> The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person.

Because it wasn't pre-AI. It was normal for people to post links as arguments, counterarguments, etc. It annoyed me, and I didn't bother clicking most of them, and would occasionally tell them "If you can't bother articulating your thoughts, I can't be bothered with that link".

But I was always in the minority. If that behavior is acceptable to the masses, so is AI generated content.

(And, BTW, the "link as argument" bugs me a lot more than AI responses. If I know the person, I can assume the person has done some due diligence in reviewing the AI response before sending it to me.)

> If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I want to hear from you.

To play the devil's advocate: it's far from a given that had you asked the LLM it would have given you a comparable response to the one you got. You're precluding the possibility that the other party instructed the LLM to write what he intended to say.

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sebastiennight an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I would have said the opposite: I'd assume the link to be to a blog post, or Wikipedia page, that articulates the idea in a clearer more succint way than the person might be able of.

This is, of course, before people started sending Instagram Reel or YouTube Short links. Or, maybe worse, links to 3-hour-long YouTube podcasts.

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aliasxneo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Eh, but it can become just as low-effort as AI slop. I've participated in a number of conversations here where it appears the person I was interacting with (this was pre-AI) was just googling off some keywords and pasting links with one or two sentences attached. Even in cases where they legitimately read the thing they posted, the static nature of the link leaves no room for actually responding to any nuance I might have added (i.e. the author missed something critical).

After a few years of this I also just stopped clicking thinks and refused to engage in conversations that seemed to be going that direction.

	▲	BeetleB 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes - I would think this is obvious to HN commenters. Generally, when someone leaves a comment on HN that is nothing but a link, it gets downvoted.

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BeetleB an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'd assume the link to be to a blog post, or Wikipedia page, that articulates the idea in a clearer more succint way than the person might be able of.

As with everything, it depends on who is sending it. For some people, yes. For the rest (majority), it's a case of

He: Makes some claim

Me: I question some aspect of it.

... Potential back and forth

He: Oh, just look at this video/article/book that explains and answers all your concerns.

Thing is, in the majority of the cases, it didn't address my concern. I'd write up something in detail, and get back either silence or yet another link. Took way too long for me to realize I shouldn't bother clicking the link to begin with.

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erikschoster an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you're right, and we've been training ourselves for the shortest path of least resistance for quite a while while kidding ourselves that we're able to somehow preserve the result as worthwhile. Before I ever tried using LLMs for search I had already been training myself for years to offload my thinking to a quick web search and a skim of some plausible result served up.

Arguably things like Cliff's Notes and "for dummies" books were sating this impulse before that, I wouldn't be surprised if the line can be traced back further.

Since dropping LLMs altogether I've made the connection to the impulse for a superficial jump to the conclusion just by noticing how I use web search, or feverishly scan some text to get to the point.

Theoretically I studied critical thinking and have learned decades ago how to recognize when this is OK and when it's a superficial placation of some addiction to closing the book on a subject or micro-subject... but boy whatever good instincts I might have developed back then have significantly eroded over time. Trying to reclaim that again is pretty humbling.

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thatjoeoverthr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Because it wasn't ..."

Not so. Posting links is not the same. If you were to copy+paste someone's blog post into the forum and post is as your own, without attribution, it would be seen as plagiarism. Everyone understands this; you're trying to pass another's work as your own.

On X there's actually a good modern equivalent to "posting links" which is @grok, and letting Grok add to the thread. There is occasional teasing but it's nothing like posting slop under your own name.

ChatGPT actually allows something like this; you can share a link to the conversation.

Everyone is free to do this, instead of using ChatGPT as a ghostwriter.

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BeetleB an hour ago | parent [-]

So I take it you'll be fine with responses that begin with:

"ChatGPT says ... "?

> Everyone is free to do this, instead of using ChatGPT as a ghostwriter.

I guess the bulk of folks use ChatGPT as the preferred chatbot, but people like me have a completely different interface that doesn't use ChatGPT. I can't send someone links to my conversation.

(And as an aside, over 80% of ChatGPT conversation links I click on don't work - not sure if they clean them after some time, or I need to be logged in, etc).

And even if it did work, I really don't want to read the whole conversation. Just send me the relevant part that ChatGPT said!

	▲	thatjoeoverthr 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		"ChatGPT says" can be annoying but it's unequivocally better than passing ChatGPT off as yourself. Quoting it for convenience ("the relevant part") --- ok, great. Does it look lazy? Well, if you respond _as its sockpuppet_ you look like a hustler, too.

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watwut an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If that behavior is acceptable to the masses, so is AI generated content.

No, linking blog post and posting AI generated content is not the same. One is ok, other is not.

	▲	BeetleB an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> No, linking blog post and posting AI generated content is not the same. One is ok, other is not. Meet "the masses". Sorry, but no. Sending me a link as an alternative to having a conversation is totally not OK.

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b112 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You're precluding the possibility that the other party instructed the LLM to write what he intended to say.

That is not currently possible. At best, you could train on millions of personal examples of style, eg historical emails, reports, etc, and you'd still never get what the person would have written.

I'd be astonished if an LLM didn't even miss important nuance, data, and focus on the wrong point.

It think the parent's point was, hearing a summary of what someone was thinking, from a second party isn't interesting as data from the primary source.

When you come to listen to Bob the Great, having a minion walk put and paraphrase Bob's words isnt the same. Human, LLM, or not.

	▲	BeetleB 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> At best, you could train on millions of personal examples of style, eg historical emails, reports, etc, and you'd still never get what the person would have written. You wouldn't get it verbatim, but your mistrust in AI reflecting what you intended to say is unwarranted. I use LLMs to clean up poorly OCR'd hand written notes. It's the exception where I need to "fix" its output. It figures out what the notes intended, and writes it up fairly well. > It think the parent's point was, hearing a summary of what someone was thinking, from a second party isn't interesting as data from the primary source. For a lot (most?) of AI slop, I agree. But pre-LLMs, this was universally a bad idea. The first draft always sucked, and was easy to misunderstand. A good LLM, with a good system prompt, will usually produce something better than the input it is fed. Most people are poor at expressing their thoughts. > When you come to listen to Bob the Great, having a minion walk put and paraphrase Bob's words isnt the same. Human, LLM, or not. Most people aren't Bob The Great, but Bob The Incoherent.