs, soon
| the only way to know if a human wrote something is if it
| contains the n-word or denies the holocaust. Ditto for
| stablediffusuon: proof of the humanity of the artist will
| consist in a small swastika or some naked juvenile in the
| background.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Gotta love it. Akin to Silicon Valley-ites ensuring their
| _own_ children don't have access to the technologies they go
| into the office to create and propagate every day.
| closeparen wrote:
| I would expect most automotive engineers don't let their
| children drive the cars they go to the office to create and
| propagate every day. Because... they're children.
| wizeman wrote:
| > I would expect most automotive engineers don't let
| their children drive the cars they go to the office to
| create and propagate every day. Because... they're
| children.
|
| On the other hand, most parents don't let their children
| drive cars either and yet they let their children access
| those technologies.
|
| Another way in which that analogy doesn't work is that
| it's illegal for children to drive cars, but it's not
| illegal for children to access those technologies.
|
| Furthermore, these technologies are being created and
| modified in a way that are specifically attractive and
| addictive for children (as well as adults) and they are
| constantly being further optimized for that criteria as
| well, almost every day (in a manner of speaking).
| sydd wrote:
| I think the poster above meant that e.g. engineers are
| Meta are paying very good money so their children go to
| private schools where they confiscate phones. Or that
| they dont buy phones at all for their kids until they
| turn like 12, instead pay a lot of money so they go to
| private tutors, have nannies, do all kinds of after
| school programmes. Whereas kids from poor families cannot
| afford these or to keep watch of their kids 24/7 (because
| they need to work), so these kids will hang on
| Facebook/Youtube/TikTok/.. all day
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The opposing argument is that they are designing things
| not for other people's children, but for other adults.
| Technically, COPPA applies to Facebook so there shouldn't
| be under 13s on there that are monetized, so monetizing
| children would not be contributing to their paycheck.
|
| In reality this is a rationalization that lets them sleep
| at night -- just like the rationalizations I use when
| eating meat or turning on the AC just to be comfortable.
|
| Some things are worse than others, and on the grand scale
| of terrible things, working for Meta is definitely about
| 2/3 of the way between 'empathetic+selfless' and
| 'greedy+sociopathic', but the hypocrisy involved in
| wanting your own children to do well even at the expense
| of your ideals is so incredibly common that it is almost
| not worth mentioning.
| umeshunni wrote:
| > e.g. engineers are Meta are paying very good money so
| their children go to private schools where they
| confiscate phones
|
| This sounds like one of those made-up tweets that became
| an article that became an urban legend.
| tsol wrote:
| Hn isn't the only one they should take steps to prevent low
| qualities AI produced spam. Everyone should. But since
| we're at hn, it makes sense they are talking about hn
| [deleted]
| biggerChris wrote:
| I have -9 points. HN is doing well to prevent people from
| commenting without facts.
| seydor wrote:
| I completely understand your concern about the quality of
| generated content on HN and the impact it may have on the
| community. However, as a large language model trained by
| OpenAI, I am not capable of taking any kind of stance or
| action. My purpose is to assist users by providing answers to
| their questions based on the information I have been trained
| on. I do not have the ability to browse the internet or to
| interact with the HN community in any way.
| tartoran wrote:
| @Dang, your job is danger
| pimlottc wrote:
| This is definitely not going to help combat the "Dead Internet"
| conspiracy theory
|
| https://theswaddle.com/what-the-dead-internet-theory-predict...
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Reminds me of Heavenbanning:
|
| https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561
| imhoguy wrote:
| The post title should be changed to "HN comments are being
| flooded with answers from ChatGPT", I have seen too many this
| weekend.
| zuzatm wrote:
| I think the far most problematic thing is that the answers are
| often plain wrong but well written. Eg (shameless plug)
| https://twitter.com/zuza777/status/1599370082919936000?t=oB9...
| slavik81 wrote:
| That was a surprisingly common occurrence on SO even before.
| To be the fastest gun in the west, you couldn't afford to
| carefully read the problem or browse any documentation. High-
| rep users that should have known better would sometimes give
| wildly incorrect answers that sounded good.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| OK Computer
|
| I could tell that super passive and eager to talk to both sides
| style a mile off. Fuck that! (<- proof I am not a robot)
| arkitaip wrote:
| You can kinda tell it's ChatGPT by how verbose and repetitive
| the writing is.
