[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be...
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Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden in
HN guidelines?
As various LLMs become more and more popular, so does comments with
"I asked Gemini, and Gemini said ....". While the guidelines were
written (and iterated on) during a different time, it seems like it
might be time to have a discussion about if those sort of comments
should be welcomed on HN or not. Some examples: -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360 -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200460 -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080064 Personally, I'm on
HN for the human conversation, and large LLM-generated texts just
get in the way of reading real text from real humans (assumed, at
least). What do you think? Should responses that basically boil
down to "I asked $LLM about $X, and here is what $LLM said:" be
allowed on HN, and the guidelines updated to state that people
shouldn't critique it (similar to other guidelines currently), or
should a new guideline be added to ask people from refrain from
copy-pasting large LLM responses into the comments, or something
else completely?
Author : embedding-shape
Score : 719 points
Date : 2025-12-09 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
| JohnFen wrote:
| I find such replies to be worthless wastes of space on par with
| "let me google that for you" replies. If I want to know what
| genAI has to say about something, I can just ask it myself. I'm
| more interested in what the commenter has to say.
|
| But I don't know that we need any sort of official ban against
| them. This community is pretty good about downvoting unhelpful
| comments, and there is a whole spectrum of unhelpful comments
| that have nothing to do with genAI. It seems impractical to
| overtly list them all.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| There is friction to asking AI yourself. And a comment
| typically means that "I found the AI answer insightful enough
| to share".
| codechicago277 wrote:
| The problem is that the AI answer could just be wrong, and
| there's another step required to validate what it spit out.
| Sharing the conversation without fact checking it just adds
| noise.
| ben_w wrote:
| Unfortunately it's easier to train an AI to be convincing
| than to be correct, so it can look insightful before it's
| true.
|
| Like horoscopes, only they're not actually that bad so roll a
| D20 and on a set of numbers known only to the DM (and varying
| with domain and task length) you get a textbook answer and on
| the rest you get convincing nonsense.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > Unfortunately it's easier to train an AI to be convincing
| than to be correct, so it can look insightful before it's
| true.
|
| This nails it. This is the fundamental problem with using
| AI material. You are outsourcing thinking in a way where
| the response is likely to look very correct without any
| actual logic or connection to truth.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| "Friciton" in this case is just plain old laziness and I
| don't think that it should be encouraged.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Then state your understanding of what it said in your own
| words, maybe you'll realize it's bunk mid-sentence.
| shishy wrote:
| People are probably copy pasting already without that disclosure
| :(
| coffeecat wrote:
| I'm sure there are people who spend their time doing this, but
| I don't understand the motive. Doesn't one post in comment
| threads because one wishes to share their thoughts with other
| humans?
| D13Fd wrote:
| That's one reason why I post comments (and none of my
| comments are AI-generated). But I think some people cut-and-
| paste AI responses because they like winning upvotes and
| running up an upvote counter.
| chemotaxis wrote:
| This wouldn't ban the behavior, just the disclosure of it.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Agreed - in fact these folks are going out of their way to be
| transparent about it. It's much easier to just take credit for
| a "smart" answer
| muwtyhg wrote:
| So those folks must be doing it because they think it's
| helpful, right? They are explicitly trying _not_ to take
| credit for the words. Do you think, after a ban of these
| kinds of posts are implemented, that those posters would
| start hiding their use of AI to create replies, or would they
| just stop using AI to reply at all?
| AlwaysRock wrote:
| I guess... That is the point in my opinion.
|
| If you just say, "here is what llm said" if that turns out to
| be nonsense you can say something like, "I was just passing
| along the llm response, not my own opinion"
|
| But if you take the llm response and present it as your own, at
| least there is slightly more ownership over the opinion.
|
| This is kind of splitting hairs but hopefully it makes people
| actually read the response themselves before posting it.
| sfink wrote:
| That was my immediate thought too, but I'm still in favor of
| banning it in order to make it a community norm. Right now,
| people generally seem to think that such comments are adding
| some sort of signal, and I don't think they're stupid to think
| that. Not stupid, just wrong. And people feel personally
| attacked and so get defensive and harden their position, so it
| would be better to just make it against the guidelines with
| some justification there rather than trying to control it with
| individual arguments (with a defensive person!) or downvoting
| alone. (And the guidelines would be the place to put the
| explanation of why it's disallowed.)
|
| People will still do it, but now they're doing it intentionally
| in a context where they know it's against the guidelines, which
| is a whole different situation. Staying up late to argue the
| point (and thus add noise) is obviously not going to work.
|
| I'd prefer the guideline to allow machine translation, though,
| even when done with a chatbot. If you are using a chatbot
| intentionally with the purpose of translating your thoughts,
| that's a very different comment than spewing out the output
| from a prompt about the topic. There's some gray area where
| they fuzz together, but in my experience they're still very
| different. (Even though the translated ones set off all the
| alarm bells in terms of style, formatting, and phrasing.)
| gortok wrote:
| While we will never be able to get folks to stop using AI to
| "help" them shape their replies, it's super annoying to have
| folks think that by using AI that they're doing others a favor.
| If I wanted to know what an AI thinks I'll ask it. I'm here
| because I want to know what other people think.
|
| At this point, I make value judgments when folks use AI for their
| writing, and will continue to do so.
| sbrother wrote:
| I strongly agree with this sentiment and I feel the same way.
|
| The one exception for me though is when non-native English
| speakers want to participate in an English language discussion.
| LLMs produce by far the most natural sounding translations
| nowadays, but they imbue that "AI style" onto their output. I'm
| not sure what the solution here is because it's great for non-
| native speakers to be able to participate, but I find myself
| discarding any POV that was obviously expressed with AI.
| justin66 wrote:
| As AIs get good enough, dealing with someone struggling with
| English will begin to feel like a breath of fresh air.
| tensegrist wrote:
| one solution that appeals to me (and which i have myself used
| in online spaces where i don't speak the language) is to
| write in a language you can speak and let people translate it
| themselves however they wish
|
| i don't think it is likely to catch on, though, outside of
| culturally multilingual environments
| internetter wrote:
| > i don't think it is likely to catch on, though, outside
| of culturally multilingual environments
|
| It can if the platform has built in translation with an
| appropriate disclosure! for instance on Twitter or
| Mastodon.
|
| https://blog.thms.uk/2023/02/mastodon-translation-options
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Maybe they should say "AI used for translation only". And
| maybe us English speakers who don't care what AI "thinks"
| should still be tolerant of it for translations.
| kps wrote:
| When I occasionally use MTL into a language I'm not fluent
| in, I say so. This makes the reader aware that there may be
| errors unknown to me that make the writing diverge from my
| intent.
| sejje wrote:
| I think multi -language forums with AI translators is a
| cool idea.
|
| You post in your own language, and the site builds a
| translation for everyone, but they can also see your
| original etc.
|
| I think building it as a forum feature rather than a
| browser feature is maybe worth.
| pjerem wrote:
| You know that this is the most hated feature of reddit ?
| (because the translations are shitty so maybe that can be
| improved)
| sejje wrote:
| I didn't, but I don't think it would work well on an
| established English-only forum.
|
| It should be an intentional place you choose, and
| probably niche, not generic in topic like Reddit.
|
| I'm also open to the thought that it's a terrible idea.
| monerozcash wrote:
| I think the audience that would be interested in this is
| vanishingly small, there exist relatively few
| conversations online that would be meaningfully improved
| by this.
|
| I also suspect that automatically translating a forum
| would tend to attract a far worse ratio of high-effort to
| low-effort contributions than simply accepting posts in a
| specific language. For example, I'd expect programmers
| who don't speak any english to have on average a far
| lower skill level than those who know at least basic
| english.
| subscribed wrote:
| OTOH I am participating in a wonderful discord server
| community, primarily Italians and Brazilians, with other
| nationalities sprinkled in.
|
| We heavily use connected translating apps and it feels
| really great. It would be such a massive pita to copy
| every message somewhere outside, having to translate it
| and then back.
|
| Now, discussions usually follow the sun, and when someone
| not speaking, say, Portuguese wants to join in, they
| usually use English (sometimes German or Dutch), and just
| join.
|
| We know it's not perfect but it works. Without the
| embedded translation? It absolutely wouldn't.
|
| I also used pretty heavily a telegram channel with
| similar setup, but it was even better, with transparent
| auto translation.
| tjoff wrote:
| Reddit would be even worse if the translations were
| better, now you don't have to waste much time because it
| hits you right in the face. Never ever translate
| something without asking about it first.
|
| When I search for something in my native tongue it is
| almost always because I want the perspective of people
| living in my country having experience with X. Now the
| results are riddled with reddit posts that are from all
| over the world with crappy translation instead.
| debugnik wrote:
| That's Twitter currently, in a way. I've seen and had
| short conversations in which each person speaks their own
| language and trusts the other to use the built-in
| translation feature.
| emaro wrote:
| Agreed, but if someone uses LLMs to help them write in
| English, that's very different from the "I asked $AI, and it
| said" pattern.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I honestly think that very few people here are completely
| non-conversant in English. For better or worse, it's the
| dominant language. Amost everyone who doesn't speak English
| natively learns it in school.
|
| I'm fine with reading slightly incorrect English from a
| non-native speaker. I'd rather see that than an LLM
| interpretation.
| guizadillas wrote:
| Non-native English speaker here:
|
| Just use a spell checker and that's it, you don't need LLMs
| to translate for you if your target is learning the language
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Better yet, I prefer to read some unusual word choices from
| someone who's clearly put a lot of work into learning
| English than a robot.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yep, it's a 2 way learning street - you can learn new
| things from non native speakers, and they can learn from
| you as well. Any kind of auto Translation removed this.
| (It's still important to have for non fluent people
| though!)
| dhosek wrote:
| Indeed, this sort of "writing with an accent" can
| illuminate interesting aspects of both English and the
| speakers' native language that I find fascinating.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Yeah, the German speakers I work with often say "Can you
| do this until [some deadline]?" When they mean "can you
| complete this by [some deadline]?"
|
| Its common enough that it must be a literal translation
| difference between German and English.
| RankingMember wrote:
| 100%! I will always give the benefit of the doubt when I
| see odd syntax/grammar (and do my best to provide helpful
| correction if it's off-base to the extent that it muddies
| your point), but hit me with a wordy, em-dash battered
| pile of gobbledygook and you might as well be spitting in
| my face.
| parliament32 wrote:
| > I'm not sure what the solution here
|
| The solution is to use a translator rather than a
| hallucinatory text generator. Google Translate is
| exceptionally good at maintaining naturalness when you put a
| multi-sentence/multi-paragraph block through it -- if you're
| fluent in another language, try it out!
| akavi wrote:
| You are aware that insofar as AI chat apps are
| "hallucinatory text generator(s)", then so is Google
| Translate, right?
|
| (while AFAICT Google hasn't explicitly said so, it's almost
| certainly also powered by an autoregressive transformer
| model, just like ChatGPT)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > it's almost certainly also powered by an autoregressive
| transformer model, just like ChatGPT
|
| The objective of that model, however, is quite different
| to that of an LLM.
| parliament32 wrote:
| I have seen Google Translate hallucinate exactly zero
| times over thousands of queries over the years.
| Meanwhile, LLMs emit garbage roughly 1/3 of the time, in
| my experience. Can you provide an example of Translate
| hallucinating something?
| Teever wrote:
| Every single time it mistranslates something it is
| hallucinations.
| lazide wrote:
| Agreed, and I use G translate daily to handle living in a
| country where 95% of the population doesn't speak any
| language I do.
|
| It occasionally messes up, but not by hallucinating,
| usually grammar salad because what I put into it was
| somewhat ambiguous. It's also terrible with genders in
| Romance languages, but then that is a nightmare for
| humans too.
|
| Palmada palmada bot.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Google Translate doesn't hold a candle to LLMs at
| translating between even common languages.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| IMO chatgpt is a much better translator. Especially if
| you're using one of their normal models like 5.1. I've used
| it many times with an obscure and difficult slavic language
| that i'm fluent in for example, and chatgpt nailed it
| whereas google translate sounded less natural.
|
| The big difference? I could easily prompt the LLM with "i'd
| like to translate the following into language X. For
| context this is a reply to their email on topic Y, and Z is
| a female."
|
| Doing even a tiny bit of prompting will easily get you
| better results than google translate. Some languages have
| words with multiple meanings and the context of the
| sentence/topic is crucial. So is gender in many languages!
| You can't provide any hints like that to google translate,
| especially if you are starting with an un-gendered language
| like English.
|
| I do still use google translate though. When my phone is
| offline, or translating very long text. LLM's perform
| poorly with larger context windows.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Google translate used to be the best, but it's essentially
| outdated technology now, surpassed by even small open-
| weight multilingual LLMs.
|
| Caveat: The remaining thing to watch out for is that _some_
| LLMs are not -by default- prompted to translate accurately
| due to (indeed) hallucination and summarization tendencies.
|
| * Check a given LLM with language-pairs you are familiar
| with before you commit to using one in situations you are
| less familiar with.
