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Comment by dottjt | Hacker News Reader

Okay, so this is what I find interesting about this post.

I actually posted this exact same thing a few days ago, and admittedly at the time, I was fairly confident that it wouldn't kick off because the title was kind of half-arsed and confusing. But also, it was uniquely me. I didn't really care.

And when I read this title, it sounds like something ChatGPT would have produced, in a very general way.

Even the body sounds very ChatGPT. So I wonder if this user decided to repost my post, in a way that would actually get engagement.

Then it got me thinking: Maybe we're reaching a point where the only thing that really matters, is your ability to create prompts. Your ability to ask the right questions to AI, so you can produce the right answers. That will be the future of humanity, and your inability to adapt to this way of thinking will hinder you.

Just an observation. Nothing more. But yeah, that title is way, way better.

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You're very good.

No, I have not seen your post. I was coding away and genuinely was thinking about my eyesight and started adjusting my ambient lightning. Then I realized that I actually have no idea what I'm doing, so I have decided to write an Ask HN.

I wrote the title but was too lazy to find good wording of the subtitle (is one needed anyway?), so I had it generated with GPT3. I adjusted it by deleting one sentence.

What is interesting, is I've been feeding in prompts from /r/writingprompts on Reddit to see what gets generated. And the stories, while somewhat impressive, all have a certain feel to them kind of like they are formulatic. Or they have story flow errors or parts that can really fit any writing prompt.

Now, lately, when reading /r/writingprompts I every once in a while come across a response that reads very much like ChatGPT generated it. I guess the feel of the AI generated responses is somewhat like what you would get when a junior high schooler is asked to write a story and hasn't had much experience yet.

This is an interesting frame, to me. Like consulting an oracle; the priesthood must know how to ask the right question, to ensure accurate and irony-free prophecy.

Seems to me to be part of some kind of duality in models of epistemology; knowledge construction, vs. knowledge discovery through "search" of the hypothesis space?

I will say I've been wondering in general whether ChatGPT is going to break HN by being used to make HN sounding answer or questions to things.

Although at the same time if no one notices and continues to enjoy the reading, then maybe no one is harmed?

In my gut I would be very sad if ChatGPT content started flooding in

You kicked yours off assuming you knew the answer. OP kicked theirs off with the root problem

Yeah, fair enough. I think I'm more used to posting on Reddit, where I think there's an expectation that you're offering something, in exchange for the information that others will provide. So I feel kind of dirty just asking people directly for information, but I guess I'm just wired to a different engagement model. It's also probably why I find News Hacker more intimidating.

If all one learns to do is only "asking the right questions", then how would you know if what the AI has produced are "the right answers" ?

Well I mean, if at the end of the day the primary game is engagement, I don't think the right answer really will matter any more, at least in the broader context of a discussion forum.

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