How much of HN is AI?

jdw64

Is Pangram's detection capability considered to be on the higher side? This post seems to be written under the assumption that Pangram's detection is highly effective. Is it actually considered to be on the higher side in English-speaking circles?

falsemyrmidon

It's not just HN, have you seen mainstream news recently? It's just a hot topic and I think it's normal for people to talk about those a lot. If quantum computing ever goes mainstream, I'm sure you'll see a lot of articles about that as well.

bewareofscams

Did not read the article, but I would say about 40%. Btw, you can toggle [showdead] in profile settings, then you'll see messages caught by moderators, which are sophisticated bots (writing style at ChatGPT3 level) + absolutely valid points that lash out on ruling class, SV mentality, US and Israel.

hugs

there was one glorious day years ago when every story on the hn front page was about erlang. that was fun. (anyone else remember that?)

micromacrofoot

Would be interested to see this compared to past trends, crypto and NFTs for example

jrflo

My reaction is: that's an appropriate amount. AI is probably the biggest thing to happen (in tech) in the last two decades, so I think it's fair that it's taking up a lot of the discourse.

jerf

"At the same time, it has a fair number of toxic commenters, making it a dependable source of insults hurled in my general direction; if you want a taste, {another article by same author} has been called “watered-down” and “slop”." We have gotten to the point where it is virtually guaranteed that some commenter to almost any given article will have an oversensitive AI detector and accuse the author of it being AI. I swear there's people whose AI detectors are just def is_content_ai(content): return True Occasionally such people also complain about how much of the world is AI now... well... yeah, that's what happens when that's your detector. It's not quite that bad, as bad as it is. I don't know what to do about it. Discussion about AI provenance of a given work is often a valid topic. When YouTube shovels an AI channel at me and it briefly penetrates my defenses, it's heartening to see the commentors trying to warn people about it, shortly before I block the channel. (It's annoying that so many legit channels, which I know are legit because they predate AI and the same person is on camera as before, have switched to heavily-AI thumbnails. That's the hole that the other channels sometimes get me with, because just having an AI thumbnail doesn't prove it's not a legit channel now.) On the other hand, the chorus of very annoyed people who are very annoyed because they see AI everywhere who see AI everywhere because they literally see AI everywhere are becoming a bit of a nuisance themselves.

mgl

Democratization of access has its victims. I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes. 15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars. 10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce. 5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter. Now it is a blurry view into the future through the black mirror of AI. How could we jump back into the cozy past again? I do not have a clear answer, but what seems to work for you are small groups of friends and friends of friends hanging out on WhatsApp or Discord, discussing geeky news together in the context of their backgrounds. But these are very curated and very closed groups, still operating on the social media platforms of behemoths. Would now be the right time to restart self-hosted message boards or Mattermost/Campfire instances?

0xbadcafebee

Compare to the 2010s when 90% of the front page was about NoSQL

brcmthrowaway

Sometimes there's an obvious AI comment, how is it auto-hidden/downvoted?

thrill

Far less than the constant whining about AI.

totalconfusion

Not everyone here is AI. I can't tell the difference so what does it matter? If I learn something or get inspired by a person or a bot, great. AI tools are incredibly powerful, new and rapidly evolving, you shouldn't be surprised that everyone on HN is all over it.

my-next-account

I swear that the amount of astroturfing in the comment field by AI bots being positive towards AI is at an all time high as well.

feverzsj

HN really needs an AI filter. Most posts are AI company promotion now.

rzmmm

Reading these comments it seems that meta-discussion of AI is the most hot button topic of all in HN.

ViktorRay

Reading about tech has become gradually less and less fun for me over the past 16 years. Does anyone remember the awe that was felt the first time we encountered an iPhone. Or an iPad? I remember those days I would read tech news and sites like Ars Technica and comments were sometimes snarky and indignant but generally people were enthusiastic about reading tech because it offered glimpses into more technically advanced futures. I wasn't browsing HN back then but I imaging the same thing was true of HN in the late 2000's and early 2010's. Now tech sites like Ars Technica consistently have comment sections filled with immense negativity cynicism indigation and just plain old boiling rage. I avoid those comment sections now because reading such things negatively affects my mood and certainly isn't fun. And over the past few years HN has gradually become more negative and nasty. All this sucks. This isn't why I became interested in tech. This isn't why I used to spend time reading about technology and science.

onesandofgrain

All of it, it's time to move away, go to https://outspeaker.com/ , it doesn't censor nor remove anti-ai content

beekthos

And what will it be in another 10 years?

asveikau

I've been noticing in recent months that even when the article is in no way related to AI, there's often comments trying to steer it into AI, often in a way that makes no sense at all. It has a way of becoming its own parody.

NoboruWataya

> In the first half of the month, roughly 60% of the daily HN lineup was AI-related or AI-generated, tapering off to ~50% as we approached the end of the month. This is up from 40% in February. This aligns with my much less scientific research. Every now and again, when I remember to do it, I will skim the top 10 stories and count how many are AI-related. I find it is very consistently in the 4-6 bracket. Probably a majority of the time, 5 out of 10 articles are AI-related, and very rarely does it drop below 4 out of 10. It also rarely goes over 6 out of 10, but I can remember it happening a couple of times. In fact, the proportion of AI representation in the top 10 is so consistent (in my, again, unscientific experience) that I wonder if it is being moderated one way or the other. Personally I find it boring that one topic gets so much discussion but who am I to argue. I do my bit by making sure to upvote non-AI stories that I find interesting.