|
| * always proof-read if you are at all able to!
|
| Ultimately you should be responsible for your own posts.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| If I want to participate in a conversation in a language I
| don't understand I use machine translation. I include a
| disclaimer that I've used machine translation & hope that
| gets translated. I also include the input to the machine
| translator, so that if someone who understands both languages
| happens to read it they might notice any problems.
| MLgulabio wrote:
| You are joking right?
|
| I mean we probably don't talk about someone not knowing
| english at all, that wouldn't make sense but i'm german and
| i probably write german.
|
| I would often enough tell some LLM to clean up my writing
| (not on hn, sry i'm to lazy for hn)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| You are adding your comments and translating them, thats
| fine.
|
| If it was _just_ a translation, then that adds no value.
| jampa wrote:
| I wrote about this recently. You need to prompt better if you
| don't want AI to flatten your original tone into corporate
| speak:
|
| https://jampauchoa.substack.com/p/writing-with-ai-without-
| th...
|
| TL;DR: Ask for a line edit, "Line edit this Slack message /
| HN comment." It goes beyond fixing grammar (because it
| improves flow) without killing your meaning or adding AI-
| isms.
| estebarb wrote:
| I have found that prompting "translate my text to English, do
| not change anything else" works fine.
|
| However, now I prefer to write directly in English and
| consider whatever grammar/ortographic error I have as part of
| my writing style. I hate having to rewrite the LLM output to
| add myself again into the text.
| carsoon wrote:
| I think even when this is used they should include
| "(translated by llm)" for transparency. When you use a
| intermediate layer there is always bias.
|
| I've written blog articles using HTML and asked llms to
| change certain html structure and it ALSO tried to change
| wording.
|
| If a user doesn't speak a language well, they won't know
| whether their meanings were altered.
| sejje wrote:
| This is the only reasonable take.
|
| It's not worth polluting human-only spaces, particularly top
| tier ones like HN, with generated content--even when it's
| accurate.
|
| Luckily I've not found a lot of that here. That which I do has
| usually been downvoted plenty.
|
| Maybe we could have a new flag option, which became visible to
| everyone with enough "AI" votes so you could skip reading it.
| fwip wrote:
| I'd love to see that for article submissions, as well.
| manmal wrote:
| What LLM generate is an amalgamation of human content they
| have been trained on. I get that you want what actual humans
| think, but that's also basically a weighted amalgamation.
| Real, actual insight, is incredibly rare and I doubt you see
| much of it on HN (sorry guys; I'll live with the downvotes).
| dogleash wrote:
| I'm downvoting exclusively for your comment about
| downvotes.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Why do you suppose we come to HN if not for actual insight?
| There are other sites much better for getting an endless
| stream of weighted amalgamations of human content.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Coming here for insight does not in any way demonstrate
| that genuine insight is actually widely available here.
| manmal wrote:
| It's obviously an amalgamation that's weighted in favor
| of your interests.
| hotsauceror wrote:
| I agree with this sentiment.
|
| When I hear "ChatGPT says..." on some topic at work, I
| interpret that as "Let me google that for you, only I neither
| care nor respect you enough to bother confirming that that
| answer is correct."
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I disagree. It's not a potential avenue for further
| investigation. Imo ai should always be consulted
| OptionOfT wrote:
| But I'm not interested in the AI's point of view. I have
| done that myself.
|
| I want to hear your thoughts, based on your unique
| experience, not the AI's which is an average of the
| experience of the data it ingested. The things that are
| unique will not surface because they aren't seen enough
| times.
|
| Your value is not in copy-pasting. It's in your experience.
| zby wrote:
| What if I agree with what AI wrote? Should I try to hide
| that it was generated?
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Did you agree with it before the AI wrote it though (in
| which case, what was the point of involving the AI)?
|
| If you agree with it after seeing it, but wouldn't have
| thought to write it yourself, what reason is there to
| believe you wouldn't have found some other, contradictory
| AI output just as agreeable? Since one of the big
| objections to AI output is that they uncritically agree
| with nonsense from the user, scycophancy-squared is even
| more objectionable. It's worth taking the effort to avoid
| falling into this trap.
| zby wrote:
| Well - the point of involving the AI is that very often
| it explains my intuitions way better than I can. It
| instantiates them and fills in all the details, sometimes
| showing new ways.
|
| I find the second paragraphs contradictory - either you
| fear that I would agree with random stuff that the AI
| writes or you believe that the sycophant AI is writing
| what I believe. I like to think that I can recognise good
| arguments, but if I am wrong here - then why would you
| prefer my writing from an LLM generated one?
| MarkusQ wrote:
| > why would you prefer my writing from an LLM generated
| one?
|
| Because I'm interested in hearing your voice, your
| thoughts, as you express them, for the same reason I like
| eating real fruit, grown on a tree, to sucking high-
| fructose fruit goo squeezed fresh from a tube.
| swampangel wrote:
| > Well - the point of involving the AI is that very often
| it explains my intuitions way better than I can. It
| instantiates them and fills in all the details
|
| > I like to think that I can recognise good arguments,
| but if I am wrong here - then why would you prefer my
| writing from an LLM generated one?
|
| Because the AI will happily argue either side of a
| debate, in both cases the meaningful/useful/reliable
| information in the post is constrained by the limits of
| _your_ knowledge. The LLM-based one will merely be
| longer.
|
| Can you think of a time when you asked AI to support your
| point, and upon reviewing its argument, decided it was
| unconvincing after all and changed your mind?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| You could instead ask Kimi K2 to demolish your point
| instead, and you may have to hold it back from insulting
| your mom in the ps.
|
| Generally if your point holds up under polishing under
| Kimi pressure, by all means post it on HN, I'd say.
|
| Other LLMs do tend to be more gentle with you, but if you
| ask them to be critical or to steelman the opposing view,
| they can be powerful tools, and even -dare I say- a path
| to understanding the other.
|
| Try this: Ask an LLM to read the view of the person
| you're answering to, and ask it steelman their arguments.
| Now think to see if your point is still defensible, or
| what kinds of sources or data you'd need to bolster it.
| subscribed wrote:
| No, but this is different.
|
| "I asked an $LLM and it said" is very different than "in
| my opinion".
|
| Your opinion may be supported by any sources you want as
| long as it's a genuine opinion (yours), _presumably_
| something you can defend as it 's your opinion.
| zby wrote:
| I don't know - the linked examples were low quality -
| sure.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| If I wanted to consult an AI, I'd consult an AI. "I
| consulted an AI and pasted in its answer" is worse than
| worthless. "I consulted an AI and carefully checked the
| result" _might_ have value.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| In a work context, for me at least, this class of reply can
| actually be pretty useful. It indicates somebody already
| minimally investigated a thing and may have at least some
| information about it, but they're hedging on certainty by
| letting me know "the robots say."
|
| It's a huge asterisk to avoid stating something as a fact,
| but indicates something that could/should be explored
| further.
|
| (This would be nonsense if they sent me an email or wrote an
| issue up this way or something, but in an ad-hoc conversation
| it makes sense to me)
|
| I think this is different than on HN or other message boards,
| it's not really used by people to hedge here, if they don't
| actually personally believe something to be the case (or have
| a question to ask) why are they posting anyway? No value
| there.
| lanstin wrote:
| Yeah if the person doing it is smart I would trust they had
| the reasonable prompt and ruled out flagrant BS answers.
| Sometimes the key thing is just to know the name of the
| thing for the answer. It's equally as good/annoying as
| reporting what Google search gives for the answer. I guess
| I assume mostly people will do the AI query/search and then
| decide to share the answer based on how good or useful it
| seems.
| dogleash wrote:
| > can actually be pretty useful. It indicates somebody
| already minimally investigated a thing
|
| Every time this happens to me at work one of two things
| happens:
|
| 1) I know a bit about the topic, and they're proudly
| regurgitating an LLM about an aspect of the topic we didn't
| discuss last time. They think they're telling me something
| I don't know, while in reality they're exposing how
| haphazard their LLM use was.
|
| 2) I don't know about the topic, so I have to judge the
| usefulness of what they say based on all the times that
| person did scenario Number 1.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| You can have the same problem with Googling things, LLMs
| usually form conclusions I align with when I do the
| independent research. Google isn't anywhere near as good as
| it was 5 years ago. All the years of crippling their search
| ranking system and suppressing results has caught up to them
| to the point most LLMs are Google replacements.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| To my mind, it's like someone saying "I asked Fred down at
| the pub and he said...". It's someone stupidly repeating
| something that's likely stupid anyway.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > When I hear "ChatGPT says..." on some topic at work, I
| interpret that as "Let me google that for you, only I neither
| care nor respect you enough to bother confirming that that
| answer is correct."
|
| I have a less cynical take. These are casual replies, and
| being forthright about AI usage should be encouraged in such
| circumstances. It's a cue for you to take it with a grain of
| salt. By discouraging this you are encouraging the opposite:
| for people to mask their AI usage and pretend they are
| experts or did extensive research on their own.
|
| If you wish to dismiss replies that admit AI usage you are
| free to do so. But you lose that freedom when people start to
| hide the origins of their information out of peer pressure or
| shame.
| dogleash wrote:
| I am amused by the defeatism in your response that
| expecting anyone to actually try anymore is a lost cause.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > expecting anyone to actually try anymore is a lost
| cause
|
| Well now you're putting words in my mouth.
|
| If you make it against the rules to cite AI in your
| replies then you end up with people masking their AI
| usage, and you'll never again be able to encourage them
| to do the legwork themselves.
| chatmasta wrote:
| If someone is asking a technical question along the lines
| of "how does this work" or "can I do this," then I'd
| expect them to Google it first. Nowadays I'd also expect
| them to ask ChatGPT. So I'd appreciate their preamble
| explaining that they already did that, and giving me the
| chance to say "yep, ChatGPT is basically right, but
| there's some nuance about X, Y, and Z..."
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Expecting people to stop asking casual questions to LLMs
| is definitely a lost cause. This tech isn't going
| anywhere, no matter how much you dislike it.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| These days, most people who try googling for answers end up
| reading an article which was generated by AI anyway. At least
| if you go right to the bot, you know what you're getting.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| "lets ask the dipshit" is how my colleague phrases it
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think there's well done and usually unnoticeable and poorly
| done and insulting. I don't agree that the two are always the
| same, but I think lots of people might think they are doing the
| former but are not aware enough to realize they are doing the
| latter.
| amelius wrote:
| "I asked AI and it said basically the same as you."
| deadbabe wrote:
| On a similar sentiment, I'm sick and tired of people telling
| others to go google stuff.
|
| The point of asking on a public forum is to get socially
| relatable human answers.
| jedbrooke wrote:
| I've seen so many SO and other forum posts where the first
| comment is someone smugly saying "just google it, silly".
|
| Only that, I'm not the one who posted the original question,
| I DID google (well DDG) it, and the results led me to someone
| asking the same question as me, but it only had that one
| useless reply
| jquery wrote:
| Or worse, you google an obscure topic and the top reply is
| "apple mountain sleep blue chipmunk fart This comment was
| mass deleted with Redact" and the replies to that are all
| "thanks that solved my problem"
| delecti wrote:
| Agreed, with a caveat. If someone is asking for an objective
| answer which could be easily found with a search, and hasn't
| indicated why they haven't taken that approach, it really
| comes across as laziness and offloading their work onto other
| people. Like, "what are the best restaurants in an area" is a
| good question for human input; "how do you deserialize a JSON
| payload" should include some explanation for what they've
| tried, including searches.
| subscribed wrote:
| Yeah, but you get two extremes.
|
| Most often I see these answers under posts like "what's the
| longest river or earth", or "is Bogota a capital of
| Venezuela?"
|
| Like. Seriously. It often takes MORE time to post this sort
| of lazy question than actually look it up. Literally paste
| their question into $search_engine and get 10 the same
| answers on the first page.
|
| Actually sometimes telling a person like this "just Google
| it" is beneficial in two ways: it helps the poster
| develop/train their own search skills, and it may gently
| nudge someone else into trying that approach first, too. At
| the same time slowing the raise of the extremely low
| effort/quality posts.
|
| But sure, sometimes you get the other kind. Very rarely.
| delfinom wrote:
| It's kinda funny how we once in internet culture had "lmgtfy"
| links because people weren't just searching google instead of
| asking questions.
|
| But now people are vomiting chatgpt responses instead of
| linking to chatgpt.
| subscribed wrote:
| No, linking to chatgpt is not a response. For some sort of
| questions it (which model exactly is it?) might be better,
| for some might be worse.
| TheAdamist wrote:
| Same acronym still works, just swap gemini in place of
| google.
| Balgair wrote:
| Aside:
|
| When someone says: "Source?", is that kinda the same thing?
|
| Like, I'm just going to google the thing the person is asking
| for, same as they can.
|
| Should asking for sources be banned too?
|
| Personally, I think not. HN is better, I feel, when people can
| challenge the assertions of others and ask for the proof, even
| though that proof is easy enough to find for all parties.
| officeplant wrote:
| >Should asking for sources be banned too?
