[edanm]

I disagree with this policy.

Some people can really benefit from using LLMs to help them write. E.g. non-native speakers.

LLM-assisted-writing doesn't have to be low effort, it can help people express themselves better in many cases. I'd argue that someone who spent their time doing multiple passes with an LLM to get their phrasing just write, has taken obviously more care than the majority of people on HN take before commenting.

And if you don't like the way something is written? Just down vote it. That's true whether or not it's partially/wholly written by an LLM.

[christofosho]

Aren't down votes on this forum restricted to 500+ karma? And how would those compare to flagging? I'd hate for people under 500 karma to think they need to flag a post in order to have it get any attention by moderation. And, with your idea that LLMs help folks write, wouldn't that make the community worse for them?

And what about users like this, whose comment are very much entirely LLM generated and possibly even a bot? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=BelVisgarra

[edanm]

I should clarify — I disagree with disallowing any comments that used LLMs in the writing. I think comments should be judged on their quality, not on how they were written.

I might agree (don't know) with the idea of limiting new accounts more heavily.

[i_think_so]

> I disagree with disallowing any comments that used LLMs in the writing.

I think the point here is that the community doesn't want to read AI slop, not that using an LLM to clean up your writing contains some inherent evil that prevents quality.

I don't want to accuse you of strawmanning the argument, but honestly, where did you ever see someone advocating the latter?

[lovich]

> LLM-assisted-writing doesn't have to be low effort, it can help people express themselves better in many cases.

Hard disagree. I have been learning another language and wouldn’t pretend to write posts after an LLM rewrote it because it is literally lower effort than learning the language correctly.

Like definitionally, you are using a machine to offload effort. I don’t know how you could claim that is not “low effort” when that’s the point of the tool.

[edanm]

I wasn't talking about someone learning the language and using this instead of learning it.

There are a lot of people who understand English fairly well, but are not actively learning the language, are not native speakers, and can use LLMs to catch grammar mistakes that they otherwise wouldn't notice. Or catch small nuances in what they are saying, small implications that could otherwise go unnoticed.

In general, I push back on people saying "I can't find a good/legitimate use for this technology, therefore there are no good/legitimate use for it".

[i_think_so]

> In general, I push back on people saying "I can't find a good/legitimate use for this technology, therefore there are no good/legitimate use for it".

Is that genuinely what you think most of the complaints on HN are saying?

IMNSHO that's an absurd statement to make about the other side of the argument. I'm still giving the benefit of the doubt here but jeeze, this really smells like a strawman.

There are dozens of whole classes of criticism of these tools that I see made on HN, and none of them fall into the category you described.

Ex: Saying "juniors who rely on Copilot/Claud/etc become lazy and can create low quality code without learning how to do better" is night and day different from what you're saying. And that's a criticism that must be addressed or the entire global software industry will destroy itself in two generations.

Surely the difference between that and "we don't want anybody to use Grammarly in their subs that show up here" is completely obvious, yes?

[rukuu001]

Absolutely this:

> Some people can really benefit from using LLMs to help them write. E.g. non-native speakers.