[cs702]

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

I'm certain GPT-3 has been commenting on HN threads for a while now. In some cases, its presence has been disclosed (see, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886503) In other cases, GPT-3's presence has not been disclosed; the machine has been pretending to be a human being, largely unnoticed. Consider only how easy it is for it to write short, punchy comments -- say, one to three sentences long.

By implication, there's a high probability that we -- you, me, and everyone else on HN -- have been upvoting and downvoting GPT-3 comments for a while without realizing it.

And the technology is only going to get better.

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm reminded of https://xkcd.com/810/.

The example comments you linked (Where GPT-3's presence was disclosed) were believably human, particularly if you were skimming, but they were not good comments. If not for the note at the end about GPT-3, I'm pretty confident they would have been downvoted.

And if I'm wrong, and GPT-3 is actually capable of writing thoughtful and substantive comments... well, in the words of XKCD, "mission fucking accomplished."

[cs702]

The longer the comment, the easier to detect GPT-3. The more rigorous the subject, the easier to detect GPT-3. But GPT-3's presence is harder to detect for short comments on less rigorous subjects generated using as input context actual headlines and top-voted comments on HN.