|
| IMO, HN commenters used to at least police themselves more
| and provide sources in their comments when making claims. It
| was what used to separate HN and Reddit for me when it came
| to response quality.
|
| But yes it is rude to just respond "source?" unless they are
| making some wild batshit claims.
| zby wrote:
| I strongly disagree - when I post something that AI wrote I am
| doing it because it explains my thoughts better than I can - it
| digs deeper and finds the support for intuitions that I cannot
| explain nicely. I quote the AI - because I feel this is fair -
| if you ban this you would just lose the information that it was
| generated.
| simianparrot wrote:
| You have to be joking
| dhosek wrote:
| Meh. Might as well encourage people to post links to search
| results then too.
| zby wrote:
| I like when someone links to where he found the
| information.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| This is like saying "I use a motorized scooter at walmart,
| not because I can't walk, but because it 'walks' better than
| I can."
| officeplant wrote:
| > if you ban this you would just lose the information that it
| was generated.
|
| The argument is that the information it generated is just
| noise, and not valuable to the conversation thread at all.
| i80and wrote:
| This is... I'll go with "dystopian". If you're not sure you
| can properly explain an idea, you should think about it more
| deeply.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Or simply not participate in that conversation. It's not
| obligatory to have an opinion on all subjects.
| zby wrote:
| I thought that the point was to post valuable thoughts -
| because it is interesting to read them. But now you
| suggest that it depends on how they were generated.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| > post valuable thoughts
|
| This is neither the mechanism nor the goal of human
| communication, not even on the internet.
| zby wrote:
| Why? This is like saying that you should not use a car -
| because you should walk. Sometimes yes - but as a general
| rule?
| pc86 wrote:
| If an LLM writes better than you do, you need to take a long
| look in the mirror and figure what you can do to fix that,
| because it's _not_ a good thing.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I am just sad that I can no longer use em dashes without people
| immediately assuming what I wrote was AI. :(
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Go ahead, use em--let the haters stew in their own
| typographically-impoverished purgatory.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Some will blindly dismiss anything using them as AI
| generated, but realistically the em-dash is only one sign
| among many. Way more obvious is the actual style of the
| writing. I use Claude all of the time and I can instantly
| tell if a blog post I'm reading was written with Claude. It
| is so distinctive. People use some of the patterns it uses
| some of the time. But it uses all of them all of the time.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| You're absolutely right. No wonder you can recognize it so
| easily. Let me just sit with that.
|
| edit 1: The sincerest form of flattery
|
| edit 2: To be fair, Claude Opus 4.5 seems to encourage
| people to be nicer to each other if you let them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree and I think it might also be useful to have that be
| grounds for a shadowban if we start seeing this getting out of
| control. I'm not interested, even slightly, in what an LLM has
| to say about a thread on HN. If I see an account posting an
| obvious LLM copy/paste, I'm not interested in seeing anything
| from that account either. Maybe a warning on the first offense
| is fair, but it should not be tolerated or this site will just
| drown in the slop.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I think what's important here is to reduce harm even if it's
| still a little annoying. Because if you try to completely ban
| mentioning something is LLM written you'll just have people
| doing it without a disclaimer...
|
| Yes, comments of this nature are bad, annoying, and should be
| downvoted as they have minimal original thought, take minimal
| effort, and are often directly inaccurate. I'd still rather
| they have a disclaimer to make it easier to identify them!
|
| Further, entire articles submitted to HN are clearly written by
| a LLM yet get over a hundred upvotes before people notice
| whether there's a disclaimer or not. These do _not_ get caught
| quickly, and someone clicking on the link will likely generate
| ad revenue that incentives people to continue doing it.
|
| LLM comments _without_ a disclaimer should be avoided, and
| submitted articles written by a LLM should be flagged ASAP to
| avoid abuse since by the time someone clicks the link it 's too
| late.
| BrtByte wrote:
| HN is the mix of personal experience, weird edge cases, and
| even the occasional hot take. That's what makes HN valuable
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| There will be many cases you won't even notice. When people
| know how to use AI to help with their writing, it's not
| noticable.
| delaminator wrote:
| While, I don't disagree with the general sentiment, a black and
| white ban leaves no room for nuance.
|
| I think its a very valid question to ask the AI: "which coding
| languages is most suitable for you to use and why" or other
| similar questions.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| And yet people ask for sources all the time. "I don't care what
| you think, show me what someone else thinks".
| crazygringo wrote:
| I actually disagree, in certain cases. Just today I saw:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204895
|
| when it had only two comments. One of them was the Gemini
| summary, which had already been massively downvoted. I couldn't
| make heads or tails of the paper posted, and probably neither
| could 99% of other HNers. I was extremely happy to see a short
| AI summary. I was on my phone and it's not easy to paste a PDF
| into an LLM.
|
| When something highly technical is posted to HN that most
| people don't have the background to interpret, a summary can be
| extremely valuable, and almost nobody is posting human-written
| summaries together with their links.
|
| If I ask someone a question in the comments, yes it seems rude
| for someone to paste back an LLM answer. But for something
| dense and technical, an LLM summary of the _post_ can be
| extremely helpful. Often just as helpful as the
| https://archive.today... links that are frequently the top
| comment.
| zacmps wrote:
| LLM summaries of papers often make overly broad claims [1].
|
| I don't think this is a good example personally.
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00025
| crazygringo wrote:
| When there's nothing else to go on, it's still more useful
| than nothing.
|
| The story was being upvoted and on the front page, but with
| no substantive comments, clearly because nobody understood
| what the significance of the paper was supposed to be.
|
| I mean, HN comments are wrong all the time too. But if an
| LLM summary can at least start the conversation, I'm not
| really worried if its summary isn't 100% faithful.
| Rarebox wrote:
| That's a pretty good example. The summary is actually useful,
| yet it still annoys me.
|
| But I'm not usually reading the comments to learn, it's just
| entertainment (=distraction). And similar to images or
| videos, I find human-created content more entertaining.
|
| One thing to make such posts more palatable could be if the
| poster added some contribution of their own. In particular,
| they could state whether the AI summary is accurate according
| to their understanding.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I _definitely_ read the comments to learn. I love when
| there 's a post about something I didn't know about, and I
| love when HN'ers can explain details that the post left
| confusing.
|
| If I'm looking for _entertainment_ , HN is not exactly my
| first stop... :P
| Semiapies wrote:
| It's at least a factor in why I value HN commentary so much
| less than I used to.
| ferngodfather wrote:
| Yeah like if I wanted to know what a particular AI says, I'd
| have asked it..
| skobes wrote:
| I hate these too, but I'm worried that a ban just incentivizes
| being more sneaky about it.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I think people are just presuming that others are regurgitating
| AI pablum regardless.
|
| People are seeing AI / LLMs everywhere -- swinging at ghosts --
| and declaring that everyone are bots that are recycling LLM
| output. While the "this is what AI says..." posts are obnoxious
| (and a parallel to the equally boorish lmgtfy nonsense), not
| far behind are the endless "this sounds like AI" type cynical
| jeering. People need to display how world-weary and jaded they
| are, expressing their malcontent with the rise of AI.
|
| And yes, I used an em dash above. I've always been a heavy user
| of the punctuation (being a scattered-brain with lots of
| parenthetical asides and little ability to self-edit) but
| suddenly now it makes my comments bot-like and AI-suspect.
|
| I've been downvoted before for making this obvious, painfully
| true observation, but HNers, and people in general, are much
| less capable at sniffing out AI content than they think they
| are. Everyone has confirmation-biased themselves into thinking
| they've got a unique gift, when really they are no better than
| rolling dice.
| nottorp wrote:
| Thing is, the comments that sound "AI" generated but aren't
| have about as much value as the ones that really are.
|
| Tbh the comments in the topic shouldn't be completely banned.
| As someone else said, they have a place for example when
| comparing LLM output or various prompts giving different
| hallucinations.
|
| But most of them are just reputation chasing by posting a
| summary of something that is usually below the level of HN
| discussion.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| >the comments that sound "AI" generated but aren't have
| about as much value as the ones that really are
|
| When "sounds AI generated" is in the eye of the beholder,
| this is an utterly worthless differentiation. I mean, it's
| actually a rather ironic comment given that I just pointed
| out that people are hilariously bad at determining if
| something is AI generated, and at this point people making
| such declarations are usually announcing their own
| ignorance, or alternately they're pathetically trying to
| prejudice other readers.
|
| People now simply declare opinions they disagree with as
| "AI", in the same way that people think people with
| contrary positions can't possibly be real and must be bots,
| NPCs, shills, and so on. It's all incredibly boring.
| nottorp wrote:
| I mean verbose for no good reasons, not contributing
| meaningfully to the discussion in any way.
|
| Just like those StackOverflow answers - before "AI" -
| that came in 30 seconds on any question and just
| regurgitated in a "helpful" sounding way whatever
| tutorial the poster could find first that looked even
| remotely related to the question.
|
| "Content" where the target is to trick someone into an
| upvote instead of actually caring about the discussion.
| bawolff wrote:
| I would consider that an https://xkcd.com/810/ situation.
|
| My objection to AI comments is not that they are AI per se, but
| they are noise. If people are sneaky enough that they start
| making valuable AI comments, well that is great.
| tpxl wrote:
| I think they should be banned, if there isnt a contribution
| besides what the llm answered. It's akin to 'I googled this',
| which is uninteresting.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I do find it useful in discussions of LLMs themselves. (Gemini
| did this; Claude did it too but it used to get tripped up like
| that).
|
| I do wish people wouldn't do it when it doesn't add to the
| conversation but I would advocate for collective embarrassment
| over a ham-fisted regex.
| MBCook wrote:
| That provides value as you're comparing (and hopefully
| analyzing) output. It's totally on topic.
|
| In a discussion of RISC v5 and if it can beat ARM someone
| just posting "ChatGPT says X" adds absolutely nothing to the
| discussion but noise.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's always fun when people point out an LLMs insane
| responses to simple questions that shatter the illusion of
| them having any intelligence, but besides just giving us a
| good laugh when AI has a meltdown failing to produce a
| seahorse emoji, there are other times it might be valuable to
| discuss how they respond, such as when those responses might
| be dangerous, censored, or clearly being filled with
| advertising/bias
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think "I googled this" can be valid and helpful contribution.
| For example looking up some statistic or fact or an year. If
| that is also verified and sanity checked.
| sejje wrote:
| Yes, while citing an LLM in the same way is probably not as
| useful.
|
| "I googled this" is only helpful when the statistic or fact
| they looked up was correct and well-sourced. When it's a
| reddit comment, you derail into a new argument about strength
| of sources.
|
| The LLM skips a step, and gets you right to the "unusable
| source" argument.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I agree. Telling I googled this and someone has this
| opinion is pretty useless. Be that someone a LLM or random
| poster on internet.
|
| Still, I will fight that someone actually doing the leg
| work even by search engine and reasonable evaluation on a
| few sources is often quite valuable contribution. Sometimes
| even if it is done to discredit someone else.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| "I googled this" usually means actually going into a page and
| seeing what it says, not just copy-pasting the search results
| page itself, which is the equivalent here.
| skywhopper wrote:
| In that case, the correct post here would be to say "here's
| the stat" and cite the actual source (not "I googled it"),
| and then add some additional commentary.
| dormento wrote:
| IMHO its far worse than "I googled this". Googling at least
| requires a modicum of understanding. Pasting slop usually means
| that the person couldn't be bothered to filter out garbage, but
| wants to look smart anyway.
| zby wrote:
| The contribution is the prompt.
| tptacek wrote:
| They are already banned.
| syockit wrote:
| You can add the guideline, but then people would skip the "I
| asked" part and post the answer straight away. Apart from the
| obvious LLMesque structure of most of those bot answers, how
| could you tell if one has crafted the answer so much that it
| looks like a genuine human answer?
|
| Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/810/
| card_zero wrote:
| 15 years ago ... needs updating in regard of how things panned
| out.
| gruez wrote:
| What do you think about other low quality sources? For instance,
| "I checked on infowars.com, and this is what came up"? Should
| they be banned as well?
| everdrive wrote:
| It depends on if you're saying "Infowars has the answer, check
| out this article" vs "I know this isn't a reputable source,
| however it's a popular source and there's an interesting debate
| to be had about Infowars' perspective, even if we can agree
| it's incorrect."
| gruez wrote:
| >I know this isn't a reputable source, however it's a popular
| source and there's an interesting debate to be had about
| Infowars' perspective, even if we can agree it's incorrect."
|
| You can make the same argument for AI output as well, but to
| be clear, I'm referring to the case of someone bringing up a
| low quality source as the answer.
| everdrive wrote:
| Definitely agreed, I think the exact same would apply -- if
| there's an insightful conversation to be had about LLMs or
| their responses, then I think we'd all welcome it. If it's
| just someone saying "I asked the LLM and it said X" then
| we're better off without it.
