Should chatbot be allowed in troubleshooting?

[Mark Kaine]

because I think it really shouldn't,  its usually not helpful and at worst highly misleading,  also its just really weird to read.

 

and i don't know if "i cant tell if its a chatbot text or not" is a good reason to just allow it, because its just so painfully obvious? 

 

i mean generally,  on a forum,  i dont want to read weird ai posts,  but maybe that's just me.

 

No examples given, you just need to look at some current troubleshooting threads, if you cant spot the chatbot from a mile away, this is probably a hopeless inquiry, unfortunately. 

 

thats not to say i couldn't give examples,  but i really think it shouldn't be necessary since it's so extremely easy to spot , i think its more a question of if you actually want to allow it rather than "what is a bot" (which might be my bias, but again its so easy to spot, its kinda funny)

 

 

 

 

[Kid.Lazer]

Are you saying there are chat bots on this forum? Please give examples, as you claim to be able to do so.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, Kid.Lazer said:

Are you saying there are chat bots on this forum? Please give examples, as you claim to be able to do so.

No, but some recent answers in Troubleshooting look like the person took the question, posted it to e.g. ChatGPT, then posted the bot's answer as their answer.

[Mark Kaine]

1 minute ago, Kid.Lazer said:

Are you saying there are chat bots on this forum? Please give examples, as you claim to be able to do so.

No i didn't say that.

i said there's a user posting chatbot texts, which is almost the same, but not quite. 

And no, i wont, i can send it to a moderator however if needed.

 

And again,  this is more a general question than pointing at a specific user... chatbot answers allowed in troubleshooting (or elsewhere) 

yes/no?

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

No, but some recent answers in Troubleshooting look like the person took the question, posted it to e.g. ChatGPT, then posted the bot's answer as their answer.

exactly and it's annoying af

[Kid.Lazer]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

thats not to say i couldn't give examples

This double negative statement means that you can get examples. Also it would help to further discussion if those of us that haven't seen it could see examples of it. Your refusal to post that seems very odd.

[Eigenvektor]

5 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

exactly and it's annoying af

Yeah, I noticed at least one such answer this morning and it certainly reads odd.

 

3 minutes ago, Kid.Lazer said:

This double negative statement means that you can get examples. Also it would help to further discussion if those of us that haven't seen it could see examples of it. Your refusal to post that seems very odd.

Probably to avoid outing members. I'll send you a recent example as a private message.

 

~edit: nvm, Levent already posted

[Mark Kaine]

6 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Yeah, I noticed at least one such answer this morning and it certainly reads odd.

 

Probably to avoid outing members. I'll send you a recent example as a private message.

 

~edit: nvm, Levent already posted

yup... that was my point,  its so easy to spot... its really more a question of how the forum moderation wants to handle this, i have no interest to discuss what is a bot or not with random posters..  that is *not* the point ...

 

depending on how the policies will be going forward,  maybe we could build a 'anti bot moderator squad' seems we already have 3 members! 

 

(although idk if 3 people are enough,  because jc if there are more of them..  oof!)

[Eigenvektor]

24 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yup... that was my point,  its so easy to spot... its really more a question of how the forum moderation wants to handle this, i have no interest to discuss what is a bot or not with random posters..  that is *not* the point ...

I get where you're coming from and I suppose my immediate reaction to the posts was the same. But I haven't entirely made up my mind how I feel about it. I'm unsure whether banning the use of bots is necessarily the correct answer (not my decision of course ). They could actually turn into a useful tool to take care of a ton of low level repeat questions.

 

To some extend someone using a bot feels like cheating and/or farming. But then as long as the poster isn't obviously violating the forum's rules and is on topic it feels weird to punish them for it. Of course if you're just repeating a bot's answers without actually understanding the subject matter, you might be doing more harm than good⁽¹⁾. But maybe the person did "moderate" the bot's answer before posting it. Hard to know.

