Why is that not sufficient for site operators to separate "AI Slop" from other articles?
If existing sites choose to tolerate "AI Slop" (why doesn't HN have this problem?), does that create a market opportunity for competitors with better filters?
> why doesn't HN have this problem?
HN comments aren’t easily monetizable.
And it's only going to get worse. I don't know what the limits of LLMs are, even before we start discussing future architectures and capabilities, but it certainly seems to me that if they just scale a bit farther on their current trajectory it is going to be very hard to detect AIs simply by the content.
One of the adaptations I've adopted is that if your content looks like it was generated from a simple prompt, no matter how long the resulting content, I just toss it. "Write me a beginner's tutorial for Python" isn't going to produce a document that the internet needs another copy of or that social media sites need to spend time linking to. Unfortunately that means even if the "tutorial" was human-generated, it's probably getting the axe too, unless it has a very interesting or unusual approach, but it isn't clear to me that that is actually a large problem.
Why isn't it? As far as I can remember, all the forums had lot of outright spam, even forums which are orders of magnitude less popular than HN. You can even see spam in usenet. Reddit/Discord is full of it. I wonder are dang/moderators the only reason for this?
I've seen a few comments on HN that looked likely to have been generated by LLMs, but they tend not to get any replies or up-votes so there's not much incentive for people to keep on trying to post them.
LLM-generated content is not distinguishable from human content by any simple rule, so you lose the ability to police the platform that way.
Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns.
It probably drives engagement, so there's no need to interfere. Perhaps it should be encouraged even..
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Please refine: To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments including this one. I do, however put in substantial input outlining my thought in detail, so I use it more like a glorified grammar checker. It helps me a lot as I'm not a good writer (as being non-native, just sufficient to be able to thrive in business environment, just not a good writer. It helps me tremendously to get my thought across efficiently.
Writing is not just about syntax, but also about communicating who you are. This is your true voice.
Some roughness in my recent writing comes from being on mobile, which makes reviewing even harder! My writing has improved, though, even when I’m working without AI, likely from exposure to better writing flows. I’d say I used to rely more on edits (20% input to 80% edits), but now it’s closer to 75% input and 25% edits. Hopefully, I can refine it even further.
"Consider the following message. Distill the main thrust of the message, and list any implied statements made within. Be particularly sensitive to any negative connotations, and summarize the writer's feelings towards the reader:"
In the case of blatantly false images like on Facebook, they get a surprising amount of organic engagement: https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1806416249259258189
Because it's already filled with russian bots.