[HN Gopher] Stackoverflow is investing into baking GenAI
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Stackoverflow is investing into baking GenAI
        
       Author : rounakdatta
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2023-06-20 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stackoverflow.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stackoverflow.co)
        
       | theptip wrote:
       | Embedding search in a chat UI over all the SO content (with valid
       | citations) would be the obvious feature I'd build if I were them.
       | 
       | "Me: How do I do X? SO: here are a few highly voted answers ...
       | Me: not quite, what if to foobar is like this? SO: In that case
       | this is probably the answer: ... Me: Upvote answer (giving RLHF
       | to the system to help with future training)"
       | 
       | ChatGPT is great at answering code questions but if you are on SO
       | you want to engage with the community, upvote the answer, or
       | comment etc.
        
       | OldManRyan wrote:
       | Me: Hey AI how do I do this using X?
       | 
       | AI: Why would you ever want to do that using X? You should do Y.
       | 
       | Me: Well I need to do it using X because of these reasons.
       | 
       | AI: ...That's dumb. You should just do Y.
        
         | nolok wrote:
         | Use jquery
        
         | sideshowb wrote:
         | Closed as duplicate of "how do I do that using X" even though
         | on close inspection that!=this
        
         | brycewray wrote:
         | That AI is definitely trained on past SO content.
        
       | ulrikhansen54 wrote:
       | Their traffic is rumoured to be down 25-30% after ChatGPT was
       | released, so good to see that they are doing something to keep
       | the community alive in the new era of GenAI.
        
         | bhouston wrote:
         | SimilarWeb shows that their traffic drop is real, roughly 20%
         | in the last two months:
         | 
         | https://www.similarweb.com/website/stackoverflow.com/#overvi...
        
         | nolok wrote:
         | I don't know about ChatGPT, but for me Phind [1] really lowered
         | my SO usage
         | 
         | [1] https://www.phind.com/
        
           | waselighis wrote:
           | It's far from perfect, but in my experience, it's much better
           | than both ChatGPT and Bard. I've also used it to ask non-
           | technical questions, and it often generates a good response,
           | so not really just "for developers".
        
           | chx wrote:
           | It's ... interesting.
           | 
           | I asked
           | 
           | how do i remove diacritics from unicode characters https://ww
           | w.phind.com/search?cache=bd2b33eb-9454-4d38-975e-1... and it
           | answered with multiple Python code snippets with the second
           | solution getting close to the real solution but is slow and
           | incorrect.
           | 
           | Now if I ask the question I actually want
           | 
           | how do i remove diacritics from unicode characters with php h
           | ttps://www.phind.com/search?cache=c29fe466-16cc-4795-94bf-0..
           | . then you can see it misunderstanding the question: the
           | first answer is the desirable output (I suspect it only works
           | for latin letters tho) except for the iconv problems
           | mentioned but the second is completely incorrect. The third
           | answer is close but no cigar as it only works with Latin
           | characters.
           | 
           | The answer I wanted to see is using the ICU library to run
           | the rules NFD; [:Nonspacing Mark:] Remove; NFC. as mentioned
           | on https://unicode-
           | org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/gener... and
           | https://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc22/a339.html and a million
           | other places but I wanted to link only official Unicode
           | documentation.
        
           | gs17 wrote:
           | I'm not getting great results. It seems to love to latch on
           | to a keyword in the question and run with it (maybe the GPT-4
           | version does better). I asked a question about async in Rust,
           | it gave me a comparison between threads and async and then
           | kept going in that direction instead of answering what I
           | asked. I mentioned a specific crate as something I wanted an
           | alternative to, and it told me a description of the crate.
           | Rephrasing the question a few times eventually got a correct
           | answer, but it's not much better than going straight to
           | ChatGPT.
        
           | 6DM wrote:
           | I've tried Phind a few times, but my gripe with it, so far,
           | is it gives me outdated examples that don't work because the
           | API has changed. Is there some magic keywords I should be
           | including to prevent that?
        
             | nolok wrote:
             | Not sure about that, it's been mostly good for me in the
             | case I needed it
        
               | 6DM wrote:
               | Maybe my use case of dotnet core development is going to
               | be different than for python devs.
        
             | rounakdatta wrote:
             | Make sure that you're logged in, and have turned on the
             | GPT-4 toggle?
        
               | 6DM wrote:
               | I assume that by GPT-4, you're talking about the "Use
               | Best Model" toggle right?
        
         | rdslw wrote:
         | Yep. they're in deeeep panic mode due to AI.
         | 
         | They're currently sending, massive unsolicited e-mail campaign
         | to all (sic!) stackoverflow users. Message they're sending
         | below. Please find 6 places where they try to address AI
         | directly and indirectly :)
         | 
         |  _Stack Overflow is investing heavily in enhancing the
         | developer experience across our products, using AI and other
         | technology, to get people to solutions faster.
         | 
         | As part of that initiative, we've launched Stack Overflow Labs.
         | 
         | Here is where we'll share our experiments, demos, insights, and
         | news - across all Stack Overflow products. We plan to
         | continually add to this site as we experiment and release new
         | solutions. You can sign up to get previews and early access to
         | features that will be available on stackoverflow.com.
         | 
         | Our guiding principles for Stack Overflow Labs
         | 
         | Find new ways to give technologists more time to create amazing
         | things. Accuracy is fundamental. That comes from attributed,
         | peer-reviewed sources that provide transparency. The coding
         | field should be accessible to all, including beginners to
         | advanced users. Humans should always be included in the
         | application of any new technology._
        
           | ulrikhansen54 wrote:
           | Very interesting -- had not seen that. Indeed, I think they
           | could do with a bit of a makeover. Their ad platform is also
           | terrible, way worse than Twitter's, so it is both good and
           | bad that they're feeling a bit of a pinch I suppose.
        
             | imachine1980_ wrote:
             | more than that the platform is the more aggressive in the
             | worst way possible, or your ask so specific about weird
             | behavior that nobody responds or they say this already bean
             | asking even if not(because some mods don't read what they
             | ban), they block conversation with hundreds of votes, they
             | practically insult the post writer for "not knowing", i'm
             | happy if they start changing the nefarious moderation
             | scheme, im 100 % more likely of making the same question in
             | reddit than in stackoverflow people are kind, because
             | moderation encourage that, that would totally increase the
             | use of their platform lots more than this.
        
         | LordShredda wrote:
         | 25% of that traffic was asking questions answered by a
         | glorified markov chain. I dont think stackoverflow lost any
         | valuable users or interaction unless they're looking for
         | newbies with syntax errors to flood the place.
        
           | jrockway wrote:
           | > newbies with syntax errors to flood the place
           | 
           | I think they are looking for that. As long as they read the
           | ads, they don't care how good at programming they are. It's a
           | "web property", not a programming contest ;)
        
         | hanniabu wrote:
         | Could also be due to VSC copilot
        
         | satvikpendem wrote:
         | The founders sold at a perfect time, getting that bag just
         | before traffic dropped due to generative AI.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | Can someone ELI5 for me what GenAI is? I've never heard of them
       | and their website is just the usual content-free buzzword salad:
       | 
       |  _artificial intelligence_ - what else, sigh!
       | 
       |  _transformative_ - you bet
       | 
       |  _business AND consumer_ - so basically everyone, why tell at
       | all?
       | 
       |  _various industries_ - everyone again
       | 
       |  _pioneering_ - yeah, what else
       | 
       |  _vertically integrated_ - sure, I was just waiting for that
       | 
       |  _AI solution_ - oh, who would have thought?
       | 
       |  _AI-powered_!- you are saying!
       | 
       | I've literally not even finished the second sentence on the page
       | and this rambling abomination goes on and on and on...
       | 
       | EDIT
       | 
       | For reference the first two sentences:
       | 
       |  _" GenAI, our mission is to harness the power of artificial
       | intelligence to create transformative tools that benefit
       | businesses and consumers across various industries. GenAI is a
       | pioneering artificial intelligence company focused on developing
       | a vertically integrated AI solutions business through its
       | proprietary MAI Cloud(tm) database, with the development and
       | commercialization of AI-powered tools and solutions for
       | businesses and consumers across multiple industries."_
       | 
       | EDIT
       | 
       | After reading other comments I think GenAI is a generic term
       | (like blockchain) referring to Generative AI. In my defense the
       | OP is not enlightening in this regard at all, so I just googled
       | the term and the company website of genai-solutions.com was the
       | first result. Nothing in the OP says that Stackoverflow is
       | working with this specific company, however, that was just my
       | (likely erroneous) assumption.
        
         | lamp987 wrote:
         | that sounds like a scam
        
         | CoastalCoder wrote:
         | > business AND consumer
         | 
         | At least for me, those two categories don't (strongly) include
         | education or government.
        
           | weinzierl wrote:
           | Fair, but I doubt they'd refuse to sell those too.
        
         | mattnewton wrote:
         | It's an abbreviation for generative ai, which are models
         | trained to synthesize novel things matching structures in the
         | training data. Think GPT, stable diffusion, eleven labs.
        
         | chx wrote:
         | It's a fancy name for automated plagiarism.
        
       | ryandrake wrote:
       | I feel like GenAI has become the next "blockchain". Wall Street
       | (or someone else!) is setting some weird expectation for every
       | company to somehow say "we're doing something with GenAI."
       | Doesn't matter what it is they're doing with it, they just have
       | to say the magic word in a press release or blog post.
       | 
       | Apparently, "we're using AI" is a better story than "we're making
       | great products, regardless of the underlying tech."
        
         | Mutlut wrote:
         | I do believe that we will talk about the AI era in a 'changing
         | the industry' way and not in a 'hot garbage we should have just
         | ignored'.
         | 
         | And we already see the effect and have not even reached any
         | hill.
         | 
         | Its for me the same as with renewable energie and EVs: We have
         | not yet invested that much money into batteries as we could and
         | all the problems we are facing will be gone sooner than later
         | because there is no ceiling currently visible. Just not enough
         | VC for it.
         | 
         | Battery tech started to get much more funding 2022.
         | 
         | AI will defintily change a lot and the progress is astonishing.
        
         | mattnewton wrote:
         | I feel like people learned not to trust their gut with
         | blockchain when they saw a lot of people making a lot of money
         | and noise for things they didn't use and didn't know why anyone
         | would. But this feels different because I see "ordinary" people
         | uploading their Lensa portraits and talking about how cool
         | silly stories they made chatgpt write were. Things understood
         | as interesting or valuable by everyday people that weren't
         | feasible 2 years ago now are.
        
         | im3w1l wrote:
         | I'm thinking it's because stockholders don't want a Kodak.
         | Spending some money on looking at how AI can be used in the
         | company, it could almost be seen as a defensive move.
         | 
         | Funny side note, I misremembered which company it was and my
         | attempts at googling Canon case study brought up nothing
         | relevant. Trying Chatgpt it said that Canon did fine, so I
         | asked it wether there wasn't some company that did fail, and it
         | reminded me it was Kodak.
        
         | wilg wrote:
         | I think a lot of people are having trouble distinguishing
         | between the two highly-hyped technologies. So there's a lot of
         | "fighting the last war".
         | 
         | Generative AI, or AI in general, has actual use cases that
         | people can immediately understand (and in fact use already on a
         | daily basis). Not one crypto fan ever made a pitch for
         | cryptocurrency that made any sense if you asked follow-up
         | questions.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ladberg wrote:
         | In my opinion it's significantly more meaningful than
         | blockchain hype. Blockchain doesn't add any value whatsoever
         | for 99% of the use-cases that companies were advertising it
         | for, but AI can immediately and cheaply create output that
         | previously would have been expensive, time-consuming, or
         | impossible.
        
           | dandellion wrote:
           | To me it looks more like the dotcom era than blockchain.
           | Obviously there's a lot of hype and much of it will be
           | vaporware, but I think there's also some really good stuff
           | that's here to stay. Might be hard to tell which is which if
           | it turns into a bubble until it's over thought...
        
             | theptip wrote:
             | Yeah that's a good baseline. Though I think it's
             | pessimistic; quite frankly AI is going to be far more
             | transformative than the internet.
             | 
             | Anyone who thinks this is like blockchain should spend 10
             | hours coding with GPT-4, and then extrapolate those
             | capabilities out a few years. It's already adding a huge
             | amount of value and productivity gain for me, though you
             | need to know what to use it for.
        
             | teaearlgraycold wrote:
             | Yeah this is more correct. There are already useful
             | implementations of generative AI:
             | 
             | * in/out painting with photo editing software
             | 
             | * GitHub Copilot
             | 
             | * voice synthesis
             | 
             | * ChatGPT (not great for what a lot of people try to use it
             | for, but I find it useful for brainstorming or as a
             | conversational programming Copilot)
        
             | plorkyeran wrote:
             | Yeah, I think dotcom era is a much better comparison. There
             | is a lot of actual innovation happening and real products
             | being built, but there's also a lot of companies slapping
             | .com onto their names and pretending they're part of the
             | new wave, and a lot of exciting new companies which don't
             | actually have a business model. I think a lot of the
             | current AI hype is wildly overblown, but there's zero
             | chance that this all goes nowhere and had no lasting
             | effect.
        
             | majormajor wrote:
             | I like this comparison. A ton of dotcom-era stuff was "the
             | same tech, applied to different industries" - that's
             | actually common for a lot of cycles, by nature. And there
             | are going to be winners and losers, but it's likely you
             | have a lot of application-specific winners that emerge (vs
             | JUST OpenAI/MS/whoever) as well as a fleet of also-rans.
             | 
             | This also doesn't at all require ChatGPT to be the first
             | step on a road to self-aware sentient AI or anything else
             | like that - the tools being built today will already
             | disrupt a lot of things enough to allow for new winners and
             | losers.
        
           | morelisp wrote:
           | This style of AI doesn't generate value, it extracts value.
           | You can deliver a 90% as good product for 10% of the cost.
           | That's great for the person arbitraging the 90% savings, but
           | worse for anyone actually using the service. In this regard
           | it functions primarily as a wealth transfer mechanism, so it
           | ends up like blockchains anyway.
        
             | majormajor wrote:
             | If you want to be reductive, you can say the same about
             | delivering knowledge over the internet.
             | 
             | You get "90%" of the value of the world's best library -
             | access to information - but lose things like a well-
             | organized professional scheme, expert humans to assist you
             | with your queries, and the ability to fill up a table with
             | a bunch of books and reference materials side by side vs
             | what you can fit onto your screen at once.
             | 
             | But you also add some new things - you don't have to
             | travel, multiple people can use it at once, etc - that all
             | basically could be thrown into the "10% the cost" bucket: a
             | company doesn't have to spend to send researchers around,
             | they don't have to wait, etc.
             | 
             | And publishers and artists of course were convinced that
             | the internet would be the death of their current business
             | models, that they were just extractive tools, not creative,
             | and bad for their world; and weren't exactly wrong.
             | 
             | They're both just moving bits around and summarizing more
             | than doing the original research to figure out atomic
             | theory, say. But "10% the cost" - and especially "10% the
             | time required" unlocks A LOT of ability to do more, fancier
             | things. As does _bypassing gatekeeping requirements_ (pay
             | to travel, pay to have marketing copy written, pay /have
             | connections to get access to the right archives, "sponsor"
             | an artist to create stuff personally for you...).
             | 
             | I think ChatGPT is generally _bad_ as a creative agent (vs
             | a carefully used tool) and is gonna result in the internet
             | being full of even more low-value BS than before, but I
             | think it 's inaccurate to say that it's not going to unlock
             | anything new. It's just gonna look way different than
             | today's internet.
        
               | morelisp wrote:
               | Paying an artist to make art is not "gatekeeping", what
               | the fuck.
        
               | majormajor wrote:
               | It's sorta a two-sided thing.
               | 
               | Is a world with Patreon more or less gate-kept from the
               | perspective of "influencing things to your taste" than
               | one where you had to be rich enough to sponsor a Mozart
               | or such?
               | 
               | Is a world where you can't afford to make your own
               | compositions because you don't have the money to afford
               | the tutelage or the free time to master every single step
               | more or less gate-kept than one where you can play around
               | and learn on free or cheap software tools?
               | 
               | It'll be _different_ but there will still be artists -
               | creation will be open to more people than ever before -
               | and I also don 't expect that the power-law function of
               | cultural products and taste will change, so there will
               | still be big winners from those artists able to command
               | $$$.
        
               | morelisp wrote:
               | It's not two-sided! That's just not what "gatekeeping"
               | is! You're talking about like ten other things, none of
               | which are gatekeeping.
        
               | majormajor wrote:
               | Sure, what are those ten other words, sub them in where
               | you like. Maybe "barrier of cost of entry" for most of
               | the ones beyond historical wealthy-person-patronage? I'm
               | not too concerned with what specifically to call examples
               | of how things will change.
               | 
               | Overall I believe that this is certainly a _disruptive_ ,
               | possibly revolutionary, information systems technology
               | but I don't believe it's more uniquely _purely
               | extractive_ than something like the internet or previous
               | disruptive ones.
        
           | grumpyprole wrote:
           | It can certainly create cheap output, but it doesn't create
           | correct output. AI is being used for many use cases where
           | correct output should be the requirement (e.g. Quora
           | answers). Blockchain resulted in a lot of fraud, AI is going
           | to result in a lot of misinformation.
        
           | xfz wrote:
           | Yes, and also StackOverflow is massively impacted by ChatGPT.
           | Many developers are already using the latter in place of SO.
           | It makes sense for them to try and keep those developers on
           | board.
        
         | rg111 wrote:
         | AI hype is like blockchain hype is a common HN meme which is
         | gravely mistaken.
         | 
         | Blockchain didn't have _any_ proper usecase that was better
         | than what it was aiming to replace.
         | 
         | But AI already has real use cases. And it is already solving
         | problems. And I don't mean ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.
         | 
         | I have myself developed and deployed AI models into real-world
         | use that have been in production for years.
         | 
         | Blockchain was only hype. AI has real uses + hype.
         | 
         | AI will be a bubble that will burst, but even after that,
         | people will improve it and use it more.
        
         | avereveard wrote:
         | GenAi can do useful work, blockchain can idk transfer wealth?
         | have programs that work exactly like every other transactional
         | program, but some of the bits are now on the user computer so
         | that everyone is at risk of losing them? reimplementing banks
         | from first principles, but with no guarantees, while speed
         | running frauds?
         | 
         | now, it's true that everyone is jumping on the bandwagon etc,
         | but the two tech are foundamentally different in usefulness.
        
           | ysavir wrote:
           | It's not about the techs themselves, it's about how investors
           | and shareholders push for the hot new thing to be included in
           | the company, even when it's not relevant (or adversarial to)
           | providing a great product.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | That's where I was going with my comment. See this other
             | commenter[1] who quoted StackOverflow's communications:
             | 
             | > _Stack Overflow is investing heavily in enhancing the
             | developer experience across our products, using AI and
             | other technology, to get people to solutions faster._
             | 
             | They could have simply said:
             | 
             | > _Stack Overflow is investing heavily in enhancing the
             | developer experience across our products to get people to
             | solutions faster._
             | 
             | And it would not have changed the meaning of the message at
             | all, except that we would not have read the magic word.
             | 
             | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36405875
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | It's a marketing text, don't expect too much of it. Your
               | simplified version retains the meaning of the original,
               | because neither is actually saying anything. "investing
               | heavily in enhancing the developer experience across our
               | products to get people to solutions faster", if not
               | immediately followed by a list of specific examples, is
               | just manipulative bullshit - it _implies_ a lot, but
               | doesn 't actually _say_ much.
        
         | brucethemoose2 wrote:
         | Its different.
         | 
         | But also its the same.
         | 
         | Economically, generative AI is _massively_ more useful than
         | blockchain algorithms, and its also a much wider field. Its
         | actually producing useful content right now, in spite of being
         | in a _very_ rough and janky state like its straight out of a
         | rushed research lab.
         | 
         | But its also getting the same slimey, scammy hype that crypo
         | and blockchain got. The space is stuffed with grifters. You
         | can't trust what anyone says about it.
        
       | symbolicAGI wrote:
       | The Stackoverflow research initiatives per generative AI are very
       | good examples of what some enterprises can do to improve user-
       | input text context on websites and applications.
       | 
       | 1. Adapt user text to a standard format. 2. Correct spelling and
       | grammar mistakes. 3. Detect inconsistencies during the input
       | process.
        
       | malfist wrote:
       | Whatever happened with the moderator strike over the AI? This
       | seems like a great way to cheapen the brand.
        
         | mwint wrote:
         | Still ongoing.
        
       | fabian2k wrote:
       | Take a look at the answers on this post if you want to know how
       | their most recent genAI experiment went:
       | 
       | https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/425162/we-are-seeki...
       | 
       | In short, it was a complete disaster. They create a tool to
       | provide formatting suggestions on your new questions by piping
       | the entire question into ChatGPT (or one of the comparable
       | services). The internal prompt was figured out within minutes.
       | And there are plenty of examples of this tool messing up
       | questions entirely. And even when it doesn't destroy the
       | questions, it still edits far too much minor and irrelevant
       | stuff.
       | 
       | I don't understand how this experiment could make it this far,
       | they actually put it into a live test on the site. So a part of
       | the new users asking questions got this tool in this broken
       | state. And the way this failed was entirely predictable when you
       | just pipe content into genAI.
        
         | LordDragonfang wrote:
         | I think this experiment would have gone over much better if SO
         | leadership wasn't so disconnected from the actual users of the
         | site, and had been willing to say "here's an early prototype,
         | please red-team it and show us where it breaks so we can
         | hopefully get it to a state where it's actually useful in a way
         | that makes your jobs easier"
        
         | lamontcg wrote:
         | I found it useful to clean up a question I wrote recently. I
         | had to do a few round trips through it, and did need to proof
         | read and fix what it suggested, but nothing too major. The
         | result was something that was much tighter than my usual aspy
         | prose, and got positive responses and suggestions and didn't
         | seem to trigger anyone being pissy.
        
         | bhouston wrote:
         | > The internal prompt was figured out within minutes.
         | 
         | So what?
         | 
         | > And there are plenty of examples of this tool messing up
         | questions entirely. And even when it doesn't destroy the
         | questions, it still edits far too much minor and irrelevant
         | stuff.
         | 
         | If it can usually help but sometimes doesn't, then this is just
         | an optional suggestion which can be skipped. This seems like a
         | decent design for rolling this out.
        
           | fabian2k wrote:
           | The users that are the most likely to benefit from this kind
           | of tool are also the least likely to be able to judge the
           | quality of the edits it produces. Especially if you're not a
           | native English speaker you might not notice that it changed
           | the meaning of the text in some way.
           | 
           | It wasn't hard to trigger problems here, it isn't like this
           | mostly works. And it also breaks code in a way that
           | invalidates the question. With no visible trail of the
           | original question being available.
        
       | stabbles wrote:
       | In a way SO is the perfect platform for human feedback in
       | reinforcement learning
        
         | nomilk wrote:
         | True, feedback on stack overflow can be brutally thorough and
         | exacting to an extreme that the general population (or a
         | mechanical turk) would struggle to emulate; perfect feedback
         | for a LLM.
        
       | csjh wrote:
       | Duplicate question closing will now be instant if your question
       | has an embedding that's remotely close to another question
        
         | ethbr0 wrote:
         | It really is obscene how many useful answers I've found on
         | threads that were subsequently closed as duplicate -- with a
         | link to a question that's not even close to the same.
        
           | coffeeshopgoth wrote:
           | I was going to post this response, too. Yes, you can close it
           | because it is duplicate, but god knows the huge range of how
           | good people are at explaining something to people of various
           | levels of understanding.
        
             | ethbr0 wrote:
             | After reviewing a few meta posts on it, much appears to
             | boil down to there being poor SO UX options.
             | 
             | I.e. there isn't a "closed for being homework" category
             | 
             | Consequently, duplicate served as the go-to but
             | inappropriate "there's something wrong with this, and I
             | don't want to deal with it" button.
        
           | josephcsible wrote:
           | Can you provide a link to an example or two of that
           | happening?
        
             | ethbr0 wrote:
             | As near as I can tell, SO prunes duplicate-tagged
             | questions. I 404d on the first few examples I pulled.
        
               | josephcsible wrote:
               | Users with 10k reputation will be able to see them even
               | though they're deleted. Can you post them anyway?
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | Wait, what?!
               | 
               | SO hides questions with answers... but still retains them
               | and allows logged in users with enough karma to see them?
               | 
               | That is insane.
        
           | yomlica8 wrote:
           | Or the original is like a decade old and the solutions don't
           | even work anymore. And even if they did still work, maybe
           | some one has come up with some new solutions in the last 10
           | years and I'd like to hear about as well.
        
       | NobodyNada wrote:
       | They tried A/B testing the "question formatting assistant" on the
       | production site a few days ago. The results were...not great, and
       | they had to quickly shut off the experiment:
       | https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/425162/we-are-seeki...
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | And before long it's going to be, "Let AI write an answer to a
       | question and you only need to edit it!".
        
         | dataengineer56 wrote:
         | I'd rather it helped people to write coherent questions rather
         | than the usual dumping of a few irrelevant lines of logs onto
         | the page and asking "please help".
        
         | agilob wrote:
         | Do I need to ask the question or can I automate that too?
        
           | easyThrowaway wrote:
           | As someone already said in another thread somewhere, we
           | should cut to the chase already and let ChatGPT click the ads
           | on the page.
           | 
           | Even better, we can further optimize the experience by
           | simplifying all news websites, reddit, SO networks to just a
           | few empty HTML pages with ads so the can be clicked by the
           | AI. No need for content, agencies, editorial staff.
           | 
           | I mean, sure, Facebook, Microsoft and Google would probably
           | say that's against the TOS of their ad services, but after
           | all it's not like they cared about TOSes when they used the
           | same websites to train their models.
        
             | wizzwizz4 wrote:
             | You might be interested in AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io/
             | 
             | It's a uBlock Origin fork that behaves as described.
        
           | Y_Y wrote:
           | If you have to ask...
        
         | armchairhacker wrote:
         | > Dear members of the Stack Overflow community, I hope this
         | question finds you well.
         | 
         | > I am a novice in the world of JavaScript and, as part of my
         | learning journey, I've undertaken the task of attempting to
         | manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM). Specifically, my
         | aim is to add a new div element dynamically to my webpage,
         | utilizing the common programming language called JavaScript.
         | 
         | > This snippet of code is my current attempt:
         | var newDiv = document.createElement("div");         newDiv.id =
         | "newDiv";         newDiv.innerHTML = "This is a new div.";
         | document.body.appendChild(newDiv);
         | 
         | > The logic behind the above code snippet is as follows:
         | 
         | > - I create a new div element by invoking
         | document.createElement("div") and assign it to the variable
         | newDiv.
         | 
         | > - I then assign an id to the newly created div by setting
         | newDiv.id to "newDiv".
         | 
         | > - To add content to the div, I set newDiv.innerHTML to "This
         | is a new div."
         | 
         | > - Lastly, I attempt to append the new div to the body of the
         | document using document.body.appendChild(newDiv).
         | 
         | > Nevertheless, the code does not seem to produce the "div" I
         | was hoping for. Additionally, there are no errors displayed on
         | the console. I have attempted to diagnose the issue myself but
         | have failed, and I have exhausted all other online resources
         | 
         | > Time is of the essence. Additionally, I would prefer this
         | answer to be as concise and easy to understand as possible.
         | Your guidance and assistance in this matter is very much
         | appreciated.
         | 
         | > Thanks in advance,
         | 
         | > user4798145768
        
           | wizzwizz4 wrote:
           | [closed]: needs details or clarity
           | 
           | 0 comments
        
         | graypegg wrote:
         | I mean, that would be the "next step" wouldn't it? I'm less
         | scared for the big stack exchange communities which have enough
         | people to vote out junk, but for the little ones I'm not sure.
        