|
| Not sure how easy that would actually be to moderate, of
| course.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| Your point is conflating a potential low quality source with AI
| output while also making the judgement that <fill in the blank
| site> is a low quality source and to be disregarded 100% of the
| time; ignoring that the potential exists that an informative
| POV may be present, even on a potential low quality source
| site.
| Aachen wrote:
| If you plagiarise text from a source that is objectively
| (measurably, systematically) unreliable, without vetting,
| adding commentary, or doing anything else to add value, then
| 100% yes that's the same issue
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Have you seen this happen in the wild, ever?
|
| I have not encountered a single instance of this ever since
| I've started using HN (and can't find one using the site search
| either) whereas the "I asked ChatGPT" zombie answers are
| rampant.
| ben_w wrote:
| Depends on the context.
|
| I find myself downvoting (flagging) them when I see them as
| submissions, and I can't think of any examples where they were
| good submission content; but for comments? There's enough
| discussion where the AI is the subject itself and therefore it's
| genuinely relevant what the AI says.
|
| Then there's stuff like this, which I'd not seen myself before
| seeing your question, but I'd say asking people here if an AI-
| generated TLDR of 74 (75?) page PDF is correct, is a perfectly
| valid and sensible use:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Banning the disclosure of it is still an improvement. It forces
| the poster to take responsibility for what they have written, as
| now it is in their name.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| To me, the valuable comments are the ones that share the writer's
| expertise and experiences (as opposed to opinions and
| hypothesizing) or the ones that ask interesting questions. LLMs
| have no experience and no real expertise, and nobody seems to be
| posting "I asked an LLM for questions and it said...". Thus, LLM-
| written comments (whether of the form "I asked ChatGPT..." or
| not) have no value to me.
|
| I'm not sure a full ban is possible, but LLM-written comments
| should at least be strongly discouraged.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Related: Comments saying "this feels like AI". It's this
| generation's "Looks shopped" and of zero value, IMO.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Disagree, find these comments valuable - especially if they are
| about an article that I was about to read. It's not the same as
| sockpuppeting accusations, which I think are right to be
| banned.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Yes. Especially on articles - the baseline assumption is that
| most articles are written by humans, and it's nice to know
| when that expectation may have been violated.
| sfink wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't used AIs enough to be that good at
| immediately spotting generated output, so I appreciate the
| chance to reconsider my assumption that something was human-
| written. I'm sure people who did NOT use an AI find it
| insulting to be so accused, but I'd rather normalize those
| accusations and shift the norm to see them as suspicions
| rather than accusations.
|
| I do find it more helpful when people specify _why_ they
| think something was AI-generated. Especially since people are
| often wrong (fwict).
| sbrother wrote:
| Fair, but then that functionality should be built into the
| flagging system. Obvious AI comments (worse, ones that are
| commercially driven) are a cancer that's breaking online
| discussion forums.
| criddell wrote:
| I think Slashdot still has the best moderating system. Being
| able to flag a comment as insightful, funny, offtopic,
| redundant, etc... adds a lot of information and gives more
| control to readers over the types, quantity, and quality of
| discussion they see.
|
| For example, some people seem to be irritated by jokes and
| being able to ignore +5 funny comments might be something
| they want.
| ruuda wrote:
| I find them helpful. It happens semi-regularly now that I read
| something that was upvoted, but after a few sentences I think
| "hmm, something feels off", and after the first two paragraphs
| I suspect it's AI slop. Then I go to the comments, and it turns
| out others noticed too. Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming too
| paranoid in a world where human-written content feels
| increasingly rare, and it's good to know it's not me going
| crazy.
|
| In one recent case (the slop article about adenosine
| signalling) a commenter had a link to the original paper that
| the slop was engagement-farming about. I found that comment
| very helpful.
| yodon wrote:
| > Comments saying "this feels like AI" should be banned.
|
| Strong agree.
|
| If you can make an actually reliable AI detector, stop wasting
| time posting comments on forums and just monetize it to make
| yourself rich.
|
| If you can't, accept that you can't, and stop wasting everyone
| else's time with your unvalidated guesses about whether
| something is AI or not.
|
| The least valuable lowest signal comments are "this feels like
| AI." Worse, they never raise the quality of the discussion
| about the article.
|
| It's "does anyone else hate those scroll bars" and "this site
| shouldn't require JavaScript" for a new generation.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I strongly disagree. I like the social pressure against
| people posting comments that feel like AI (e.g., that add a
| lot of text and little non-BS substance). I also like the
| reminder to view suspicious comments and media through that
| lens.
| notahacker wrote:
| "Does anyone else hate those scrollbars
| ads/modals/unconventional page layout" is the archetypical HN
| response tbf, and often the most upvoted
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure most people can spot blogspam full of
| glaringly obvious cliche AI patterns without being able to
| create a high reliability AI detector. To set that as the
| threshold for commentary on whether an article might have
| been generated is akin to arguing that people shouldn't
| question the accuracy of a claim unless they've built an
| oracle or cracked lie detection.
| djeastm wrote:
| I disagree. Traditional netiquette when downvoting something is
| to explain why.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| One of my recent blog posts got a comment like that, and I
| tried to reframe it as "this is poorly written", and took the
| opportunity to solicit constructive criticism and to reflect on
| my style. I think my latest post improved, and I'm glad I
| adjusted my style.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45652349
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think some people get excited by the notion of identifying
| AI content so start doing so without knowing how. truly
| nothing about your post reads like an LLM generation, it has
| a very non-LLM 'voice'
| Marsymars wrote:
| Not that you shouldn't self-reflect, but some people's style
| is going to be similar to the default GPT voice incidentally,
| and unfortunately for them.
|
| GPT has ruined my enjoyment of using em dashes, for instance.
| dpifke wrote:
| I recently logged onto LinkedIn for the first time in a
| while, and found an old job posting from when I was hiring
| at a startup ~2 decades ago. It's amazing how much it
| sounds like LLM output--I would have absolutely flagged it
| as AI-generated if I saw it today.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Strong disagree: these comments (if they lay out their case
| persuasively) allow me to skip the content completely, and save
| me a lot of time. They provide lots of value, and in fact there
| should be social rewards for the work of wading through value-
| free slop to save others from having to do so.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Does it need a rule? These comments already get heavily down-
| voted. People who can't take a hint aren't going to read the
| rules.
| rsync wrote:
| This is my view.
|
| I tend to dislike these type of posts but a properly designed
| and functioning vote mechanism should take care of it.
|
| If not, it is the voting mechanism that should be tuned - not
| new rules.
| eskori wrote:
| If HN mods think the rule should be applied whatever the
| community thinks (for now), then yes, it needs a rule.
|
| As I see it, down-voting is an expression of the community
| posture, rules are an expression of the "space" posture. It's
| up to the space to determine if there is something relevant
| enough to include it in the rules.
|
| And again, as I see it, community should also have a way to at
| least suggest modifications of the rules.
|
| I agree with you in "People who can't take a hint aren't going
| to read the rules". But as they say: "Ignorance of the law does
| not exempt one from compliance."
| tptacek wrote:
| Again: there already is a rule against this.
| dormento wrote:
| > These comments already get heavily down-voted.
|
| Can't find the link right now (cause why would i save a thread
| like that..) but I've seen more than once situations where
| people get defensive of others that post AI slop comments. Both
| times it was people in YC companies that have personal interest
| related to AI. Both times it looked like a person defending
| sockpuppets.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think it helps having guidelines and not relying on user
| sentiment alone. When I first joined HN I read the guidelines
| and it did make me alter my comments a bit. Hoping everyone who
| joins goes back to review the up/down votes on their comments
| and then take away the right lesson with limited information as
| to why those votes were received seems like wishful thinking.
| For those who do question why they keep getting downvoted, it
| might lead them to check the guidelines and finding the right
| supporting information would be useful.
|
| A lot of the guidelines are about avoiding comments that aren't
| interesting. A copy/paste from an LLM isn't interesting.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm veering towards this being the answer. People downvote the
| superfluous "I don't have any particular thoughts on this, but
| here's what a chatbot has to say" comments all the time. But
| also, there are a lot of discussions around AI on HN, and in
| some of those cases posting verbatim responses from current
| generation chatbots is a pretty good indication of _they can
| give accurate responses when posed problems of this type_ or
| _they still make these mistakes_ or _this is what happens when
| there 's too much RHLF or a silly prompt_...
| BrtByte wrote:
| HN tends to self-regulate pretty well
| 63stack wrote:
| Yes
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| I don't think they should be banned, I think they should be
| encouraged: I'm always appreciative when people who can't think
| for themselves openly identify themselves so that it costs me
| less effort to spot them.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| It should be allowed and downvoted
| lproven wrote:
| I endorse this. Please do take whatever measures are possible to
| discourage it, _even if it won 't stop people_. It at least sends
| a message: this is not wanted, this is not helpful, this is not
| constructive.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| Maybe I remember the Grok ones more clearly but it felt like "I
| asked Grok" was more prevalent than the others.
|
| I feel like the HN guidelines could take inspiration from how
| Oxide uses LLMs. (https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576).
| Specifically the part where using LLMs to write comments violates
| the implicit social contract that the writer should put more care
| and effort and time into it than the reader. The reader reads it
| because they assume this is something a person has put more time
| into than they need to. LLMs break that social contract.
|
| Of course, if it's banned maybe people just stop admitting it.
| josefresco wrote:
| As a community I think we should encourage "disclaimers" aka "I
| asked <AIVENDOR>, and it said...." The information may still be
| valuable.
|
| We can't stop AI comments, but we can encourage good
| behavior/disclosure. I also think brevity should still be
| rewarded, AI or not.
| superfishy wrote:
| I agree. The alternative is prohibiting this practice and
| having these posters not disclose their use of LLMs, which in
| many cases cannot really be easily detected.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| No, most don't think they're doing anything wrong, they think
| they're actually being helpful. So, most wouldn't try to
| disguise it, they'd just stop doing it, if it was against the
| rules.
| abustamam wrote:
| Agreed with them not thinking they're doing anything wrong.
| Disagree with them not wanting to disguise it. If they
| don't think they're doing anything wrong, then they likely
| don't think it's against the rules. If they knew it were
| against the rules, they'd probably disguise it better.
|
| This may actually be a good thing because it'd force them
| to put some thought into dissecting the comment from AI
| instead of just pasting it in wholesale. Depending on how
| well they try to disguise it, of course.
| AlwaysRock wrote:
| Yes. Unless something useful is actually added by the commenter
| or the post is about, "I asked llm x and it said y (that was
| unexpected)".
|
| I have a coworker who does this somewhat often and... I always
| just feel like saying well that is great but what do you think?
| What is your opinion?
|
| At the very least the copy paster should read what the llm says,
| interpret it, fact check it, then write their own response.
| Arainach wrote:
| I keep this link handy to send to such coworkers/people:
|
| https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-...
| exasperaited wrote:
| I have a client who does this -- pastes it into text messages!
| as if it will help me solve the problem they are asking me to
| solve -- and I'm like "that's great I won't be reading it". You
| have to push back.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > At the very least the copy paster should read what the llm
| says, interpret it, fact check it, then write their own
| response.
|
| then write their own response using an AI to improve the
| quality of the response? the implication here is that an AI
| user is going to do some research when using the AI was their
| research. to do the "fact check" as you suggest would mean
| doing actual work, and clearly that's not something the user is
| up for indicated by use of the AI.
|
| so, to me, your suggestion is fantasy level thinking
| 0x00cl wrote:
| This is what DeepSeek said:
|
| > 1. Existing guidelines already handle low-value content. If an
| AI reply is shallow or off-topic, it gets downvoted or flagged. >
| > 2. Transparency is good. Explicitly citing an AI is better than
| users passing off its output as their own, which a ban might
| encourage. > > 3. The community can self-regulate. We don't need
| a new rule for every type of low-effort content. > > The issue is
| low effort, not the tool used. Let downvotes handle it.
| debo_ wrote:
| I was hoping someone did this.
| dominotw wrote:
| i asked chatgpt and it said no its not a good idea to ban
| yomismoaqui wrote:
| I think disclosing the use the AI is better than hiding it. The
| alternative is people using it but not telling for fear of a ban.
| gAI wrote:
| I asked AI, and it said yes.
| exasperaited wrote:
| No, don't ban it. It's a useful signal for value judgements.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| What is annoying about them is that they tend to be long with a
| low signal/noise ratio. I'd be fine with a comment saying. "I
| think the ChatGPT answer is informative: [link]". It'd still
| likely get downvoted to the bottom of the discussion, where it
| likely belongs.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Honestly I judge people pretty harshly. I ask people a question
| in honest good faith. If they're trying to help me out and
| genuinely care and use AI fine.
|
| But most of the time it's like they were bothered that I asked
| and copy paste what an AI said.
|
| Pretty easy. Just add their name to my "GFY" list and move on in
| my life.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I don't see how it is much different than using Wikipedia. They
| are usually about the same answer and at least in Gemini it is
| usually a correct answer now.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| If it's part of an otherwise coherent post making a larger point
| I have no issue with it.
|
| If it's a low effort copy pasta post I think downvotes are
| sufficient unless it starts to obliterate the signal vs noise
| ratio on the site.
| sans_souse wrote:
| There be a thing called Thee Undocumented Rules of HN, aka
| etiquette, in which states - and I quote: "Thou shall not post AI
| generated replies"
|
| I can't locate them, but I'm sure they exist...
