Comment by mrlambchop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrlambchop | Hacker News Reader

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In the spirit of tech conversations, here was my original input from my history:

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I was swept up in this article and the portrait for Amanda (barrows) - what a unique and strong person - this city is soo lucky to have her.

I want to respond that unlike some here, I came away with huge empathy and today's HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard accordingly. The public order issues such as homelessness in the park have impacted me, but more so, how to translate the state of the world to my children. I always remind them that this person was once a little boy / girl and we might be older, but we're still kids inside and nobody dreamt to grow up in this environment.

The compassion and my own empathy shown here coupled with the pragmatic approach shown by Amanda washed over me and the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that make solutions slow and ineffecient are understandable, but also highly frustrating.

The unhoused individuals and their mental state vs the requirements to find a home are very frustrating - the city surely understands the cost of housing policies and is run by highly pragmatic people, but rules are rules and some top down accommodations and medications are needed to help merge this.

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I personally don't see my opinions changed here - I think the posted text is a bit better but also agree on the uncanny valley issue. A little less brain swelling and I would have been all over the small signals :)

Personally, I find AI and the derivatives extremely helpful when it comes to communication (a booster for the mind!) and use it all the time when translating into other languages and also removing my northern British dialect from communication over in California.

A lesson to take from this is, "if a post expresses strong opinions, and you believe AI was involved in it's generation, then they probably used AI to edit, not to generate whole cloth." A hallmark of ChatGPT is an unwillingness to take a position, and instead to describe what positions it's possible to take. By the time you've prompted it enough to take a strong position, you've probably crossed into "editing" rather than "generating".

You can disagree with someone's view, but editing their words with AI doesn't make them wrong or disingenuous any more than asking another human to critique your post would be. And to imply otherwise is, itself, disingenuous and disruptive.

The exception would be if you thought there was no human involvement in the account at all, in which case, as another commenter noted, the appropriate thing would be to email the mods.

Do you think this would be the top comment were it not manipulated with AI? I don't think so.

a.) While I can't possibly know, yes, I think there's a very good chance. I think it's the top comment chiefly because it expressed a view that was popular with commenters. It's not like AI is a magic spell that bewitches people into upvoting.

b.) Another way to look at it is, "do you think it would be the top comment if the author didn't solicit feedback and thoughtfully edit their comment?" To which I would say, "who cares? Editing is fair play. Let's talk about our actual points of disagreement."

c.) To be frank I think this response from you is very telling. I haven't seen you engage at all with the substance of the comment. But you press very hard on this "AI" angle. The commenter has now shown us their pre-AI draft, and it's much the same - I think if you had a good-faith concern that it was "manipulated," that would satisfy you. Since it hasn't, I infer that your concern is either puritanical ("no AI must ever be used in any way") or that you are attacking the style of the comment when your real issue is it's substance.

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