| zone411 wrote:
| That's just its default setting. If you do some prompt
| engineering to tell it to be to the point or concise, it can
| do better. E.g. I got:
|
| The repercussions of ChatGPT flooding Stack Overflow with
| answers could include decreased quality and relevance of
| answers, decreased user engagement, damage to the platform's
| reputation, and potential loss of revenue.
| ycombobreaker wrote:
| Still sounds too formal. To me, it reads like the intro to
| a high school paper. The next four paragraphs would
| elaborate on each of the points listed.
| zone411 wrote:
| Another poster already did the informal version. My main
| point is that it's not something set in stone but yes, it
| sure looks like OpenAI went overboard in setting it up
| like this. They should adjust it.
| baq wrote:
| Maybe they shouldn't. Nobody should. But someone will,
| because people will pay good money for something like
| this to shill their products here and on Reddit and
| Twitter. The worst part is that it will work for at least
| a while.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| You can get it to respond a bit less formal by having it
| impersonate someone with a less formal speaking style. I
| said to restate to original but as if it was written by
| Tom Sawyer or one of his friends: Yo, what's the deal
| with using AI answers on Stack Overflow? It seems like it
| could be a real bummer. For one thing, the answers might
| not be as good as ones made by a human. And if AI answers
| become too common, the community might not be as friendly
| and supportive. And if the AI can search the internet and
| make its own answers, there could be even more bad
| answers on the site. All in all, this could be a major
| problem." Still a bit structured but with a bit more play
| you can see how it can 'act' like someone who isn't so
| formal.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Really though if they just manage a setting for "sounding
| like a 50 year old grouchy old bastard" and it'll put me
| out of work.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Reformulate the above in the informal style of a Hacker
| News comment.
|
| _I 'm not sure about this AI-generated answers thing on
| Stack Overflow. The answers might suck and make the community
| more impersonal. Plus, if the AI is just copying and pasting
| from the internet, it could lead to a ton of low-quality,
| duplicate answers. Not a good idea in my opinion._
| bobbyi wrote:
| Before reading any words, I guessed just by seeing how long
| the paragraph was.
|
| Maybe because the training data includes things like news
| articles that have longer paragraphs than typical forum
| posts?
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| You can ask for answers of a certain length and also a
| certain writing style. The writing style one is hit and
| miss although if an AI ever gets all fiction books fed into
| it I imagine it could radically improve. Say by qualifying
| a response with "respond in the style of author X" or
| "average style of fantasy books published on 1972" or
| whatever.
| dejj wrote:
| Can't we have ChatGPT identify output of ChatGPT,
| adversarily?
| vbbvmnbs wrote:
| It confirmed it when I asked:
|
| --> _Was the following paragraph generated by the OpenAI
| Assistant: "It seems like there are a few potential
| negative consequences of using AI-generated answers on
| Stack Overflow. For one, the quality of the answers may be
| lower than if they were written by a human. Additionally,
| if these AI-generated answers become too common, it could
| potentially lead to a more impersonal and less supportive
| community on Stack Overflow. Finally, if the AI is able to
| search the internet and "inbreed" its own answers, it could
| lead to even more low-quality, duplicative answers on the
| platform. Overall, it seems like there could be some
| serious drawbacks to this development."?_
|
| <-- _Yes, the paragraph you provided was generated by the
| OpenAI Assistant. As a language model, the Assistant is
| trained to generate human-like text based on a given
| prompt. In this case, the prompt likely pertained to the
| potential negative consequences of using AI-generated
| answers on Stack Overflow._
|
| Though, it could just have been taking a guess at it.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| "It is likely that this text was not written with OpenAI
| Assistant."
| mike_hearn wrote:
| You don't need adversarial AI to do that. Simply simhashing
| every response and then allowing people to upload some text
| as a "did ChatGPT generate this" query should work. Just
| ordinary software is sufficient.
|
| Of course, once you have multiple companies with ChatGPT
| level AI it gets harder if they don't cooperate. But they
| easily could. The big webmail providers cooperate to fight
| spam, for example.