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I've seen that document. It also has a rule that states "Thou
| shall not be a bot."
|
| Unfortunately, I can't find them. Its a shame. Everybody should
| read them.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| It's a great doc, I've been training my HN bot on it.
| Zak wrote:
| I don't think people should post the unfiltered output of an LLM
| as if it has value. If a question in a comment has a single
| correct answer that is so easily discoverable, I might downvote
| the comment instead.
|
| I'm not sure making a rule would be helpful though, as I think
| people would ignore it and just not label the source of their
| comment. I'd like to be wrong about that.
| prpl wrote:
| were lmgtfy links ever forbidden?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| For better or worse, that ship has sailed. LLM's are now as
| omnipresent as websearch.
|
| Some people will know how to use it in good taste, others will
| try to abuse it in bad taste.
|
| It might not be universally agreed which is which in every case.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| I think the ship very much has not sailed on how different
| spaces treat LLM responses. Are LLMs something that you can use
| if you want, but are considered rude and banned from being
| blatantly posted without human ownership? "You can't use an
| LLM" would be an impossible rule, but "You can use an LLM to
| write your response but you have to take responsibility for the
| output" is feasible.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think comments like this should link their generation rather
| than C+P it. Not sure if this should be a rule or we can just let
| downvoting do the work - I worry that a rule would be overapplied
| and I think there are contexts that are okay.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| There's hardly a standard for a 'quality' contribution to
| discussion. Many styles, many opinions, many ways to react and
| support one's statements.
|
| If anything, it had been quite customary to supply references for
| some important facts. Thus letting readers to explore further and
| interpret the facts.
|
| With AI in the mix the references become even more important, in
| the view of hallucinations and fact poisoning.
|
| Otherwise, it's a forum. Voting, flagging, ignoring are the usual
| tools.
| wswope wrote:
| > There's hardly a standard for a 'quality' contribution to
| discussion. Many styles, many opinions, many ways to react and
| support one's statements.
|
| My brain-based LLM would like you to know there's a set of
| standard guidelines for contribution linked on the footer of
| this page.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Formalizing it within the community rules removes ambiguity
| around intent or use, so yes, I do believe we should be barring
| AI-generated comments and stories from HN in general. At the very
| least, it adds another barometer of sorts to help community
| leaders do the hard work of managing this environment.
|
| If you didn't think it, and you didn't write it, it doesn't
| belong here.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| No. I like being able to ignore them. I can't do that if people
| chop off their disclaimers to avoid comment removal.
| ruined wrote:
| you got a downvote button
| ilc wrote:
| No, I put them with lmgtfy. You are being told that your question
| is easy to research and you didn't do the work, most of the time.
|
| Also heaven forbid, AI can be right. I realize this is a shocker
| to many here. But AI has use, especially in easy cases.
| watwut wrote:
| 1.) They are not replies to people asking questions.
|
| 2.) Posting AI response has as much value as posting random
| reddit comment.
|
| 3.) AI has value where you are able to factually verify it. If
| someone asks a question, they do not know the answer and are
| unable to validate ai.
| emaro wrote:
| I don't think LLM responses mean a question is easy to research
| - they will _always_ give an answer.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| "I asked AI and it said" is far worse than lmgtfy (which is
| already rude) because it has zero value as evidence. AI can be
| right, but it's wrong often enough that you can't actually use
| it to determine the truth of something.
| zepolen wrote:
| How is lmgtfy rude?
| mindcandy wrote:
| Is the content of the comment productive to the conversation?
| Upvote it.
|
| Is the content of the comment counter-productive? Downvote it.
|
| I could see cases where large walls of text that are generally
| useless should be downvoted or even removed. AI or not. But, the
| first example
|
| > faced with 74 pages of text outside my domain expertise, I
| asked Gemini for a summary. Assuming you've read the original,
| does this summary track well?
|
| to be frank, is a service to all HN readers. Yes it is possible
| that a few of us would benefit from sitting down with a nice cup
| of coffee, putting on some ambient music and taking in 74 pages
| of... whatever this is. But, faced with far more interesting and
| useful content than I could possibly consume all day every day,
| having a summary to inform my time investment is of great value
| to me. _Even If It Is Imperfect_
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the system of long-lived nicks on YNews is intended to build a
| mild and flexible reputation system. This is valuable for complex
| topics, and to notice zealots, among other things. The feeling
| while reading that it is a community of peers is important.
|
| AI-LLM replies break all of these things. AI-LLM replies must be
| declared as such, for certain IMHO. It seems desirable to have
| off-page links for (inevitable) lengthy reply content.
|
| This is an existential change for online communications. Many
| smart people here have predicted it and acted on it already. It
| is certainly trending hard for the forseeable future.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| I think that the whole point of the discussion forum is to talk
| to other people, so I am in favor of banning AI replies. There's
| zero value in these posts because anyone can type chatgpt.com in
| the browser and then ask whatever question they want at any time
| while getting input from an another human being is not always
| guaranteed.
| Aachen wrote:
| You're like the 9th out of the 10 top-level replies I've read
| so far that says this, with the 10th one saying it in a
| different way (without suggesting they could have asked it
| themselves). What I find interesting is that everyone agrees
| and nobody argues about prompt engineering, as in, nobody says
| it's helpful that a skilled querier shares responses from the
| system. Apparently there's now the sentiment that literally
| anybody else could have done the same without thought
|
| Whether prompt engineering is a skill is perhaps a different
| topic. I just found this meta statistic in this thread
| interesting to observe
| alwa wrote:
| I do think it would be useful to normalize pasting a link to
| the full transcript if you're going to quote an LLM. Both
| because I do find it useful to examine others' prompting
| techniques, and because that gives me the context to gauge
| the response's credibility.
|
| What did we used to call it? Google-fu?
| pembrook wrote:
| No, this is not a good rule.
|
| What AI regurgitates about about a topic is often more
| interesting and fact/data-based than the emotionally-driven human
| pessimists spewing constant cynicism on HN, so in fact I much
| prefer having more rational AI responses added in as context
| within a conversation.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Ironic that your comment downvoted... gosh darn emotional
| humans
| nlawalker wrote:
| No, just upvote or downvote. I think the site guidelines could
| take a stance on it though, encouraging people to post human
| insights and discouraging comments that are effectively LLM
| output (regardless of whether they actually are).
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Yes. If I wanted an LLM's opinion, I would have asked it myself.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| Would your prompt have been identical and produced identical
| results, today, tomorrow, which version of AI would you have
| used, were there bugs present that made the post or comment
| interesting that would have been absent in your response
| because the bug had been fixed already?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| In any case, it should have some more thought to it, some
| summary, some highlight, what you find useful/insightful
| about it. Just dumping the response is lazy and
| disrespectful.
|
| And if two people can get two opposite results by giving the
| same prompt which asks a very specific question to the same
| model, it looks like bunk anyway. LLMs don't care if they are
| correct.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Would your prompt have been identical and produced identical
| results, today, tomorrow, which version of AI would you have
| used, were there bugs present that made the post or comment
| interesting that would have been absent in your response
| because the bug had been fixed already?
|
| Why is that relevant to GP's point?
|
| I can't speak for anyone else, but I come to HN to _discuss_
| stuff with other humans. If I wanted an LLM 's (it's not AI,
| it's a predictive text algorithm) regurgitations, I can
| generate those myself and don't need "helpful" HNers to do it
| for me _unasked_.
|
| When I come here I want to have a _discussion_ with other
| sentient beings, not the gestalt of training data
| regurgitated by a bot.
|
| Perhaps that makes me old-fashioned and/or bigoted against
| interacting with large language models, but that's what _I_
| want.
|
| In discussion, I want to know what other sentient beings
| think, not an aggregation of text tokens based on their
| probability of being used in a particular sequence determined
| by the data fed to model.
|
| The former can (but may well not be) a creative, intellectual
| act by a sentient being. The latter will _never_ be so, as it
| 's an aggregation of existing data/information as a sequence
| of tokens cobbled together based on the frequency with which
| such tokens are used in a particular order in the model's
| corpus.
|
| That's not to say that LLM are useless. They are not. But
| their place is not in "curious conversation," IMNSHO.
| jpease wrote:
| I asked AI if "I asked AI, and it said" replies should be
| forbidden, and it said...
| AnonC wrote:
| Are you a new HN mod (with authority over the guidelines) and are
| asking for opinions from readers (that'd be new)? Or are you just
| another normal user and are loudly wondering about this so that
| mods get inputs (as opposed to writing a nice email to
| hn@ycombinator.com)?
|
| I think just downvoting by committed users is enough. What
| matters is the content and how valuable it seems to readers.
| There is no need to do any gate keeping by the guidelines on this
| matter. That's my opinion.
| jdoliner wrote:
| I've always liked that HN typically has comments that are small
| bits of research relevant to the post that I could have done
| myself but don't have to because someone else did it for me. In a
| sense the "I asked $AI, and it said" comments are just the
| evolved form of that. However the presentation does matter a
| little, at least to me. Explicitly stating that you asked AI
| feels a little like an appeal to authority... and a bad one at
| that. And makes the comment feel low effort. Often times comments
| that frame themselves in this way will be missing the "last-mile"
| effort that tailors the LLMs response to the context of the post.
|
| So I think maybe the guidelines should say something like:
|
| HN readers appreciate research in comments that brings
| information relevant to the post. The best way to make such a
| comment is to find the information, summarize it in your own
| words that explain why it's relevant to the post and then link to
| the source if necessary. Adding "$AI said" or "Google said"
| generally makes your post worse.
|
| ---------
|
| Also I asked ChatGPT and it said:
|
| Short Answer
|
| HN shouldn't outright ban those comments, but it should
| culturally discourage them, the same way it discourages low-
| effort regurgitation, sensationalism, or unearned certainty. HN
| works when people bring their own insight, not when they paste
| the output of a stochastic parrot.
|
| A rule probably isn't needed. A norm is.
| MBCook wrote:
| Yes, please. It's extremely low effort. If you're not adding
| anything of value (typing into another window and copying and
| pasting the output are not) then it serves no purpose.
|
| It's the same as "this" of "wut" but much longer.
|
| If you're posting that and ANALYZING the output that's different.
| That could be useful. You added something there.
| satisfice wrote:
| Only if they also do a google search, provide the top one hundred
| hits, and paste in a relevant Wikipedia page.
| incanus77 wrote:
| Yes. This is the modern equivalent of "I searched the web and
| this is what it said". If I could do the same thing and have the
| same results, you're not adding any value.
|
| Though this is unlikely a scenario that happened, I'd equate this
| with someone asking me what I thought about something, and me
| walking them over to a book on the shelf to show them what that
| author thought. It's just an aggregated and watered-down average
| of all the books.
|
| I'd rather hear it filtered through a brain, be it a good answer
| or bad.
| leephillips wrote:
| Posting this kind of slop should be a banning offense. Also:
| https://hn-ai.org/
| newsoftheday wrote:
| If someone is going to post like that, I feel they should post
| their prompt ver batim, the exact AI and version used and the
| date they issued the prompt to receive the response they're
| posting.
|
| There are far too many replies in this thread saying to drop the
| ban hammer, for this to be seriously taken as Hacker News. What
| has happened to this audience?
| Tiberium wrote:
| I'm honestly grateful to those who disclose their use of AI in
| replies, because lately I've noticed more and more of clearly
| LLM-generated comments on HN with no disclaimers whatsoever. And
| the worst part is that most people don't notice and still engage
| with them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| They should be forbidden _everywhere_. Absolutely obnoxious.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| Yes. I'd prefer comments that have intent, not just high
| statistical probability.
| createaccount99 wrote:
| Forbidden? They should be mandatory.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| That and replies that start with "No"
| Aachen wrote:
| Now I'm curious what kinds of comments you mean
| sodapopcan wrote:
| haha, you've never seen any? It's pretty classic HN. If
| someone thinks a comment is false the reply will look
| something like: "No. What you really meant to say is..." and
| often times the "No." will be its own paragraph.
| theLegionWithin wrote:
| how are you going to enforce it? if someone does that & reformats
| the text a bit it'll look like a unique response
| bbor wrote:
| large LLM-generated texts just get in the way of reading real
| text from real humans
|
| In terms of reasons for platform-level censorship, "I have to
| scroll sometimes" seems like a bad one.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| This feels like an oversimplification of the issue. Why
| moderate at all? Spam posted here would only require you to
| "have to scroll sometimes".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I'd like it to be forbidden, yes.
|
| Sure, I'll occasionally ask an LLM about something if the info is
| easy to verify after, but I wouldn't like comments here that were
| just copy-pastes of the Google search results page either.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If it was my personal site I would instantly ban all such
| accounts. They are basically virus-carrying individuals from
| outer space, here to destroy the discourse.
