Edit: I called this wrong - see >>43075184 . Sorry!
My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse, and different platforms have adopted varying stances on whether such content is acceptable, encouraged, discouraged, or outright prohibited. Some online communities prefer organic, human-generated discussions to preserve authenticity, while others are more permissive, provided that AI-generated responses align with the spirit and intent of meaningful discourse.
Thus, within the context of HN’s commenting system, does the platform have an explicit policy, a tacit expectation, or any historical precedent regarding whether AI-assisted comments are permissible? If so, are there any specific constraints, recommendations, or guiding principles that users should adhere to when leveraging AI for participation in discussions? Furthermore, if such a policy exists, is it officially documented within HN’s guidelines, or is it more of an unwritten cultural norm that has evolved over time through community moderation and feedback?
I would appreciate any insights on whether this matter has been formally addressed or discussed in past threads, as well as any pointers to relevant resources that shed light on HN’s stance regarding AI-assisted participation.
You ever notice that only stuff you disliked is AI?
So the user "searealist" who you're responding to was correct in saying the comment was written by AI. Are we not supposed to call that out when we notice it? It's difficult because it's typically impossible to prove, and most people won't be as honest as the OP was here.
If what "searealist" did here is not acceptable even though he was right, what are we supposed to do? Flag, downvote?
Personally, I do not want to see any LLM generated content in HN comments, unless it's explicitly identified by the person posting it as a relevant part of some conversation about LLMs themselves.
[1] >>43075184
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(see also >>22427782 and similar)
We haven't added a specific rule to the guidelines about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) but we may end up having to.
What's tricky is that accusing other commenters of being bots/AIs is, at the same time, a new twist on the "you're a shill/astroturfer/troll/bot/spy" etc. swipe that internet users love to hurl at each other, and which we do have a guideline against (for good reason).
Between those two rules (or quasi-rules) there's a lot of room to get things wrong and I'm sorry I misread the above case!
We don't want LLM-generated comments (or any other kind of generated comments) here. Downvoting or flagging comments that you think are generated is fine. "Calling out" is more of a grey area because there are also a lot of ways to get it wrong and break the site guidelines by doing so. But I got it wrong the opposite way in the above case, so I'm not really sure how to make all this precise yet.
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. I'd be happy to take the rate limit off your account, but when I look at your recent comments, I still see too many that match that description:
If you want to build up a track record of using HN as intended for a while, you'd be welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we can take a look and hopefully take the rate limit off your account.
For reference, the GGGP comment was generated using this prompt:
turn this small reply into an extremely verbose, very long
comment: Outside of my accusation. Does HN have any
guidelines on using chatgpt comments?