 

1) Of course human answers, mine definitely included, aren't always on point, helpful or might even be actively harmful

[LogicalDrm]

Imo any non-human content should be either contained in single thread (such as) or booted. If you have nothing personal to add, then your presence is not required.

[Mark Kaine]

28 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

I get where you're coming from and I suppose my immediate reaction to the posts was the same. But I haven't entirely made up my mind how I feel about it. I'm unsure whether banning the use of bots is necessarily the correct answer (not my decision of course ). They could actually turn into a useful tool to take care of a ton of low level repeat questions.

 

To some extend someone using a bot feels like cheating and/or farming. But then as long as the poster isn't obviously violating the forum's rules and is on topic it feels weird to punish them for it. Of course if you're just repeating a bot's answers without actually understanding the subject matter, you might be doing more harm than good⁽¹⁾. But maybe the person did "moderate" the bot's answer before posting it. Hard to know.

 

1) Of course human answers, mine definitely included, aren't always on point, helpful or might even be actively harmful

the main problem is its harmful to any kind of discussion,  for many rather obvious reasons,  and for troubleshooting its especially harmful because there might be a correct answer in there somewhere but since it's not a human it lacks any nuance and context... 

i agree for "low level" stuff ie "why is my xmp" not working, it could be helpful,  but for the majority of questions, its just not helpful because often its things you cant just find the solution easily on the internet and it needs an actual human with specific experience to answer that question properly... and after such a bot answer the thread is basically "derailed" completely (thats how it feels to me)

 

28 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

someone using a bot feels like cheating and/or farming.

that too... its just annoying? and doesn't seem to be very helpful at all, as i explained above.

 

22 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Imo any non-human content should be either contained in single thread (such as) or booted. If you have nothing personal to add, then your presence is not required.

pretty much this.  as i already said too, this just defeats the purpose of a forum... why would anyone go on a forum to talk to bots basically...and its really super noticable in troubleshooting because of how generic and more or less useless it is.

I mean bots aren't allowed on most forums for a reason... and this is basically simply a new form of "bot"... 

[Middcore]

Get that shit outta here. 

[divito]

The botphobia in this thread is concerning.

[Godlygamer23]

I would consider using AI to respond to someone's question as plagiarism, since you're posting as if it's strictly your own answer, when in reality it was generated using AI. This also goes back to AI-generated art, where it becomes a copyright issue if the images are not different enough.

[divito]

28 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I would consider using AI to respond to someone's question as plagiarism, since you're posting as if it's strictly your own answer, when in reality it was generated using AI. This also goes back to AI-generated art, where it becomes a copyright issue if the images are not different enough.

"Generated using AI," as in a bot giving back human text. A human can regurgitate a paragraph too.

[LogicalDrm]

6 hours ago, divito said:

The botphobia in this thread is concerning.

There's quite big difference between phobia and concern over value. Once bots can actually replace you, I probably will prefer bot since they don't act like children when told they break rules.

 

 

3 hours ago, divito said:

"Generated using AI," as in a bot giving back human text. A human can regurgitate a paragraph too.

Which matters why? We don't allow plagiarism either way. Direct copypaste answers are as pointless as just linking to Google.

[Arika]

14 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Imo any non-human content should be either contained in single thread (such as) or booted. If you have nothing personal to add, then your presence is not required.

What are the chances of this being added to the CS so it can actually be treated as a rule and report-able?

 

Spoiler

yes, i know, says me, the one using, posting and talking about AI before ChatGPT even existed

 

[LogicalDrm]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

What are the chances of this being added to the CS so it can actually be treated as a rule and report-able?

 

  Hide contents

yes, i know, says me, the one using, posting and talking about AI before ChatGPT even existed

 

Plagiarism is already within what should be reported. While not expressively said, and its mostly issue in Tech News. As academic, not properly attributing work that you didn't do is serious offense to me. If one doesn't have respect towards sources they get their information from, how can we expect them to value any rules?

[Arika]

25 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Plagiarism is already within what should be reported. While not expressively said, and its mostly issue in Tech News

Ah, guess that makes sense. More of a common sense rule as opposed to something that need l needs to be specifically called out.