|
| Since that isn't likely to happen, perhaps the community can
| develop a browser extension that calls attention to or suppresses
| such accounts.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Yes. LLM copy/paste strongly indicates karma/vote farming,
| because if I wanted an LLM's output I could just go there myself.
|
| Someone below mentions using it for translation and I think
| that's OK.
|
| Idea: Prevent LLM copy/pasting by preempting it. Google and other
| things display LLM summaries of what you search for after you
| enter your search query, and that's frequently annoying.
|
| So imagine the same on an HN post. In a clearly delineated and
| collapsible box underneath or beside the post. It is also
| annoying, but it also removes the incentive to run the question
| through an LLM and post the output, because it was already done.
| tptacek wrote:
| They already are against the rules here.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| (This is a broader restriction than the one you're looking for).
|
| It's important to understand that not all of the rules of HN are
| on the Guidelines page. We're a common law system; think of the
| Guidelines as something akin to a constitution. Dan and Tom's
| moderation comments form the "judicial precedent" of the site;
| you'll find things in there like "no Internet psychiatric
| diagnosis" and "not owing $publicfigure anything but owing this
| community more" and "no nationalist flamewar" and "no hijacking
| other people's Show HN threads to promote your own thing". None
| of those are on the Guidelines page either, but they're
| definitely in the guidelines here.
| Rendello wrote:
| This is the correct answer. If you're curious about what other
| sorts of things are disallowed by common law, look at dang and
| tomhow's comments that say "please don't":
|
| dang:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| tomhow:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| Akronymus wrote:
| > This is the correct answer.
|
| Where does that saying come from? I keep seeing it in a lot
| of different contexts but it somehow feels _off_ to me in a
| way I can 't really explain.
| Rendello wrote:
| It's the first time I've ever commented that, and I was
| trying to figure out a way to omit it. I don't like that
| sort of phrase either, I especially hate comments that just
| go "This.", but they're rare on HN so I'm in good company.
|
| Ultimately, I put it because:
|
| - It was the most directly informative comment on the
| thread;
|
| - It had been downvoted (greyed out) to the very bottom of
| the thread; and
|
| - I wanted to express my support before making a fairly
| orthogonal comment without whiplashing everyone.
|
| The whiplashing concern is the problem I run into most
| generally. It can be hard to reply to someone with a
| somewhat related idea without making it seem like you're
| contradicting them, particularly if they're being dogpiled
| on with downvotes or comments. I'd love to hear other ways
| to go about this, I'm always trying to improve my
| communication.
| sfink wrote:
| It's not "off" unless you're simply reading it literally.
| If you do that, then it's a verbose way of saying "I
| agree". But the connotations are something like "I agree,
| strongly, and in particular am implying (possibly just for
| effect) that there are objectively right and wrong answers
| to this question and the other answers are wrong." The main
| difference is the statement that there is an objective
| answer to what people may be treating as a subjective
| question.
|
| If it helps, you can think of it as saying more about
| possible disagreeing opinions than about the specific
| opinion expressed. "This answer is right, and the people
| who disagree are 'objectively' wrong."
|
| It took me some time to catch on to this. It can certainly
| be jarring or obnoxious, though sometimes it can be helpful
| to say "yo people, you're treating this like a subjective
| opinion, but there are objective reasons to conclude X."
| Rendello wrote:
| I (the comment writer), agree that it's jarring and a bit
| obnoxious. There were three factors that led me to write
| it anyway, which I've mentioned here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46209137
|
| Edit: Rereading the comments, I agree (heheh) with you
| analysis. I hadn't considered saying "I agree", because I
| didn't feel I was expressing an opinion, but a fact, like
| 1+1=2. The comment stated that the mods in fact disallow
| those comments and provided proof, so I didn't consider
| it an opinion.
| sfink wrote:
| Heh, and rereading my comment, it comes across as more
| against the usage than I actually feel. It's not my
| personal style, and sometimes I find it annoying, but 80%
| of the time I think it's totally fine and expresses a
| nuance that would take a lot more words otherwise. Your
| usage here, for example, seems totally appropriate to me.
| Rendello wrote:
| The reason why _I_ was reticent to use it was not because
| I was uncomfortable asserting an absolute (the link
| showed clearly that mods didn 't allow these comments, I
| don't see any controversy there), but more so that on
| this type of forum, the act of voting itself is the
| primary method of agreement. Saying "I agree" or "this is
| true" or "THIS!" is generally redundant and noisy.
|
| I really like this conversation by the way. I'm actively
| trying to become a better writer (by doing copywork of my
| favourite writers), and no other forum on Earth has this
| sort of conversation in such an interesting, nuanced way.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Yeah, that seems like a fair way to put my feelings into
| words.
| versavolt wrote:
| That answer is incorrect. Common law can only be created by
| courts.
| cm2012 wrote:
| These comments are in the top 10% of usefulness of all comments
| in those threads. Clear, legible information that is easy to read
| and relevant. Keep!
| qustrolabe wrote:
| HN have very primitive comments layout that gives too big of an
| focus to large responses and first most upvoted post with all its
| replies. I think just because of that it's better to do something
| about large responses with little value. I'd rather they just
| share conversation link
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| This is not just about banning a source; it is about preserving
| the core principle of substantive, human-vetted content on HN.
| Allowing comments that are merely regurgitations of an LLM's
| generic output--often lacking context, specific experience, or
| genuine critical thought--treats the community as an outsourced
| validation layer for machine learning, rather than an ecosystem
| for expert discussion. It's like allowing a vending machine to
| contribute to a Michelin-starred chef's tasting menu: the
| ingredients might be technically edible, but they completely
| bypass the human skill, critical judgment, and passion that
| defines the experience. Such low-effort contributions
| fundamentally violate the "no shallow dismissals" guideline by
| prioritizing easily manufactured volume over unique human
| insight, inevitably degrading the platform's high signal-to-noise
| ratio and displacing valuable commentary from those who have
| actually put in the work.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Please stop
| teach wrote:
| _slow clap_
|
| A tip of the hat for this performance art
| UncleEntity wrote:
| One has to wonder if this is how the next generation of kids
| are going to write after being raised exclusively on AI
| generated content?
| WorldPeas wrote:
| In this digital world, the core components of writing can
| feel overwhelming, by leveraging crutches learned by
| reading hundreds of dead internet comments, the core
| principles of writing in an ever-shifting landscape can be
| more crucial than ever.
|
| (written by a human with help from
| https://aiphrasefinder.com/common-chatgpt-phrases/)
| myst wrote:
| I remember times when this sentiment was being expressed about
| "According to Wikipedia..." As much as I am pro implementing this
| rule, I'm afraid we are losing this fight.
| legohead wrote:
| Lots of old man yelling at clouds energy in here.
|
| This is new territory, you don't ban it, you adapt with it.
| m-hodges wrote:
| I feel like this won't eliminate AI-generated replies, it'll just
| eliminate disclosing that the replies are AI-generated.
| danielbln wrote:
| Personally, I don't care about AI generated replies, but if
| it's a wall of text of unedited first-try output, then it's
| just slop, and that's just rude. If I don't notice it's AI
| because it's succinct and without GPTisms, well, I don't love
| it either, but neither will I recognize it nor will it
| therefore bother me.
| TomasBM wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The pre-LLM equivalent would be: "I googled this, and here's what
| the first result says," and copying the text without providing
| any additional commentary.
|
| Everyone should be free to read, interpret and formulate their
| comments however they'd like.
|
| But if a person outsources their entire thinking to an LLM/AI,
| they don't have anything to contribute to the conversation
| themselves.
|
| And if the HN community wanted pure LLM/AI comments, they'd
| introduce such bots in the threads.
| christoff12 wrote:
| Good point
| ycosynot wrote:
| As a brain is made of small pebbles, a LLM is made of small
| pebbles. If it wants to talk, let it be. I am arguing
| metaphysically. Not only did it evolve partially out of
| randomness (and so with a kind of value as an enlighted POV on
| existence), but it is still evolving to be human, and even more
| than human. I believe LLM should not be banned, "they" should be
| willfully, and cheerfully, included in the discourse.
|
| I asked Perplexity, and Perplexity said: ""Your metaphysical
| intuition is very much in line with live debates: once "small
| pebbles" are arranged into agents that talk, coordinate, and co-
| shape our world, there is a strong philosophical case that they
| should be brought inside our moral and political conversations
| rather than excluded by fiat.""
| FromOmelas wrote:
| rather then ban, I would prefer posts/comments are labeled as
| such.
|
| with features:
|
| - ability to hide AI labeled replies (by default)
|
| - assign lower weight when appropriate
|
| - if a user is suspected to be AI-generated, retroactively label
| all their replies as "suspected AI"
|
| - in addition to downvote/upvote, a "I think this is AI" counter
| tekacs wrote:
| Based on other HN rules thus far, I tend to think that this just
| results in more comments pointing out that you're violating a
| rule.
|
| In many threads, those comments can be just as annoying and
| distracting as the ones being replied to.
|
| I say this as someone who to my recollection has never had anyone
| reply with a rule correction to me -- but I've seen so many of
| them over the years and I feel like we would fill up the screen
| even more with a rule like this.
| etchalon wrote:
| Yes.
| Aloha wrote:
| I also endorse this - maybe not outright ban but at least highly
| discourage.
| flkiwi wrote:
| I read comments citing AI as essentially equivalent to "I ran a
| $searchengine search and here is the most relevant result." It's
| not equivalent, but it has one identical issue and one new-ish
| one:
|
| 1. If I wanted to run a web search, I would have done so 2.
| People behave as if they believe AI results are authoritative,
| which they are not
|
| On the other hand, a ban could result in a technical violation in
| a conversation _about AI responses_ where providing examples of
| those responses is entirely appropriate.
|
| I feel like we're having a larger conversation here, one where we
| are watching etiquette evolve in realtime. This is analogous to
| "Should we ban people from wearing bluetooth headsets in the
| coffee shop?" in the 00s: people are demonstrating a new behavior
| that is disrupting social norms but the actual violation is
| really that the person looks like a dork. To that end, I'd
| probably be more for public shaming, potentially a clear "we
| aren't banning it but please don't be an AI goober and don't just
| regurgitate AI output", more than I would support a ban.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >If I wanted to run a web search, I would have done so
|
| While true, many times people don't want to do this because
| they are lazy. If they just instead opened up chatgpt they
| could have instantly gotten their answer. It results in a waste
| of everyone's time.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Well put. There are two sides of the coin: the lazy
| questioner who expects others to do the work researching what
| they would not, and the lazy/indulgent answerer who basically
| LMGTFY's it.
|
| Ideally we would require people who ask questions to say what
| they've researched so far, and where they got stuck. Then
| low-effort LLM or search engine result pages wouldn't be such
| a reasonable answer.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I haven't thought about LMGTFY since stackoverflow. Usually
| though I see responses with people thrusting forth AI
| answers that provide more reasoning, back then LMGTFY was
| more about rote conventions(e.g. "how do you split a string
| on ," and ai is used more for "what are ways that solar
| power will change grid dynamics")
| MarkusQ wrote:
| This begs the question. You are assuming they wanted an LLM
| generated response, but were to lazy to generate one. Isn't
| it more likely that the reason they didn't use an LLM is that
| they didn't want an LLM response, so giving them one
| is...sort of clueless?
|
| If you asked someone how to make French fries and they
| replied with a map-pin-drop on the nearest McDonald's, would
| you feel satisfied with the answer?
| charcircuit wrote:
| It's more like someone asks if there are McDonald's in San
| Francisco, and then someone else searches "mcdonald's san
| francisco" on Google Maps and then replies with the result.
| It would have been faster for the person to just type their
| question elsewhere and get the result back immediately
| instead of someone else doing it for them.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Right. If someone asks "What does ChatGPT think about
| ...", I'd fully agree that they're being lazy. But if
| that's _not_ what they ask, we shouldn't assume that
| that's what they meant.
|
| We should at least consider that maybe they asked how to
| make French fries because they actually want to learn how
| to make them themselves. I'll admit the XY problem is
| real, and people sometimes fail to ask for what they
| actually want, but we should, as a rule, give them the
| benefit of the doubt instead of just assuming that we're
| smarter than them.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Such open ended questions are not the kind of questions
| I'm referring to.
| officeplant wrote:
| > If they just instead opened up chatgpt they could have
| instantly gotten their answer.
|
| Great now we've wasted time & material resources for a
| possibly wrong and hallucinated answer. What part of this is
| beneficial to anyone?
| allenu wrote:
| I think a lot of times, people are here just to have a
| conversation. I wouldn't go so far as to say someone who is
| pontificating and could have done a web search to verify
| their thoughts and opinions is being lazy.
|
| This might be a case of just different standards for
| communication here. One person might want the absolute facts
| and assumes everyone posting should do their due diligence to
| verify everything they say, but others are okay with just
| shooting the shit (to varying degrees).
| charcircuit wrote:
| I've seen this happen too. People will comment and say in
| the comment that they can't remember something when they
| could have easily refound that information with chatgpt or
| google.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Agreed on the similar-but-worse comparison to to the laziest
| possible web-searches of yesteryear.