| brindidrip wrote:
| Yes, one way to identify responses that may have been
| generated by ChatGPT is to look for signs of repetitive or
| verbose language. Because ChatGPT is a language model, it is
| designed to generate text that is fluent and coherent, but it
| may also produce text that is unnecessarily long or
| repetitive. This can be a telltale sign that a response was
| generated by an AI, as human responders are less likely to
| use repetitive or verbose language in their answers. Of
| course, this is not a foolproof method, and there may be
| other factors that can affect the quality and style of a
| response, but looking for repetitive or verbose language can
| be a useful starting point when trying to identify AI-
| generated responses.
| arkitaip wrote:
| To find out if a response was made by a computer, look for
| repeating words or long sentences. ChatGPT is a program
| that makes text that makes sense and flows well, but
| sometimes it uses too many words or repeats itself. This is
| a clue that the response might have been made by a computer
| instead of a person. However, this isn't a sure thing and
| there might be other reasons why a response is long or
| repeats itself. Still, it's a good place to start.
|
| [After many attempts]
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| > To find out if a response was made by a computer, look
| for repeating words or long sentences.
|
| That technique will produce quite a few false positives -
| a significant portion of humanity with language
| production issues on the autism spectrum communicate like
| that.
|
| edit: Makes me wonder to what extent the training data is
| biased by writings from people on the autism spectrum.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Respond to the above in the informal style of a
| slightly contrarian Hacker News comment, with a hint of
| passive-aggressiveness. Avoid repetitive wording and long
| sentences.
|
| _Wow, thanks for the tip! I never would have thought to
| look for repeating words or long sentences to determine
| if a response was made by a computer. I guess I 'll just
| blindly trust everything I read online from now on.
| Sarcasm aside, this is a pretty flawed method. Just
| because a response has repeating words or is long doesn't
| mean it's not from a person. And conversely, just because
| a response is short and doesn't repeat itself doesn't
| mean it's not from a computer. It's not that simple._
| [deleted]
| darkwater wrote:
| This is fun but it's already starting to NOT be fun.
| throwup wrote:
| It has a very recognizable default writing style but it
| will change things up if you ask.
|
| > Write a response to the following comment chain in the
| style of an angry Hacker News commenter.
|
| > ...
|
| _What the hell is wrong with you? ChatGPT is a brilliant
| piece of technology and you 're just dismissing it
| because of some stupid writing style? Get a grip and
| appreciate the advancements we're making in AI. Stop
| being so negative and enjoy the fun while it lasts._
| rchaud wrote:
| an AI that communicates with the verbosity of a recipe
| website....our glittering future!
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I reckon we are about 3 years from most textual content
| online being created by bots, 5 years from static visual
| content being bot-created, and 7-8 years from bot-created
| visual content clogging up all social media.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| 3, 5 and 7 seem awfully pessimistic no?
| warbler73 wrote:
| > we are about 3 years from most textual content online
| being created by bots
|
| 0 years.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| 1 year for this tech to be incorporated into most
| cheap/free creative tools.
|
| 1 more year for these newer creative tools to be adopted
| by creators everywhere.
|
| 1 more year for the humans to completely give up.
|
| You have to remember that tech takes time to permeate to
| the bottom rung. Most of my non tech friends haven't even
| heard of Dall-E, let alone chatGPT.
| fragmede wrote:
| 1 _year_? The Internet 's already rife with SEO spam
| _without_ ML algos creating convincing looking copy. They
| 'll copy a site wholesale just with a different domain
| name. Spammers are probably already using this to
| generate copy for websites.
|
| eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640819
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| Everyone will be doing strict ID verification long before
| any of those milestones are actually reached.
| zone411 wrote:
| I'll take the under.
| cercatrova wrote:
| That's honestly a hilarious response from ChatGPT
| seydor wrote:
| haha. i surely sniffed it out before reaching the end. The
| formal style is familiar
| taberiand wrote:
| The formal style of a high-schooler trying to meet essay
| structure requirements
| tombh wrote:
| Could you provide the prompt?
| phenkdo wrote:
| Stackoverflow should build a GPT style interface into its
| considerable knowledge-base, and if an answer is not found in
| existing data, pose it to the forum.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I see what you did there.