Spoiler

Unfortunately there is a shear lack of such common sense on the internet these days

 

[divito]

10 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

There's quite big difference between phobia and concern over value. Once bots can actually replace you, I probably will prefer bot since they don't act like children when told they break rules.

Value? Have you seen some human responses on this forum? 

 

10 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Which matters why? We don't allow plagiarism either way. Direct copypaste answers are as pointless as just linking to Google.

Why does it matter if a human uses Google vs. a bot using a dataset? Are you trying to say the forum vets all posts to verify plagiarism?  

[LogicalDrm]

5 minutes ago, divito said:

Value? Have you seen some human responses on this forum? 

Oh, I've been on forums for the past 10 years. I measure value in different ways. Some people are at level of bots, most way above it.

 

5 minutes ago, divito said:

Why does it matter if a human uses Google vs. a bot using a dataset?

You have wrong question there. Its not about why it matters, because it doesn't. We don't need humans doing it, and until bots can be 90% effective, we don't need even one doing it. Just pasting first article from Google is not why people come to forums. Most have basic searching skills, and those who don't wont benefit from the "first article from google" answers. They usually need more back and forth action. Which requires human interaction, at this point and time.

 

5 minutes ago, divito said:

Are you trying to say the forum vets all posts to verify plagiarism?  

Its pretty easy to spot when something is not written by poster, for most of the times. But no, we don't. Just like we don't read every post that gets posted. That doesn't make rules not apply over whole forums if someone doesn't see it. My point here is that rules apply, to everyone.

 

If you would make a post using bot as tool, modify it and verify its accuracy, I don't have issue. Then the post would have your own input. But if bot makes posts for you, why do we need to keep you around? Clearly bot is better than you.

[Fendrick]

There will always be people who prioritize and value having knowledge and sometimes people may lack knowledge in a specific criteria as well this hobby is not a stagnant thing, using AI is not really a detriment in any way if the person it gets to is helped accurately.

 

This seems to me to be based on fear or maybe even some egotism.

[Middcore]

27 minutes ago, Fendrick said:

using AI is not really a detriment in any way if the person it gets to is helped accurately.

 

They aren't being helped accurately.

 

Example: yesterday a user asked, in essence, which of two B660 motherboards they should choose. Chatbot guy responded with this pearl of wisdom:

 

Quote

It is generally not recommended to use a motherboard that is not the one specified for your system. The BIOS settings, hardware components, and other system parameters may not be compatible with your system if you use a different motherboard. Additionally, using a different motherboard may void your warranty or cause other issues.

 

This is useless twaddle. There is no motherboard "specified for the system" because the user was building their own PC, and they were choosing between two boards with the same chipset and therefore essentially identical hardware compatibility. But the chatbot response went on like that for two more paragraphs of irrelevant nonsense about "compatibility issues," "instability," and "hardware failures." 

[Fendrick]

1 minute ago, Middcore said:

 

They aren't being helped accurately.

 

Example: yesterday a user asked, in essence, which of two B660 motherboards they should choose. Chatbot guy responded with this pearl of wisdom:

 

 

This is useless twaddle. There is no motherboard "specified for the system" because the user was building their own PC, and they were choosing between two boards with the same chipset and therefore essentially identical hardware compatibility. But the chatbot response went on like that for two more paragraphs of irrelevant nonsense about "compatibility issues," "instability," and "hardware failures." 

It would help that you also provided this information beforehand instead of complaining with useless twaddle leaving it to others to guess or do what I did and make suppositions.

 

This goes both ways.

[Middcore]

1 minute ago, Fendrick said:

It would help that you also provided this information beforehand instead of complaining with useless twaddle leaving it to others to guess or do what I did and make suppositions.

 

This goes both ways.

 

The account this thread is basically about was linked above, you could have looked at it and seen for yourself the quality of what they were contributing. The information you needed to avoid making a wrong assumption was at hand, please don't blame others for failing to spoonfeed it to you.