|
| To introspect a bit, I think the rote regurgitation aspect is
| the lesser component. It's just rude in a conventional way that
| isn't as threatening. It's the implied truth/authority of the
| Great Oracular Machine which feels more-dangerous and
| disgusting.
| flkiwi wrote:
| There's also a whole "gosh golly look at me using the latest
| fad!" demonstration aspect to this. People status signaling
| that they're "in". Thus the Bluetooth earpiece comment.
|
| It's clumsy and has the opposite result most of the time, but
| people still do it for all manner of trends.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > 2. People behave as if they believe AI results are
| authoritative, which they are not
|
| Web search has the same issue. If you don't validate it, you
| wind up in the same problem.
| pyrale wrote:
| > "I ran a $searchengine search and here is the most relevant
| result."
|
| Except it's "...and here is the first result it gave me, I
| didn't bother looking further".
| 9rx wrote:
| _> people are demonstrating a new behavior that is disrupting
| social norms_
|
| The social norm has always been that you write comments on the
| internet for yourself, not others. Nothing really changes if
| you now find enjoyment in adding AI output to your work.
| Whatever floats your boat, as they say.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| The issue isn't people posting AI generated comments on the
| Internet as a whole, it's whether it should be allowed in
| this space. Part of the reason I come to HN is the quality of
| comments are pretty good relative to other places online. I
| think it's a legitimate question whether AI comments would
| help or hinder discussion here.
| 9rx wrote:
| That's a pretty good sign that the HN user base as a rule
| finds most enjoyment in writing high quality content for
| themselves. All questions are legitimate, but in this
| circumstance what reason is there to believe that they
| would find even more enjoyment from reducing the quality?
|
| It seems a lot like code. You can "vibe code" your way into
| an ungodly mess, but those who used to enjoy the craft of
| writing high quality code before LLMs arrived still seem to
| insist on high quality code even if an LLM is helping
| produce it now. It is highly likely that internet comments
| are no different. Those who value quality will continue to.
| Those who want garbage will produce it, AI or not.
|
| Much more likely is seeing the user base shift over time
| towards users that don't care about quality. Many a forum
| have seen that happen long before LLMs were a thing, and it
| is likely to happen to forums again in the future. But, the
| comments aren't written for you (except your own, of
| course) anyway, so... It is not rational to want to control
| what others are writing for themselves. But you can be
| responsible for writing for yourself what you want to see!
| munchbunny wrote:
| _> 2. People behave as if they believe AI results are
| authoritative, which they are not_
|
| I'm not so sure they actually believe the results are
| authoritative, I think they're being lazy and hoping you will
| believe it.
| flkiwi wrote:
| This is a big of a gravity vs. acceleration issue, in that
| the end result is indistinguishable.
| icoder wrote:
| Totally agree if the AI or search results are a (relatively)
| direct answer to the question.
|
| But what if the AI is used to build up a(n otherwise) genuine
| human response, like: 'Perhaps the reason behind this is such-
| and-such, (a quick google)|($AI) suggests that indeed it is
| common for blah to be blah, so...'
| ozgung wrote:
| I think doing your research using search engine/AI/books and
| paraphrasing your findings is always valuable. And you should
| cite your resources when you do so, eg. "ChatGPT says that..."
|
| > 1. If I wanted to run a web search, I would have done so
|
| Not everyone has access to the latest Pro models. If AI has
| something to add for the discussion and if a user does that for
| me I think it has some value.
|
| 2. People behave as if they believe AI results are
| authoritative, which they are not
|
| AI is not authoritative in 2025. We don't know what will happen
| in 2026. We are at the initial transition stage for a new
| technology. Both the capabilities of AI and people's opinions
| will change rapidly.
|
| Any strict rule/ban would be very premature and shortsighted at
| this point.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I think it's closer in proximity to the "glasshole" trend,
| where there social pressure actually worked to make people feel
| less comfortable about using it publicly. This is an entirely
| vibes based judgement, but presenting unaltered ai speech
| within your own feels more imposing and authoritative(as
| wagging around an potentially-on camera did then). This being
| the norm on other platforms has degraded my willingness to
| engage with potentially infinite and meaningless streams of
| bloviation rather than the (usually) concise and engaging
| writings of humans
| monknomo wrote:
| I do not think so. If I wanted an ai's opinion, I'd ask the ai.
|
| Should we allow 'let me google that for you' responses?
| snayan wrote:
| I would say it depends, from your examples:
|
| 1) borderline. Potentially provides some benefit to the thread
| for readers who also don't have time or expertise to read an 83
| page paper. Although it would require someone to acknowledge and
| agree that the summary is sound.
|
| 2) Acceptable. Dude got grok to make some cool visuals that
| otherwise wouldn't exist. I don't see what the issue is with
| something like this.
|
| 3) borderline. Same as 1 mostly.
|
| The more I think about this, the less bothered I am by it. If the
| problem were someone jumping into a conversation they know
| nothing about, and giving an opinion that is actually just the
| output of an LLM, I'd agree. But all the examples you provided
| are transformative in some way. Either summarizing and
| simplifying a long article or paper, or creating art.
| Akronymus wrote:
| I'd love to say yes, but it's basically unenforcable if the
| comment doesnt disclose it itself.
| hooverd wrote:
| Yes please. I don't care if somebody did their own research via
| one, but it's just so low effort.
| djoldman wrote:
| The current upvote/downvote mechanism seems more than adequate to
| address these concerns.
|
| If someone thinks an "I asked $AI, and it said" comment is bad,
| then they can downvote it.
|
| As an aside, at times it may be insightful or curious to see what
| an AI actually says...
| mattnewton wrote:
| 1 and 3, straight to jail. 2 is fine
| markus_zhang wrote:
| It's fine as long as ppls took effort to double check the
| answers.
| srcreigh wrote:
| The guidelines are just fine as they are.
|
| Low effort LLM crap is bad.
|
| Flame bait uncurious mob pile-ons (this thread) are also bad.
|
| Use the downvote button.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Permaban from first strike
| 827a wrote:
| This is a way of attributing where the comment is coming from,
| which is better than responding with what the AI says and not
| attributing it. I would support a guideline that discourages
| posting the output from AI systems, but ultimately there's no way
| to stop it.
| neom wrote:
| Not addressing your question directly, but when I got flagged
| last year I emailed Dan and this was the reply: " John Edgar
| <je@h4x.club> Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:08 AM to Hacker
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735275
|
| Just curious if chatGPT is actually formally banned on HN?
|
| Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 4:12 PM to me
|
| Yes, they're banned. I don't know about "formally" because that
| word can mean different things and a lot of the practice of HN is
| informal. But we've definitely never allowed bots or generated
| comments. Here are some old posts referring to that.
|
| dang
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35984470 (May 2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35869698 (May 2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35210503 (March 2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35206303 (March 2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747 (Dec 2022)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33911426 (Dec 2022)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32571890 (Aug 2022)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27558392 (June 2021)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693590 (April 2021)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22744611 (April 2020)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427782 (Feb 2020)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774797 (Dec 2019)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325914 (March 2019)"
|
| (Edit: oh, it's not 2024 anymore. How time flies!)
| amelius wrote:
| Can't we have a unicode escape sequence for anything generated by
| AI?
|
| Then we can just filter it at the browser level.
|
| In fact why don't we have glyphs for it? Like special quote
| characters.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Absolutely. Any of us could ask AI if we wanted to hear random
| unsubstantiated opinions. Why should that get in the way of what
| we all come here for, which is communication with humans?
| ok123456 wrote:
| yes
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Umm, just to be clear;
|
| HN is not actually a democracy. The rules are not voted on. They
| are _set_ by the people who own and run HN.
|
| Please tell me what you think _those people_ think of this
| question.
| stack_framer wrote:
| I'm here to learn what other people think, so I'm in favor of not
| seeing AI comments here.
|
| That said, I've also grown exceedingly tired of everyone saying,
| "I see an em dash, therefore that comment must have come from
| AI!"
|
| I happen to like em dashes. They're easy to type on macOS, and
| they're useful in helping me express what I'm thinking--even if I
| might be using them incorrectly.
| submeta wrote:
| While I agree that we should be genuinely engaging with each
| other on this platform, trying to disallow all AI generated
| content reminds me of the naysayers when it comes to letting llms
| write code.
|
| Yes, if you wanted to ask an llm, you'd do so, but someone else
| asks a specific question to the llm, and generates an answer
| that's specific to his question. And that might add value to the
| discussion.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Ban it. It is the "let me google that for you" of the 2020s
| alwa wrote:
| I tend to trust the voting system to separate the wheat from the
| chaff. If I were to try and draw a line, though, I'd start at the
| foundation: leave room for things that add value, avoid
| contributions that don't. I'd suggest that line might be
| somewhere like "please don't quote LLMs directly unless you can
| identify the specific value you're adding above and beyond." Or
| "...unless you're adding original context or using them in a way
| that's somehow non-obvious."
|
| Maybe that's part of tracing your reasoning or crediting sources:
| "this got me curious about sand jar art, Gemini said Samuel
| Clemens was an important figure, I don't know whether that's
| historically true but it did lead me to his very cool body of
| work [0] which seems relevant here."
|
| Maybe it's "I think [x]. The LLM said it in a particularly
| elegant way: [y]"
|
| And of course meta-discussion seems fine: "ChatGPT with the new
| Foo module says [x], which is a clear improvement over before,
| when it said [y]"
|
| There's the laziness factor and also the credibility factor. LLM
| slop speaks in the voice of god, and it's especially frustrating
| when people post its words without the clues we use to gauge
| credibility. To me those include the model, the prompt, any
| customizations, prior rounds in context, and any citations (real
| or hallucinated) the LLM includes. In that sense I wonder if it
| makes sense to normalize linking to the full session transcript
| if you're going to cite an LLM.
|
| [0] https://americanart.si.edu/blog/andrew-clemens-sand-art
| bakugo wrote:
| While I do think such comments are pointless and almost never add
| anything to the discussion, I don't believe they're anywhere near
| as actively harmful as comments and (especially) submissions that
| are largely or entirely AI generated with no disclosure.
|
| I've been seeing more and more of these on the front page lately.
| novok wrote:
| IMO you shouldn't put a large amount of quoted text, that is just
| annoying. You should link out at that point. I think if we ban
| people from citing sources, they will just stop citing sources
| and that is even worse. It's the new "I googled that for you" and
| that is fine IMO.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| "I googled that for you" is generally deployed when you know
| better than the other person (and likely wish to rub it in
| their face that they should know better too).
|
| I feel like the LLM equivalent here sort of demonstrates the
| exact opposite (I don't know enough about this topic to even
| doubt the accuracy of the machine...)
| novok wrote:
| I often get to a point where it's faster to tell a person to
| just look at the output of the ai agent than to write it out
| myself.
|
| "I googled that for you" can also be done from a position of
| ignorance too.
|
| This is just a new thing that new cultural norms are
| developing from.
| WithinReason wrote:
| That's what the upvote/downvote system is for.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yes. If I wanted an LLM-generated response I'd submit my own
| query to such a service. I never want to see LLM-generated
| content on HN.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Most comments I've seen are comparing this behavior to "I googled
| it and..." but I think this misses the point.
|
| Someone once put it as, "sharing your LLM conversations with
| others is as interesting to them as narrating the details of your
| dreams", which I find eerily accurate.
|
| We are here in this human space in the pursuit of learning,
| edification, debate, and (hopefully) truth.
|
| There is a qualitative difference between the unreliability of
| pseudonymous humans here vs the unreliability of LLM output.
|
| And it is the same qualitative difference that makes it
| _interesting_ to have some random poster share their (potentially
| incorrect) factual understanding, and _uninteresting_ if the same
| person said "look, I have no idea, but in a dream last night it
| seemed to me that..."