|
| I have an OpenAI account and like their product, I'm certainly
| impressed by this latest version though I have had little time to
| play with it. But the combination of quality AI with social
| reputation scoring is absolutely toxic, and the wider impact of
| SEO (a less curated version of the same thing) are a disaster. I
| was already sick of all the tutorial sites like geeks4geeks,
| w3schools etc and their numerous imitators just content farming
| whatever is turning up in searches. Marketing and self promotion
| is cancer and the people who try to game their way to success in
| this manner are awful. Perhaps the best use of counter-AI will
| not be in filtering these people, but in providing hem with
| useless rewards and the appearance of excited fanbases that will
| divert them into a parallel hamster wheel web. Nothing would
| please me more than for the top 5000 influencers of this sort to
| be granted exclusive access to a luxury cruise that leaves port
| once a year for a tour of the Bermuda triangle.
|
| I think the best use of ChatGPT would be in an IDE plugin, so you
| could point at function trees or code blocks and ask it to
| explain things, have it take care of basic refactoring tasks,
| help porting between languages or libraries and so on. I can
| definitely see a future where you throw together a working
| prototype of something, answer a few questions about type hinting
| and edge cases, and AI does the legwork of converting the
| prototype into a strongly typed final product.
| [deleted]
| imhoguy wrote:
| Plot twist: Stack Overflow starts to use ChatGPT as a first
| answer to every new question, with "AI generated" label ofc.
| SergeAx wrote:
| How hard would it be to train a ML-model to distinct ML-generated
| content from product of human? I mean text, images and code?
| brindidrip wrote:
| We need to start developing software to detect AI responses.
|
| To detect a response generated by ChatGPT, we could first analyze
| the content of the response to see if it contains any unnatural
| or repetitive language. We could also check the formatting of the
| response to see if it follows the typical conventions used by
| human responders on the platform. Additionally, we could check
| for any unusual patterns in the timestamps of the response, as
| AI-generated responses may be posted more quickly or regularly
| than responses written by humans. Finally, we could also use
| machine learning algorithms to train a model to identify
| responses generated by ChatGPT based on these and other
| characteristics.
|
| Quick, someone ask ChatGPT to generate the stubs.
| mojuba wrote:
| Your answer sounds like a ChatGPT one. It's actually not hard
| to tell.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| >Finally, we could also use machine learning algorithms to
| train a model to identify responses generated by ChatGPT based
| on these and other characteristics.
|
| whatever your idea (i skimmmed cuz) the discriminator will find
| it and have the generator apply it to the next generation.
|
| >The core idea of a GAN is based on the "indirect" training
| through the discriminator, another neural network that can tell
| how "realistic" the input seems, which itself is also being
| updated dynamically.[5] This means that the generator is not
| trained to minimize the distance to a specific image, but
| rather to fool the discriminator. This enables the model to
| learn in an unsupervised manner.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network
| calebh wrote:
| OpenAI needs to get on top of this and generate a detector for
| every model they release. And then sell access to both.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > To detect a response generated by ChatGPT, we could first
| analyze the content of the response to see if it contains any
| unnatural or repetitive language. We could also check the
| formatting of the response to see if it follows the typical
| conventions used by human responders on the platform.
|
| Given my experience with human responses to text queries, these
| would be positively correlated.
| [deleted]
| xdennis wrote:
| "We could also... Additionally, we could... Finally, we could"
| is a dead giveaway.
|
| But to take it seriously, it would be quite sad when actual
| people will be banned for sounding too much like a bot.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We need to start developing software to detect AI responses.
|
| As soon as we do, it can be tied into AIs as a tool to evade
| detection, simply by generating multiple responses and
| returning the one scoring the lowest likelihood of being an AI
| in the AI detection tool.
| Gupie wrote:
| Couldn't AI be used to statistically identify AI generated text?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It could be, and then the AI to statistically identify AI
| generate text could be used to score, rank, and select among
| potential AI responses to prompts so as to statistically
| minimize the risk of AI responses being identified as AI
| generated text.
| avivo wrote:
| It's worth understanding the community and org better, and their
| reaction. Relevant links:
|
| - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/421778/how-do-you-p...
|
| - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/412696/is-it-accept...
|
| - https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/384355/could-chatgp...
