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dataflowtoday at 12:04 AM7 repliesview on HN

Do the guidelines also disallow comments along the lines of "according to <AI>, <blah>"? (I ask this given that "according to a Google search, <blah>" is allowed, AFAIK.)


Replies

BeetleBtoday at 12:42 AM

I would lean towards disallowing those. With "According to a Google search ...", someone can ask for specific links (and indeed, people often say to link to those sources to begin with instead of invoking Google). With "According to AI ... " - why would most readers care what the AI thinks? It's not a reliable source! You might as well say "According to a stranger I just met and don't know ..."

If you're going to say that the AI said X, Y, Z, provide a rationale on why it is relevant. If you merely found X, Y and Z compelling, feel free to talk about it without mentioning AI.

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MetaWhirledPeastoday at 1:55 AM

I don't have a problem with that. First off it's not very common. Second off it can add to a conversation, just as it can with in-person discussions. If you feel like it doesn't, don't upvote and don't reply. There's no value in pretending we're Woodward and Bernstein every time we leave a comment.

yellowappletoday at 12:46 AM

I think those should be allowed iff the nature of being AI-generated is relevant to the topic of discussion — e.g. if we're talking about whether some model or other can accurately respond to some prompt and people feel inclined to try it themselves.

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dangtoday at 5:14 AM

We don't want people copy-pasting in comments generally. Summary comments, onlyquote comments (i.e. consisting of a quote and nothing else), duplicate comments are other examples of this. It's not specific to LLMs.

However, that's probably not critical enough to formally add to the explicit guidelines, so it's probably fine to leave it in the "case law" realm—especially because downvoters tend to go after such comments.

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crossroadsguytoday at 1:41 AM

I'd rather ask AI to provide a source and then cite the source. But if the source itself is AI backed, then it's a bit different :)

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snowwrestlertoday at 1:05 AM

Citations can be helpful. But AI summaries and Google searches are poor citations because they are not primary sources.

dfxm12today at 1:57 AM

AI is not a source. A Google search result page is not a source. Hopefully, these things help you find a source. If you're posting something you feel the need to source, post the source along with your comment! For example, don't say "according to a Google search, x"... say something like "according to Microsoft's documentation, x" and provide a link to Microsoft Learn page...