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Banning, no. proper citations and disclosure, yes. Sometimes an
| AI response is noteworthy and it is the point of the post.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| It's karma fishing, so yes, please ban it. While we're at it,
| just automatically add the archive.is link to any news article or
| don't allow voting on those comments -\\_(tsu)_/-
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes, they are almost always low value comments.
| BrtByte wrote:
| Maybe a good middle ground would be: if you're referencing
| something an LLM said, make it part of your thinking...
| zby wrote:
| What is banned here? I can only find guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html not rules.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I see it equivalently helpful to the folks who paste
| archive.is/ph links for paywalled content. It saves me time to do
| something I may have wanted to do regardless, and it's easy
| enough to fold if someone does post a wall of response.
|
| IMO hiding such content is the job of an extension.
|
| When I do "here's what chatgpt has to say" it's usually because
| I'm pretty confident of a thing, but I have no idea what the
| original source was, but I'm not going to invest much time in
| resurrecting the original trail back to where I first learned a
| thing. I'm not going to spend 60 minutes to properly source a HN
| comment, it's just not the level of discussion I'm willing to
| have though many of the community seem to require an academic
| level of investment.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| As Tom Scott has said, people telling you what AI told them is
| worse than people describing their dreams. It definitely does not
| usefully contribute to the conversation.
|
| Small exception if the user is actually talking _about_ AI, and
| quoting some AI output to illustrate their point, in which case
| the AI output should be a very small section of the post as a
| whole.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's nice that they warn others, though. Better to let them label
| it as such rather than banning the label. I'd rather it be simply
| frowned upon.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| nah
| Havoc wrote:
| I'd say it's annoying & low value but doesn't quite warrant a ban
| per se.
|
| Plus if you ban it people will just remove the "AI said" part,
| post it as is without reading and now you're engaging with an AI
| without even the courtesy of knowing. That seems even worse
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| TL;DR; Until we are sure we have the moderation systems to assist
| surfacing the good stuff I would be in favour of temporary
| guidelines to maintain quality.
|
| Longer ...
|
| I am here for the interesting conversations and polite debate.
|
| In principle I have no issues with either citing AI responses in
| much the same way we do with any other source. Or with
| individual's prompting AI's to generate interesting responses on
| their behalf. When done well I believe it can improve discourse.
|
| Practically though, we know that the volume of content AI's can
| generate tends to overwhelm human based moderation and review
| systems. I like the signal to noise ratio as it is; so from my
| pov I'd be in favour of a cautious approach with a temporary
| guidelines against it's usage until we are sure we have the
| moderation tools to preserve that quality.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| I agree and think the solution is to get rid of the LLMs.
| TZubiri wrote:
| In my experience with managing teams, you want to encourage and
| not forbid this because the alternative is people will use llms
| without telling, which is 100 times worse than disclosed LLM use.
| ahmadtbk wrote:
| ai writing should be rewritten or polished at least as a form of
| respect for others.
| ahmadtbk wrote:
| AI slop is very exhausting to understand. If it's well written
| maybe not. If its obviously AI then that should be flagged.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| HN does not and has not ever valued human input, it has always
| valued substantive, clever, or interesting thought.
|
| I am a human and more than half of what I write here is rejected.
|
| I say bring on the AI. We are full of gatekeeping assholes, but
| we definitely have never cared if you have a heart (literally and
| figuratively).
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden
| in HN guidelines?
|
| This should be restated: _Should people stop admitting to AI
| usage out of shame, and start pretending to be actual experts or
| doing research on their own when they really aren 't?_
|
| Be careful what you wish for.
| bloppe wrote:
| I don't think this needs to be banned, particularly because it
| wouldn't be very effective (people would just get rid of the "AI
| said" part), and also because anybody who actually writes a
| comment like that would probably get downvoted out of the
| conversation anyway.
|
| Why introduce an unnecessary and ineffective regulation.
| freejazz wrote:
| Yes.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| >Personally, I'm on HN for the human conversation
|
| Agreed. It's hard enough dealing with the endless stream of LLM
| marketing stories, please lets at least try to keep the comments
| a little free of this 'I asked...' marketing spam.
| kreck wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Saying "ChatGPT told me ..." is a fast track to getting your
| input dismissed on our team. That phrasing shifts accountability
| from you to the AI. If we really wanted advice straight from the
| model, we wouldn't need a human in the loop - we'd ask it
| ourselves.
| abustamam wrote:
| We use AI heavily in our product and development flow.
| Sometimes we'd encounter a problem none of us can figure out at
| the moment so some of us would use ChatGPT to brainstorm some
| solutions. We'd present the solutions, poke holes into them,
| and go forward from there. Sometimes we don't use the actual
| ideas from GPT but ideas that were inspired by the generated
| ideas.
|
| The intent isn't to shift accountability, it's to brainstorm. A
| shitty idea gets shot down quickly, whereas a good idea gets
| implemented.
|
| Edit: sentence
| mx7zysuj4xew wrote:
| Yes, ounequivocally yes
| fortran77 wrote:
| Sometimes AI gives such a surprising or unusual answer to a
| question that it's worth a discussion. I think it should be
| discouraged but not "forbidden".
| Projectiboga wrote:
| With the exception if careful language translation I would say
| yes. Otherwise follow the breadcrumbs and click through to the
| source and go from there, as far as search engine derived AI
| snippets go.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| But what [if the llms generate] constructive and helpful
| comments? https://xkcd.com/810/
|
| For obvious(?) reasons I won't point to some recent comments that
| I suspect, but they were kind and gentle in the way that Opus 4.5
| can be at times; encouraging humans to be good with each other.
|
| I think the rules should be similar to bot rules I saw on
| wikipedia. It ought to be ok to USE an AI in the process of
| making a comment, but the comment needs to be 'owned' by the
| human/the account posting it.
|
| Eg. if it's a helpful comment, it should be upvoted. If it's not
| helpful, downvoted; and with a little luck people will be
| encouraged/discouraged from using AI in inappropriate ways.
|
| "I asked gemini, and gemini said..." is probably the wrong
| format, if it's otherwise (un)useful, just vote it accordingly?
| stevenalowe wrote:
| I think the AIs should post directly
| alienbaby wrote:
| This will be fine, until You can't tell the difference and people
| forgo the 'i asked' part.
| alienbaby wrote:
| This will be fine, until you can't tell the difference and they
| forgo the 'i asked'
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| Yes
| seizethecheese wrote:
| No, because this is self correcting behavior. If the comments are
| annoying, people will downvote them. In the rare case this is
| appropriate, they should be allowed. Guidelines are for things
| that will naturally be upvoted but shouldn't be.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| I think answers should be judged by content, not by the tool used
| to construct the answer.
|
| Also, if you forbid people to tell you they consulted AI, they
| will just not say that.
| Gud wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| I am blown away by LLMs - now using ChatGPT to help me write some
| python scripts in seconds, minutes, that used to take me hours,
| weeks.
|
| Yet, when I ask a question, or wish to discuss something on here,
| I do it because I want input from another meatbag in the hacker
| news collective.
|
| I don't want some corporate BS.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| It's a tad rich to be on HN for such a small amount of time and
| already be trying to sway the rules to what you wish them to be.
| bjourne wrote:
| Yes, please. LLMs are poisoning all online conversions
| everywhere. It's an epidemic global plague.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| AI generated content should be absolutely banned without
| question. This includes comments and submissions.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| We should probably distinguish between posting AI responses in a
| discussion of AI vs. posting them in a discussion of something
| else.
|
| If the discussion itself is _about_ AI then what it produces is
| obviously relevant. If it 's about something else, nobody needs
| you to copy and paste for them.
| uhfraid wrote:
| IMO, I don't think they add any value to HN discussions
|
| It's the HN equivalent to "@grok is this true?", but worse
| jasomill wrote:
| Short answer: Probably not outright forbidden -- but discouraged
| or constrained -- because "I asked AI..." posts usually add
| noise, not insight.
|
| _(source: ChatGPT)_
| razingeden wrote:
| I only get upset about it when the AI didn't read the article
| either.
| suckler wrote:
| Asking a chat bot a question and adding its answer to a public
| conversation defeats the purpose of the conversation. It's like
| telling someone to Google their question when your personal
| answer could have potentially been a lot more helpful than a
| Google search. If I wanted Grok I'd ask Grok, not the human I
| chose to speak to instead.
| iambateman wrote:
| We should prefer shaming and humiliation over forbiddance--norms
| beat laws in such situations.
|
| Of course I prefer to read the thoughts of an actual human on
| here, but I don't think it makes sense to update the guidelines.
| Eventually the guidelines would get so long and tedious that no
| one would pay attention to them and they'd stop working
| altogether.
|
| (did I include the non-word forbiddance to emphasize the point
| that a human--not a robot--wrote this comment? Yes, yes I did.)
| cwmoore wrote:
| Yes. Embarrassing cringe, whether or not it is noted.
|
| But this is a text-only forum and text (to a degree, all digital
| content) has become compromised. Intent and message is not
| attributable to real life experience or effort. For the moment I
| have accepted the additional overhead.
|
| As with most, I have a habit of estimating the validity of
| expertise in comments, and experiential biases, but that is
| becoming untenable.
|
| Perhaps there will soon be transformer features that produce
| prompts adequate to the task of reproducing the thought behind
| each thread, so their actual value, informational complexity,
| humor, and salience, may be compared?
|
| Though many obviously human commentors are actually inferior to
| answers from "let me chatgpt that for you."
|
| I have had healthy suspicions for a while now.
| lkt wrote:
| No because it allows you to set the bozo bit on them and
| completely disregard anything they say in the future
| unsignedint wrote:
| I think the real litmus test should be whether the comment adds
| anything substantive to the conversation. If someone is
| outsourcing their ideas to AI, that's a different situation from
| simply using AI to rephrase or tidy up their own thoughts--so
| long as they fully understand what they're posting and stand
| behind it.
|
| Saying "I asked AI" usually falls into the former category,
| unless the discussion is specifically about analyzing AI-
| generated responses.
|
| People already post plenty of non-substantive comments regardless
| of whether AI is involved, so the focus should be on whether the
| remark contributes any meaningful value to the discourse, not on
| the tools used to prepare it.
| stocksinsmocks wrote:
| I already assume everything, and I mean everything, that I read
| in any comment section, whether here or sewers like Reddit, X, or
| one of the many Twitter-but-Communist clones, is either:
|
| 1. Paid marketing (tech stacks, political hackery, Rust
| evangelism) 2. Some sociopath talking his own book 3. Someone who
| spouts off about things he doesn't know about (see: this post's
| author)
|
| The internet of real people died decades ago and we can only
| wander in the polished megalithic ruins of that enlightened age.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| That's been discussed previously in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628 and dang said in
| the topmost comment: " _They 're already banned--HN has never
| allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that
| explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html,
| but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there.
| We don't want canned responses from humans either! ..._". There
| more to his comment if you're interested.
|
| The HN guidelines haven't yet been updated but perhaps if enough
| people send an email to the moderators, they'll do it.
| tveyben wrote:
| If one want's an opinion from AI, one must ask AI - if on the
| other hand one want's an opinion from a human being (those with a
| real brain thinking real thoughts etc.) then - hopefully - that's
| what you get (and will keep getting) when visiting HN.
|
| Please don't pollute responses with made-up machine generated
| time-wasting bits here...!!!
| ynx0 wrote:
| You can't stop peope from using AI, but at least people are being
| transparent.
|
| Doing this will lead to people using AI without mentioning it,
| making it even harder to parse between human-origin content.
| HackeNewsFan234 wrote:
| I like the honesty aspect of it so that I can choose to
| (possibly) ignore the response. If they were forbidden and people
| posted the same $AI response without the disclaimer, I'd be more
| easily deceived.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yes. Unambiguously. I want this exact behavior to lead to social
| ostracism everywhere.
|
| Edit: I'm happy to add two related categories to that too -
| telling someone to "ask ChatGPT" or "Google it" is a similar
| level offense.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I think AI can be useful to cite in comments as a source of
| information. I.e., where you might otherwise say "According to
| Bloomberg, CPI is up 5% in the past 6 months[0]" with [0] linking
| to a page where you got that info, you could have "According to
| Claude/GPT/Gemini, CPI is up 5% in the past 6 months" ideally
| with [0] being the prompt used.
| BiraIgnacio wrote:
| HN (and the community here) has a great system for surfacing the
| most useful information and therefore, pushing the not so good
| one away.
|
| So no, I don't think forbidding anything helps. Let things fall
| where they should, otherwise.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| I always state when I use AI because I view it to be deceptive
| otherwise. Since sometimes I'll be using AI when it seems
| appropriate, and certainly only in direct limited ways, this rule
| seems like it would force me to be dishonest.
|
| For instance, what's wrong with the following: "Here's
| interesting point about foo topic. Here's another interesting
| point about bar topic; I learned of this through use of Gemini.
| Here's another interesting point about baz topic."
|
| Is this banned also? I'm only sharing it because I feel that I've
| vetted whatever I learned and find it worth sharing regardless of
| the source.
| clearleaf wrote:
| I don't see the point of publishing any AI generated content. If
| I want AIs opinion on something I can ask it. If I want an AI
| image I can generate it. I've never found it helpful to have
| someone else's ai output lying around.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I think you shouldn't launder LLM output as your own, but in AI
| model discussion and new release threads it can be useful to
| highlight examples of outputs from LLMs. The framing and usage is
| a key element: I'm interested in what kinds of things people are
| trying. Using LLM output as a substitute for engagement isn't
| interesting, but combining a bunch of responses to highlight
| differences between models could be interesting.
|
| I think sometimes it's fine to source additional information from
| an LLM if it helps advance the discussion. For example, if I'm
| confused about some topic, I might explore various AI responses
| and look at the source links they provide. If any of the links
| seem compelling I'll note how I found the link through an LLM and
| explain how it relates to the discussion.
| Razengan wrote:
| Fighting the zeitgeist never works out. The world's gonna move on
| whether you move on with it or not.
|
| I for one would love to have summary executions for anyone who
| says that Hello-Fellow-Kids cringe pushed on us by middle-aged
| squares: "vibe"
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