alt Hacker NewsHow about comments that include AI output if labeled?
Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for).
I asked Perplexity and given my recollection and when I heard about the case it suggested a candidate and gave a summary. The summary matched my recollection and a quick look at the decision itself verified it had found the right case and did a good job summarizing it--probably better than I would have done.
I posted a cite to the case and a link to decision. I normally would have also linked to the Wikipedia article on the case since those usually have a good summary but there was no Wikipedia article for this one.
I though of pasting in Perplexity's summary, saying it was from Perplexity but that I had checked and it was a good summary.
Would that be OK or would that count as an AI written comment?
I have also considered, but not yet actually tried, running some of my comments through an AI for suggested improvements. I've noticed I have a tendency to do three things that I probably should do less of:
1. Run on sentences. (Maybe that's why of all the people in the 11th-100th spot on the karma list I have the highest ratio of words/karma, with 42+ words per karma point [1]).
2. Use too many commas.
3. Write "server" when I mean "serve". I think I add "r" to some other words ending in "e" too.
I was thinking those would be something an AI might be good at catching and suggesting minimal fixes for.
Replies
It sounds like you already know how to improve your comments, how about just doing those things.
Before chatbots, people used to link to Google search result pages as a passive-agressive way to say “the information is out there, go find it, I don’t care about you enough to explain it to you”
Pasting a chatGPT response into a comment, and labeling it as such, feels the same to me.
It is more, not less, insulting than trying to pass an AI response off as your own.
I'd be fine with treating this like snippets from Wikipedia with citations back to the article. This way, people can manually verify the sources if they so choose.
> I though of pasting in Perplexity's summary, saying it was from Perplexity but that I had checked and it was a good summary.
> Would that be OK or would that count as an AI written comment?
The rule seems written to answer this directly.
Absolutely nobody cares what Perplexity has to say about the case - summary or otherwise. If you mention what the case is, I can ask claude myself if I’m interested.
Better yet, post a link to an authoritative source on the case (helpful but not required).
At minimum, verify your info via another source. The community deserves that much at least.
An AI-generated summary adds nothing positive and actually detracts from the conversation.
Perplexity supports sharing URL to the thread. I think it's quite natural to link AI summaries like that.
This is how I would use/expect AI to be used in HN. I would also like this clarified.
I would still say no, there is something about finding the words for yourself, even if they aren't as elegant as an Ai can make. It's fine, most humans prefer imperfection.
The point is we don't want to read Ai summaries, we can make one ourselves if we want. Personally, with certainty, I don't want to read one from Perplexity on the basis that they do the Ai for Trump Social. (reverse-kyc if you are not aware)
For some inspiration on why this is meaningful: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/g-s1177-78041/what-to-do-when...
You were correct not to post the summary. HN tends to expect readers to invest time in reading and understanding long form content and for community to step into discussions and offer context and explanations when necessary. One of the most important context statements on this site has been “in mice”, posted as a two word comment, elevated to top comment on the post. An AI summary will miss that context altogether while busily calculating a cliffsnote no one wants to read (and could often get you flagged and potentially banned, even before today’s guideline update). If a reader wants an AI summary, they have the same tools you do to generate it by their own hand.
If you have domain familiarity with it, have some personal insight to offer a lens through, or care about the topic deeply enough to write a summary yourself, then go ahead! I almost never post about AI given my loathing of generative ML, but I posted a critical summary in a recent “underlying shared structure” post because it was a truly exciting mathematical insight and the paper made that difficult to see for some people.
Please don’t use AI to reduce the distinctiveness of your writing style. Run on sentences are how humans speak to each other. Excess commas are only excess when you consider neurotypicals. I’m learning French and I have already started to fuck up some English spelling because of it. None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Just add -er suffix checks to your mental proofreading list and move on with being you.