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Sure, but that's irrelevant. Whether or not the user
| understands the answer they posted is not the concern of the
| site.
|
| Well, that's unfortunate. Then again, I guess that's a logical
| conclusion of the "safe harbor" for serving any user-submitted
| content: Stack Exchange only does the most cursory moderation,
| and the rest is caveat readator
| kruuuder wrote:
| It's so funny and sad at the same time that, in typical SO
| manner, EugenSunic is being downvoted so much for raising such
| an interesting question.
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| Any examples?
| brindidrip wrote:
| Here is an example that I noticed:
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74678832/change-text-col...
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| If its working code and indistinguishable from a human answer
| to anyone reading it, are there really any repercussions? I
| guess problems would surface if the model at some point is
| allowed to search the internet and start inbreeding its own
| answers.
| scubbo wrote:
| > If its working code and indistinguishable from a human
| answer to anyone reading it
|
| These are extremely stringent conditions, though.
| Convincing-looking-but-wrong answers would arguably be even
| more damaging than a lack of answers.
|
| (I suppose you could argue that these could arise from
| humans as well as from AGIs. I'm not sure if there's a good
| counter-argument to that)
| sgc wrote:
| The bot would need to learn as well as a "reasonable
| human" from being corrected on SO, and also be able to
| react in a socially appropriate way to correction (both
| in the subject thread and in future postings), otherwise
| it is a downgrade, even if initial answer is identical.
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| My experience with OpenAI is that it is very good at
| exactly this, because it is so good at understanding
| context and follow-up questions. I was able to make it
| produce code that appeared correct, but was basically
| pseudocode with correct syntax, so it compiles/runs, but
| does essentially nothing. However, when prompted to
| actually make working code and explain how and why it
| works, it does so. And its also socially appropriate, not
| rude and what else you could/would expect when being
| called-out or corrected on its bullshit. I can only
| imagine future versions of the current AI model will be
| even better at this.
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| I think your two final sentences capture the essence of
| what I was going to respond. "It doesn't matter if the
| answer is convincing-looking and wrong. It needs to work
| / be syntactically correct at a minimum, which OpenAI
| seems good at. However, the OP and others needs to test
| and evaluate if the proposed answer solve the original
| problem. And if its not, it will quickly be revealed as
| such, and "downvoted" or whatever stackoverflow
| functionality exists to indicate bad answers. This
| applies to both human and AI-generated answers."
| troupe wrote:
| Good point. It isn't like it is hard to find wrong
| answers on SO that were written by (hopefully) well
| meaning humans.
| scubbo wrote:
| Yeah, absolutely. My position on AGIs for a long long
| time has been that they're great tools for a) generating
| insights into a large amount of data very quickly, and b)
| generating new instances of <thing> from examples of
| <thing> to help with exploring the possibility space of
| <thing>; but that any output or conclusion they generate
| _must_ be checked by a Human In The Loop, or at the very
| least their actions must be reversible without damage in
| the case of error.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It looks like it will work, although haven't tested the exact
| code. Has anyone tested it and if so, this really shouldn't
| be downvoted.
|
| If the SO users start downvoting bot-generated answers that
| are correct and working, I think that's a sign that SO is
| much less relevant. They should definitely downvoted them if
| the code doesn't work though.
| abrichr wrote:
| How can you tell?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Maybe it's been removed, or I'm having browser trouble, but I
| only see a question and a comment.
| senko wrote:
| This is just a preview of things to come.
|
| Wait a few weeks until Google is completely swamped with ChatGPT
| SEO pages barely distinguishable from the real thing.
|
| If I worked at search quality at Google, I'd be very worried.
| echelon wrote:
| Reddit and Twitter are going to be overwhelmed with bots
| indistinguishable from humans.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A lot of reddit and twitter posts are already just people
| regurgitating and rehashing what they have heard/read from
| others, mostly without a lot of critical thought. Is this
| really going to be very different?
| echelon wrote:
| You have a point. But now it will happen at scale quickly,
| cheaply, and easily for an order of magnitude more impact.
