Ask HN: Is there a desire for an AI summary friendly version of Hacker News?

2 pointslinotype6mo ago24 comments

Recently I received a lot of negative feedback from a few HNers about an AI summary I posted about a complex immigration concept (changes to non-Immigrant visas in the US). The post received a number of upvotes but the comments were negative from Anti-AI folks. I’ve seen a number of negative posts about AI here as well. Would there be any interest in a static site that would regularly scan the public HN posts from their API and generate AI summaries of the content without a comment section?

24 comments

3np6mo ago

No. And it's not just "anti-AI folks" who consider it spam and noise to copy-paste LLM summaries into a discussion forum.

vunderba6mo ago

Why not just go full-on dystopia and make a slackernews.com site that is an exact mirror of the submissions from HN api, and then populate them with entirely chatbot generated comment sections?

linotypeOP6mo ago

There would be no comments, just a summary of the contents of the post with a link to post.

baubino6mo ago

But…why? This is a discussion forum. We come here to discuss. Also, none of the posts are so long that they warrant a summary (AI or otherwise).

minimaxir6mo ago

The main reason your comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45160084) got downvoted was because you gave a summary without disclosing it's AI-generated, which made other users upset.

But even if you did disclose, it's still against HN rules, as other people in that thread told you. You commented "they’re free to delete it. I think it adds value", but as you've seen the community disagrees.

linotypeOP6mo ago

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

Not according to the guidelines and the upvotes the comment received.

minimaxir6mo ago

The guidelines are out of date and they don't mention anything for or against AI comments. Having your comment flagged makes the number of upvotes irrelevant.

The search thread you were linked to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) are comments from dang, the head moderator of HN. His word is the law.

1 more reply

brudgers6mo ago

People often upvote comments that are contrary to the spirit of HN.

And for better or worse, lawyering the guidelines is not in the spirit of HN. Better because moderation is generally patient, kind, and soft touch. Worse because the guidelines are guidelines not so much bright lines and some people want bright lines.

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ForHackernews6mo ago

Why? Anyone who wanted that could copy-paste into chatgpt or install a browser extension to do it for them.

linotypeOP6mo ago

That creates a ton of traffic to LLMs for the same summary. Why not have one person do it and post it?

minimaxir6mo ago

If there were a actual demand for that, Y Combinator could implement something similar to Google AI Overview that automatically summarizes each post, which would strongly discourages people from actually reading the articles and giving thoughtful insights.

1 more reply

MilnerRoute6mo ago

In addition to everything else, this is bad for all web publishers.

No matter whose link is being shared on Hacker News... This would siphon away some traffic -- all the people who now just read the AI summary, without clicking through to the article.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

24 comments

3np6mo ago

No. And it's not just "anti-AI folks" who consider it spam and noise to copy-paste LLM summaries into a discussion forum.

vunderba6mo ago

Why not just go full-on dystopia and make a slackernews.com site that is an exact mirror of the submissions from HN api, and then populate them with entirely chatbot generated comment sections?

linotypeOP6mo ago

There would be no comments, just a summary of the contents of the post with a link to post.

baubino6mo ago

But…why? This is a discussion forum. We come here to discuss. Also, none of the posts are so long that they warrant a summary (AI or otherwise).

minimaxir6mo ago

The main reason your comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45160084) got downvoted was because you gave a summary without disclosing it's AI-generated, which made other users upset.

linotypeOP6mo ago

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

Not according to the guidelines and the upvotes the comment received.

minimaxir6mo ago

The guidelines are out of date and they don't mention anything for or against AI comments. Having your comment flagged makes the number of upvotes irrelevant.

The search thread you were linked to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) are comments from dang, the head moderator of HN. His word is the law.

1 more reply

brudgers6mo ago

People often upvote comments that are contrary to the spirit of HN.

1 more reply

ForHackernews6mo ago

Why? Anyone who wanted that could copy-paste into chatgpt or install a browser extension to do it for them.

linotypeOP6mo ago

That creates a ton of traffic to LLMs for the same summary. Why not have one person do it and post it?

minimaxir6mo ago

1 more reply

MilnerRoute6mo ago

In addition to everything else, this is bad for all web publishers.

No matter whose link is being shared on Hacker News... This would siphon away some traffic -- all the people who now just read the AI summary, without clicking through to the article.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse