> Please don’t put words in my mouth, insinuating the tone my reply before I’ve made it, and then use that rhetorical device to introduce a flamebait tangent to discredit me with. I’ve made no claims about future capabilities here and I’m not going to address this irrelevance further.

I apologize--the "you" I meant was the person currently reading my post, not the person I was replying to. I was merely trying to answer a common objection that I've heard.

> HN need not offer itself up as a Petri dish for AI writing experimentation.

I'm not sure HN has a choice. I don't think we can prevent posters from experimenting with LLMs to post on HN--even if they adhere to the guidelines. For example, can I ask the LLM to come up with the strongest argument it can and then re-write it in my own words? That seems to be allowed by the guidelines. Would someone even be able to tell that's what I did? [NOTE: I did not do that.]

I think you're arguing that we should not encourage even more use of LLMs on HN. I get that. But I feel like that this community is uniquely qualified to search for better solutions.

> Our current criteria seem sophisticated already.

I hope you're right! That implies that you believe the current guidelines are sufficient to keep HN as the place we all love despite the assault from LLMs. I'm skeptical, but I've been wrong plenty of times!

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altairprime 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> I don't think we can prevent posters from experimenting with LLMs to post on HN

And yet, she persisted, we will still set guidelines; so that people know they’re unwelcome to do so when they do, so that they can’t argue that they didn’t know, so that we as a social club can strive towards the standards we argue about and accept from the organizers. The point of guidelines is not that they prevent malicious intent; the point is that they inhibit those behaviors that exceed the defined boundaries, however vague or precise they may be. Prevention of malice is an impossibility in all human social affairs, whether guidelines are defined or not; one must find other reasons for rules than prevention to understand why rules are at all.

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GMoromisato 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> And yet, she persisted, we will still set guidelines

I'm not sure if you're including or excluding me from the "we". If you're excluding me, then I feel our conversation has come to an end.

But if you're including me, then I think the guidelines need to evolve to deal with LLMs. Maybe not right now--maybe the current guidelines are sufficient for the next year or two or three. But I think we as a community are uniquely qualified to design and influence the future of internet social clubs in the face of LLMs.

	▲	altairprime 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I'm not sure if you're including or excluding me from the "we". “We” here refers to individual human beings that are members of the human social-entity constructs (‘social clubs’) that precipitate naturally out of human groups, both in general to all such groups and in specific to the group under discussion here today, HN participants. Whether or not you’re a member of “we” HN participants is conditional on whether or not you are honoring the policy of no AI-assisted writing at HN that is in effect as of whenever you saw this post or the new guidelines. I have no judgment to offer you in that regard, and in any case you’re readily able to decide that for yourself. Separately, I’m not engaging with discussion about future policy; perhaps you should start a top-level thread about it, or write a blog post and submit it (after a few days have passed, so it doesn’t get topic-duped and so that passions have cooled somewhat).