and as always, the culprit is ChatGPT. Stack Overflow Inc. won’t let their mods take down AI-generated content

  •  Hyperz   ( @Hyperz@beehaw.org ) 
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    3111 months ago

    It seems to me like StackOverflow is really shooting themselves in the foot by allowing AI generated answers. Even if we assume that all AI generated answers are “correct”, doesn’t that completely destroy the purpose of the site? Like, if I were seeking an answer to some Python-related problem, why wouldn’t I go straight to ChatGPT or similar language models instead then? That way I also don’t have to deal with some of the other issues that plague StackOverflow such as “this question is a duplicate of <insert unrelated question> - closed!”.

    •  OrangeSlice   ( @14specks@lemmy.ml ) 
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      1411 months ago

      I think what sites have been running into is that it’s difficult to tell what is and is not AI-generated, so enforcement of a ban is difficult. Some would say that it’s better to have an AI-generated response out there in the open, which can then be verified and prioritized appropriately from user feedback. If there’s a human generated response that’s higher.quality, then that should win anyway, right? (Idk tbh)

      •  Hyperz   ( @Hyperz@beehaw.org ) 
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        711 months ago

        Yeah that’s a good point. I have no idea how you’d go about solving that problem. Right now you can still sort of tell sometimes when something was AI generated. But if we extrapolate the past few years of advances in LLMs, say, 10 years into the future… There will be no telling what’s AI and what’s not. Where does that leave sites like StackOverflow, or indeed many other types of sites?

        This then also makes me wonder how these models are going to be trained in the future. What happens when for example half of the training data is the output from previous models? How do you possibly steer/align future models and prevent compounding errors and bias? Strange times ahead.

        •  OrangeSlice   ( @14specks@lemmy.ml ) 
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          1011 months ago

          This then also makes me wonder how these models are going to be trained in the future. What happens when for example half of the training data is the output from previous models? How do you possibly steer/align future models and prevent compounding errors and bias? Strange times ahead.

          Between this and the “deep fake” tech I’m kinda hoping for a light Butlerian jihad that gets everyone to log tf off and exist in the real world, but that’s kind of a hot take

          •  Pigeon   ( @Lowbird@beehaw.org ) 
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            1211 months ago

            I’ve been seeing so many stories about student work getting falsely flagged as AI generated. It really feels bad to be accused of that, I think. So I can see why it would be better to avoid trying to determine one way or the other if something is AI generated, for now.

            All that matters for a question answer is whether it’s right, partly right, completely dead wrong, and so on, right? And that can still be judged regardless of whether it’s AI.

            AI absolutely shouldn’t be outright invited either, though.