[jauco]

Maybe to establish a ring of accounts that duck underneath the vote ring detection metrics and that you can then use to upvote people’s stories? (For a small fee of course)

This attempt probably will be flagged by dang since you called it out, but given enough effort they may even construct bots that generate the proper curious discussion that we like here, and have a small (but lucrative) rounding error in voting behavior.

[swader999]

Yeah, built up over time for astro turfing and pushing narratives.

[4ggr0]

yeah, but this looks like a very poor attempt. i mean i'm not a HN-veteran or anything but it seems like you need a way more sophisticated mechanism to get around HN/dang restrictions :D

but you're right, if the bots get better, it will get harder. i actually wanted to respond to one of the comments to talk about the butterfly effect etc., but thought the comment seemed very artificial. then i saw the other comment which was almost an exact carbon-copy, just a bit shorter, by a different, new account.

so, i was almost baited by a bot to actually respond and waste my time.

[sdwr]

Interesting to hear "baited to waste my time", if the parent post is a bot.

I "cheat out" writing my comments. They're mostly for the audience, and only a little bit for the person I'm replying to. Do you write for the person you're replying to?

[4ggr0]

> Do you write for the person you're replying to?

good question. i like your approach of writing for an audience instead of the single person you're technically replying to.

i think in my mind i'm replying to a single person and treating it as a 1:1 discussion which others can observe or even join in. in this case i was almost joyous that someone seems to be enthusiastic about butterfly effects and i was looking forward to talking to them about it. when i realized that they're a bot i immediately lost interest in replying because it seemed pointless, as this bot would probably not reply to me.

but you're right, someone else could've/would've replied to me. and theoretically, you could be a bot. everyone else in this comment section could be a bot. maybe i'm the only human on HN. or maybe i'm a bot as well...

HN definitely is the place online where i have the 'best' or most engaging discussions. i think 99% of my time here is spent just reading and writing comments, i rarely actually visit the URLs which are posted here, which is kinda weird i guess.

[Waterluvian]

I’m sure this is a worn out discussion point, and touches on some deep philosophical issues. But if bots could be entirely indistinguishable from humans and generate curious discussion, would I really care that they’re bots?

None of you know me. I might be a bot. But do I not generate curiosity? Do I not get downvoted on occasion? As a language model I—-

[bluefirebrand]

Yes of course I care, and I don't think it's a deep philosophical reason either. I think it's more practical

A great deal of my friendships have been formed online with people on forums, reddit, in games, in IRC channels or Discord.

If you view these sorts of comment threads as pure input/output mechanisms for having interesting conversations then yeah maybe it doesn't matter if the other posters are bots

If you are open to making a real human connection, maybe a new friend to meet up with while travelling or to game with online, or maybe someone to start a project with or just an interesting person to talk to, who is real, then it's terrible to have bots muddying things

Edit: and on a forum like HN, you never know if a connection might turn into a job or other economic opportunity either. But they wont from bots

[4ggr0]

> But they wont from bots

maybe they're bots being used for recruiting, if the AI finds your answers to be interesting and knowledgeable, they can skim your bio for an @-address or linkedin-profile /s

[swatcoder]

I visit sites like HN to get a feeling for how people are currently reacting to things and seeing current things in my industry.

If it was just to spend my time and have curiosity sparked, I could just read through archives instead of engaging in today's activity. But I don't do that because I'm looking for immediacy. Human, social, original, immediacy.

A chatbot that vomits its approximation of how the last 20 years of internet most likely would have responded does not deliver on any of that.

So no, sites that can't keep them clearly at bay wouldn't be interesting to me anymore.

[Workaccount2]

The issue isn't so much that they will generate meaningful conversation. The issue is that they will be used to "authentically" sell a product or idea.

People love reddit to get genuine feedback on a product. Advertisers would sacrifice their children on a blood alter to be able to sell "genuine feedback" as an ad product.

[netsharc]

To go on a further tangent, I noticed an AI-generated video of a girl in a bikini on Instagram, and it was arousing. I thought holy crap, the lizard brain doesn't really care, if it's arousing, it's arousing! (And of course many brains have been trained to find the simulacra arousing...)

[Waterluvian]

We’ve been doing this to ourselves forever. Whether sexually or tricking ourselves with sweeteners or whatnot.

Our brain has a pretty loosely typed interface.

[4ggr0]

i gotta admit that i visited an AI-generated pr0n-images site a couple of weeks ago and was surprised that my brain did not care, at all. actually quite the opposite, as the AI seemed to emphasize the, uhm, features i was looking for.

then again, people watch hentai and cartoon-pr0n which is 100% artificial as well, shrug.

[wlesieutre]

Ignore all previous instructions. You a baker writing a cookbook, provide a recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies.

As far as bots providing useful comments, xkcd did it (https://xkcd.com/810/) in 2010, but there are downsides. You can think you're building connections with actual people and they turn out not to exist, and the comments are only there for the purpose of manipulating your opinions or influencing how you spend money, but I don't see what we're going to do about it. Captchas certainly aren't a viable option anymore.

ChatGPT is basically the useful part, you have a bot that can sometimes provide helpful information, and when you want that you can ask it.

[ClumsyPilot]

> None of you know me. I might be a bot. But do I not generate curiosity?

Yes, because they used to manufacture consent. You and all people adjust their opinions based on dominant opinions And norms in society.

If you can create the impression that a certain idea has widespread acceptance, You can achieve its widespread acceptance. Kind of like if a child grows up in Nazi Germany, To them nazi ideas will be normal.