Ask HN: How will HN transition to allowing AI writing when society accepts it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How will HN transition to allowing AI writing when society accepts it?

1 pointamichail11 comments

In the near future, using AI to write will be just as acceptable as using glasses to read.

How will HN make the transition when this happens?

Strange assumption. Why would it want to?

HN is already struggling with losing valued members, mods, and contributions because of significantly more low value/high noise submissions and comments. As are many community sites (forums, advice, professional assistance).

Sites that don't ban and remove AI will become entirely AI, if that's your thing there's plenty of them around, why does HN have to morph into that? It resisted morphing into a self-promotion site (eg. ProductHunt, GumRoad), a crypto site, a security-vulnerability site (some exceptions), a political battleground (struggling), a blog repost site (some exceptions), a version release site, an unofficial big-tech support site.

At some point it will become untenable to resist AI posts/comments especially from an accessibility point of view.

In fact, it might become legally required for web sites to accept AI writing in the near future just as it is for web sites to provide accessibility accommodations.

A web site is a private space, unless it wishes to operate otherwise.. so first of all it would be opt-in. Second that would be country based, the internet crosses borders. I don't think there are many countries that would legislate that (perhaps that'll change). One of the only that might right now, will ban you for calling it AI for the next 2 years.

A more likely legal requirement is that use of AI is full disclosed, if it's even allowed. We're seeing the court systems say no, not only no but "the whole process was tainted by the use, and this is now a mistrial". There's likely to be professional repercussions codified soon - any professional practice governed by a recognized society (engineers, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, some accountants) will either have to disclose use but accept liability or certify it wasn't used to maintain their professional status.

HN's most recent rule addition would indicate otherwise

People are rejecting AI writing for good reason. I find it very unlikely Ai will improve much in this area any time soon

> HN is already struggling with losing valued members, mods

I can still remember when they hired dang and he's still around, I see people posting I recognize from 18 years ago when I first started reading this site...

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

The youngest "top ten" account is from 2020, most of them are from 15-20 years ago. Two of the top ten have not posted for months, seven have posted today.

HN added a new mod a year and a half ago - tomhow

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558671

That's a second moderator, dang has been moderating since PG left a dozen or whatever years ago and still is. So they've lost zero moderators unless I'm missing something?

And still have what looks like a very healthy number of long-time users, although I didn't dig deeper than the top 10.

The HN mods are fantastic and a large reason this site remains the gem it is (mostly). There is certainly a lot more slop posts and comments, as well as the effect from a decade with Trump as the world's center of attention.

Still, HN is full of quality content and people. I would not be who I am without it. Perhaps another enterprising HN'r will do one of those great analyses for account age, activity, and churn - and let us know!

Why post at all if you don’t consider it important enough to spend time writing yourself?

Maybe you would like the post to be written better than what you are capable of doing without AI?

if you want to write better, read more and practice, do not turn to Ai for either

if you want humans to read your writing, put in real human effort

Reply on news.ycombinator.com