       | supriyo-biswas wrote:
       | SO could go on all in using the 100k context length of Anthropic
       | Claude, feed in the documentation of a library or product, and
       | have it generate questions and answers, and post them on Stack
       | Overflow to fake activity now that everyone I know participates
       | on it in a read-only fashion.
        
       | rounakdatta wrote:
       | Just like wealth redistribution and inequality, I'm seeing this
       | migration of "programming discussion" moving from open forums
       | like SO to closed systems (guarded silos of GH Copilot, ChatGPT,
       | Phind and others). We are preferring to ask the nitpicks in their
       | chatbox instead of as a public comment on Stackoverflow.
        
       | lopkeny12ko wrote:
       | Is this why ChatGPT answers are banned on SO? Because it would
       | compete with their own upcoming business?
        
         | ComputerGuru wrote:
         | Really no. I'll quote myself replying to another HN comment:
         | 
         |  _> If you go to ChatGPT and just ask it, you'll get the
         | equivalent of asking Reddit: a decent chance of someone writing
         | you some fan-fiction, or providing plausible bullshit for the
         | lulz.
         | 
         | I disagree. A layman can't troll someone from the industry let
         | alone a subject matter expert but ChatGPT can. It knows all the
         | right shibboleths, appears to have the domain knowledge, then
         | gets you in your weak spot: individual plausible facts that
         | just aren't true. Reddit trolls generally troll "noobs" asking
         | entry-level questions or other readers. It's like understanding
         | why trolls like that exist on Reddit but not StackOverflow. And
         | why SO has a hard ban on AI-generated answers: because the
         | existing controls to defend against that kind of trash answer
         | rely on sniff tests that ChatGPT passes handily.. until put to
         | actual scrutiny._
        
           | meowface wrote:
           | Is there really an epidemic of troll answers? Not sure I've
           | ever seen intentionally bad programming advice on reddit.
           | (Unintentionally bad, sure.) Even 4chan of all places is rare
           | in this regard, honestly, and in the cases where it does
           | happen the answer is usually dripping with blatant sarcasm.
           | 
           | I'd guess totally made-up answers will be way, way, _way_
           | more common with LLMs compared to any human social network.
        
             | ComputerGuru wrote:
             | There absolutely is an epidemic of troll answers on Reddit
             | _but not on programming subs_ , presumably precisely
             | because of the aforementioned reasons. The kind of person
             | that knows the actual answer (or has sufficient background
             | knowledge to BS a believable answer) is the kind of person
             | that won't post a troll answer in a programming sub. The
             | kind of person that will post a troll answer won't have the
             | requisite background knowledge and will be immediately
             | "outed" and downvoted on the more legitimate (not r/all)
             | subs, and eventually be discouraged from trying.
             | 
             | ChatGPT is immune to this organic feedback loop.
        
         | balder1991 wrote:
         | How would they know the answer was gotten from ChatGPT though?
         | If I ask ChatGPT something, test it and confirm it's correct, I
         | can answer it in a simple way.
        
         | LordDragonfang wrote:
         | Actually, SO leadership recently pissed off their moderators by
         | updating their moderation guidelines to _de facto_ allow
         | Generative AI answers on the site:
         | 
         | https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389811/moderation-s...
         | 
         | So it's the opposite, they decided to unban it just as they
         | started selling the same thing.
        
       | madsbuch wrote:
       | As writing, all comments seems to be quite negative. I think this
       | is awesome and definitely something that can unlock a lot for me.
       | 
       | I problem I often encounter when using stack overflow is that
       | questions are answered ina a very narrow way that doesn't really
       | fit me. So I need to bounce between 3-4 answers that are related
       | to get the right solution.
       | 
       | I would guess this solution could do this for me, provided that I
       | provide anough context is my problem prompt.
        
       | nomilk wrote:
       | The projects listed [1] seem a bit mundane at first, but I prefer
       | that to the opposite, where companies shoehorn GPT into places
       | where it just irritates users.
       | 
       | [1] Title generation, Formatting assistant, Sentiment analysis,
       | Identifying duplicate questions
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-06-20 23:03 UTC)