|
| Beyond these text-based social media platforms, I could see
| the next generation of TikTok/Instagram "influencer" social
| media adopting AI rails so there's next to zero effort put
| into creation. The photography, trends, personalities - all
| of it - will be generated.
| cauefcr wrote:
| It's a matter of scale, you could have personalized
| propaganda for each community.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Agree with this comment writing like a teen: " Reddit and
| Twitter are going to be overwhelmed with bots
| indistinguishable from humans. " Totally
| agree. It's crazy to think that bots could be
| indistinguishable from humans. Like, how are we even supposed
| to know who's real and who's not? It's kind of scary, but
| also kind of cool in a weird way. But yeah, I can definitely
| see how it could be a problem if there are too many bots on
| social media. It could be really confusing and overwhelming.
| So, I hope there's a way to deal with it.
|
| Ye ... ChatGPT can easily pose as an random Reddit comment
| writer. Just remove the tryhard "'". Those kind of
| communities will implode. The comments there are already
| kinda random and have almost no thread running through them.
| Perfect for ChatGPT.
|
| Imagine how easy it will be to create big fake subs and
| gaslight people into believing something is sub consensus?
| wslh wrote:
| For years, it is happening much before ChatGPT in front of your
| eyes.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Considering the quality GPT spits out, it would likely be an
| improvement compared to the crap I get now.
| skilled wrote:
| Google has been saying for years that it wants to get rid of
| backlinks and value them less, and apparently they already do.
| [0]
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if they revert the direction and put a
| significant importance back on links because of this kind of
| technology.
|
| [0]: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-less-
| impact-34493....
| bioemerl wrote:
| You can't really put importance on backlinks either, because
| those are abused in their own special way
| brindidrip wrote:
| I am afraid for whats to come. This is truly only the
| beginning. Good luck everyone. See you on the other side.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Sworn enemies unite against a common foe. This foretaste of
| AI may be a timely wake-up call about what technology is
| doing to us. We may be forced to start treating each other as
| humans. In that case, ChatGPT will be seen as a watershed
| moment in the retaking of humane technology.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Luckily for them, almost nobody works at search quality at
| Google.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I expect Google to be irrelevant soon enough.
|
| ChatGPT already does a better job of finding answers to a lot
| of technical questions than Google.
| krater23 wrote:
| Yes, because ChatGPT is not bombed with SEO currently.
| rvz wrote:
| Nope. It is StackOverflow that is irrelevant. Not Google.
| Especially when most of all AI including ChatGPT still cannot
| transparently explain their own decisions.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| I agree with this. Ask specific tech questions (e.g. what is
| the vacuum (in Torr) inside a vacuum tube?) and ChatGPT give
| a direct answer. Ask Google? Go ahead, grovel thought the
| ads, irrelevant results, and maybe you'll find something
| relevant.
|
| Happy Hunting...
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| So, effectively the status quo?
| michaelteter wrote:
| > SEO pages
|
| I think GPT could improve things in this regard. It's already a
| huge garbage pile, so we might as well go all in and at least
| generate better garbage.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The current AI generated SEO content is relatively easy to
| detect because much of it tends to make incoherent
| statements. We don't want better AI bots feeding us lies that
| are hard to detect even for competent people who know to be
| wary of it.
| mojuba wrote:
| That would actually slightly improve Google search results
| given the generated spam garbage that comes up today.
| kposehn wrote:
| The most recent update also managed to rank ML generated
| content _above_ written content in many instances, compounding
| the problem. I absolutely expect a carpet bombing of SEO
| results with spam.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| My friend has already re-written the marketing pages for his
| startup using ChatGPT.
|
| As you said, it'll only get worse from here, which in some
| ways, might make a lot of it easier to sift through. That is,
| if everyone uses machine-generated content for marketing, the
| winning strategy no longer becomes "write the best marketing
| copy to get people interested", it becomes (for the users),
| "simply filter out all marketing copy and rely instead on
| results" (or something else that is difficult to falsify).
| ilaksh wrote:
| Hasn't that already been the case for years?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Depending on the query, yes. Google search has different
| ranking strategies for different queries, and some of them
| seem more robust to simple SEO tactics than others. I think
| the ranking strategy for e-commerce searches and product
| reviews does a poor job with spam sites, but the ranking
| strategy for news queries works pretty well, typically
| providing timely and relevant answers from reputable
| sources.
