Tell HN: The Decay and Fall of HN | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: The Decay and Fall of HN

3 pointszkmon3 comments

Today I suddenly woke up to the fact that HN is quickly changing. The average poster on HN is extremely wary of someone posting AI-assisted content. Real human posts are being labelled as AI slop and hurting the people who usually write in a formal tone that resembles AI output.

Ofcouse, HN is not too different from other social forums which are also affected by the similar problem. I don't see HN to be insulated from these issues. The existing moderation strategies do not seem to withstand. The forum would get flooded by trivial-natured, trigger-happy shallow commenters who value a few likes, instead of being themselves, or challenge the status-quo.

You get the point. I'm not sure if something can be done, or should be done, to resist that.

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I know what you mean, I'm ambivalent about AI since I perceive both advantages and disadvantages which balance out to be about neutral.

Well, as neutral as can be for someone who put lots of effort into ML way back in 1980 for a while there before the crash.

That's a pretty long time to be considering things like this, but it's so far removed from today that by now more decades have been spent as an outside observer with a bit of a unique background than anything else.

On any one subtopic I may still have a knee-jerk reaction more positive or negative than neutral, where I might not be that well-informed or have a full grasp of the implications. Regardless of how flexible I am as things emerge faster than ever, at times it could just as easily be lumped in with either the doomers or those who feel AI can do no wrong.

Maybe a few decades is not enough to come up with the really hard answers. Or even all the right questions?

I'm first to admit that about the main thing I do is respond to prompts for more than a decade without even trying. Without any AI at all and that's not likely to change.

If that's confusing, oh well.

OTOH the huge advances in language models make it easier for non-English speakers to make their messages more readable which can help a lot. And with computer languages being languages themselves progress here is remarkable too.

Were there specific posts that prompted* you to write this? I'm trying to understand the context for what you're talking about.

(* maybe I shouldn't use that word!)

You forgot the voting rings, any post or comment that goes against some people's politics or opinios immidiately gets downvoted and removed, and its making me come to HN and spend time less and less each time.

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