[ryandrake]

IMO posting "This article is AI" does not add anything to the conversation.

The HN guidelines[1] include:

    Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage.

and

    Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

I'd argue pointing out that you think an article is AI is very similar in value to pointing out any of the above. None of us like AI slop. But I wouldn't be surprised if, by the end of 2026, 90-95% of articles posted online are AI slop. Pointing it out is useless. As useless as pointing out that the article breaks the scrollbar (which happens often) or that the article is formatted badly or has poor text contrast, or that an article is Chinese propaganda. Probably true, but posting about it adds nothing to the discussion, and is not allowed on HN.

All we really need is to add "Don't complain that an article is AI" to the guidelines.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[WD-42]

But it is useful. I can deal with a broken scrollbar if the content is good, but if an article is AI written I don't want to read the content at all. That's a huge difference.

Nowadays I usually check the comments first for the "This is AI" comment, I've left a few of my own and gotten thank yous in reply.

[tayo42]

I don't think I agree with that. Complaining about AI written articles is more about the quality of the writing. it's on par with a piece of writing that wasn't proof read, well researched or some stream of consciousness rant.

I think the criticism also signals to the submitter or idk co-author? That the article isn't valued

[asdff]

Flagged as AI is useful as it would mean I skip the article.

[kordlessagain]

You could just ask your AI to flag it with an extension, or rewrite it in a style you prefer (or just do a good job summarizing the articles core meaning).

[asdff]

That would be like driving a v12 down my driveway everytime I want to check the mailbox.

[kordlessagain]

I have a local 12GB GPU doing this, and it's definitely not a v12.

[asdff]

Meanwhile I use no vram to read with my own eyes

[eclipticplane]

But what if your v12 was fueling an entire economy based on miles driven?

[asdff]

A real v12, vs hypothetical in my example, actually does in the form of gas consumed. Still, doesn't mean it is a good excuse to justify the waste in energy and materials, all to achieve what I already can do. It would be nice to throw that compute towards stuff like curing disease or towards something that might stave off climate change, instead of using it to turn bullet points into an article and me turning that article back into bullet points.

[nvme0n1p1]

> > I don't want to deal with AI or AI slop

> You should add more AI to your life

I hope you can see how this is not a useful suggestion.

[kordlessagain]

I'm suggesting using AI to combat the AI issue, not complaining endlessly with pointless points that do nothing to solve the very real problem that is not going away by being stubborn or rude. My suggestion, which I use myself, helps limit the blast radius. Doesn't mean I have to get involved with it while it's doing what it does. Do you also question email filters and argue that sending spam is wrong and suggesting to use a spam filter is not useful to the conversation?

[nvme0n1p1]

GP proposed the site should solve the problem once at the source, and everyone benefits. You counter-proposed that every individual reader should take manual action on every headline they see. That's a lot of redundant wasted effort across the userbase.

To continue your analogy, that would be like if Gmail got rid of spam filters, and then told people to stop complaining endlessly and manually copy every email they get into SpamGPT to ask if it's spam or not.

[Diogenesian]

It is very useful when the LLM-generated article is full of inaccuracies. Look how confused people were in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48873424 A disclaimer on HN saying "AI generated" would have cleared things up instantly.

[lelanthran]

> But I wouldn't be surprised if, by the end of 2026, 90-95% of articles posted online are AI slop. Pointing it out is useless.

Actually, when 90%-95% of articles posted online are AI slop, it's even more useful to identify those which aren't.

When the signal/noise ratio is too low, having an indicator of signal is tremendously useful.

[archagon]

I am exclusively interested in the remaining 5% that is not AI slop, so yes, I always want to see that information.

[Ferret7446]

Agreed, I find comments whining about AI slop to be far less valuable than the supposed AI slop, and I wonder if the commenters are aware of the irony, or perhaps those comments are also AI slop themselves.