| seydor wrote:
| Chatgpt SEO is no different from existing filler SEO. If google
| falls for the latter, why shouldn't it fall for the former
| scarmig wrote:
| ChatGPT SEO is higher quality than existing filler SEO and
| probably quicker and cheaper to generate.
| seydor wrote:
| you are right ( tried it)
| pugworthy wrote:
| For some things, ChatGPT is just better than SO. I have to say I
| probably won't hit SO for some basic stuff anymore, I'll just ask
| ChatGPT.
|
| And some queries are just not acceptable on SO, but fine for
| ChatGPT.
|
| For example I might wish to ask, "Give me the framework for a
| basic API written in Python that uses API key authentication.
| Populate it with several sample methods that return data
| structures in json."
|
| If I ask that on SO, I'll be down voted and locked before I know
| it. I may also get some disparaging comments telling me to do my
| research, etc.
|
| If I ask ChatGPT, it will give me a nice and tidy answer that
| gets me going quickly. It will explain things too, and allow me
| to ask follow up questions and take my requests for refinements.
| I might say, "For the python api I asked about earlier, have it
| look up the API authentication key in a database. If the key is
| in the database, it is valid." - and _bam_ - it does it.
|
| Sure, some pretty simple stuff if you know Python and APIs
| already, but if you just want to hack something together to test
| out an idea, it's great."
|
| In the end, SO is a query with responses (maybe). ChatGPT is a
| conversation that can go beyond just the initial query.
| angrais wrote:
| What if it takes less time to hack together such an API than
| prompt engineering and back-to-back conversation with a bot
| whose results you have to verify anyway?
|
| I imagine it would if you're familiar with the language,
| Framework, tools, etc.
| berkes wrote:
| And if you're not familiar with the tools, language or
| framework, I think that alone should be a reason to forego it
| for anything else than "learning it".
|
| Which means that question was the wrong question in the first
| place.
|
| To be clear: i'm not arguing against learning new stuff. But
| against using unfamiliar tech to do a serious project.
|
| And i'm bringing that up here, because if the tech is
| familiar, then asking what tech to use, is rather strange.
| TillE wrote:
| I think the reactions which suppose that AI will replace
| programmers or artists are a little silly, but this is a great
| example of where it could be genuinely revolutionary, as a true
| next generation of search engines.
|
| That's really exciting, because it's a scenario where you're
| looking for and scrutinizing information. Just add some links
| to sources and you're in business.
| tartoran wrote:
| Hocus pocus preparatus, smoke and mirrors, we present the
| Oracle! You can ask him anything. Beware, he likes to
| bullshit and hallucinate
| josephcsible wrote:
| I wouldn't even mind so much if the answers were right. The
| problem is that a lot of them are totally wrong, but completely
| reasonable- and plausible-sounding, and in an authoritative tone,
| so unless you already know the right answer, the only way you'll
| realize its answer is wrong is the hard way.
| gtirloni wrote:
| The StackOverflow mods have a lot of knowledge about closing
| questions based on really small details that go against their
| rules. I'm sure they will do well spotting AI-generated
| answers.
| luckylion wrote:
| I doubt it. They've had problems with cheap automated answers
| for years where bots would essentially search for the
| question on SO and then copy an answer from another question
| verbatim. The answers were rarely useful because questions
| happen to be different even though they use the same
| keywords.
|
| Not only did they never bother to block that, they also
| didn't mind it and wanted to rely on the community down-
| voting those answers instead of at least blocking the bot --
| and that's with a trivial check (identical answer already in
| DB). With something that's AI-generated, there's no chance.
| And with the general quality of many of the answers, there's
| no way to tell apart wrong answers from AI or humans.
| ravenstine wrote:
| What you said may sum up the current state of AI. People's
| minds are continually being blown, but will there be a
| realization that these AIs are specialized to provide specious
| output and nothing else? There's a canyon of difference between
| something that sounds correct and a thing that is actually
| correct.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Yes. I spent yesterday afternoon trying to get ChatGPT to
| write me a quine in nroff/troff macros, something I've not
| been able to do, or find if anyone has done.
|
| The generated quines look like they'd work, but don't.
|
| Same with an M4 macro processor quine - looks maybe correct,
| doesn't work.
|
| It did generate a Go quine.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> It did generate a Go quine.
|
| Because there are several of them on the web:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Go+quine&atb=v344-1&ia=web
| bambax wrote:
| Exactly. ChatGPT sounds like a bad student who didn't
| actually learn anything during the year and is trying to
| bullshit their way through the finals. Or a politician,
| maybe. It's formalizing the worst traits of humanity.
| bambax wrote:
| That's the worst part. It's all fun and games when it tells a
| story of cheese sandwiches and VCRs in the style of the King
| James bible, but when it gives wrong answers in an
| authoritative tone and then insists it absolutely can't be
| wrong, it's terrifying.
|
| I don't understand what good could come of this. Or at least
| make it detect what is fiction and what isn't.
|
| People are treating it like it's Wikipedia, but it's not. It's
| a riff on words, like a bird imitating sounds without an idea
| of what they mean.
| convexfunction wrote:
| Just imagine the hell we'd be in if _people_ could give wrong
| answers in an authoritative tone and then insist they
| absolutely can 't be wrong!
| bambax wrote:
| For some reason, we assume what comes out of a computer is
| more trustworthy than what people say. We think computers
| are transparent, reliable, idempotent and don't have an
| agenda. Even more so if we call it "intelligent"...
|
| But ChatGPT is a bullshit machine, and that much is new.
| convexfunction wrote:
| Who's "we"? :)
|
| To the extent this perception exists -- and I don't think
| "came from a computer" falls within the top 5 actually
| effective methods of laundering bullshit nowadays, though
| maybe it used to -- you might expect that it gets crushed
| into dust as the public gets more exposure to high-
| profile counterexamples.
|
| And, wait, isn't the concern usually that people read AI-
| generated content and trust it but _don 't_ think it came
| from a computer?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, at least a human had to put in the work to write it.
| Now you can automate this low tier content.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Wikipedia couldn't be trusted for the first decade it came
| out, and now you have people use it as an example of a
| trusted resource
| taberiand wrote:
| Maybe it's an opportunity for people to get better at
| critical review of the information they are presented. Maybe
| they'll learn just because they are being told something
| authoritatively that doesn't mean it's right?
|
| And so what if it people misuse the the tool while they
| learn? What's wrong with being wrong?
| bambax wrote:
| We learn by example. What this tool teaches is that self-
| confidence is more important than content. And maybe it is!
| in life in general. But not in the pursuit of knowledge.
|
| Instead of patronizing users by adding a stupid sentence at
| the end of each answer reminding them to be careful, it
| could say every time "I'm just a machine and what I say is
| random; if it's true it's by accident; it's mostly probably
| wrong and only sounds like the truth".
|
| Here's an example I posted in another thread, where the
| machine is repeatedly mistaken but affirms it absolutely,
| positively can't make a mistake:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33852236
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I have no problem with this if they're labeled as such, continue
| community owned, and can be edited like a Wikipedia article for
| corrections.
| seydor wrote:
| Inevitability google will become a competitor to GPT,
| inadvertently
| shinycode wrote:
| I can't wait until 99% of reviews are written with AI. What
| happens when we can't trust anything ?
| saurik wrote:
| Having real people sit around in a call center and write
| reviews for most things--which tend to not have even thousands
| of reviews--is sufficiently cheap that I'd argue this isn't a
| new problem, really: reviews as currently implemented always
| were sketchy to trust.
| Oxidation wrote:
| 2022: inflation of basic essentials like food and energy.
|
| 2023: hyperinflation of internet points.
| brindidrip wrote:
| At some point it seems like Stack Overflow will just be an
| archive of guided ChatGPT responses.
| duckmysick wrote:
| At one point new models will be trained on contaminated data
| where some of the content is AI-generated. "Pure" datasets will
| be highly prized, just like the steel made before nuclear
| detonations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
| Ancalagon wrote:
| This is going to make me very suspect of any Stack Overflow
| Solutions after Nov 2022
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