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Policy: Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is banned (on Stack Overflow) (meta.stackoverflow.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Carighan to c/[email protected]

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Obviously, given the subject matter, I had to let ChatGPT generate a summary for this:

The Meta Stack Overflow post discusses a policy decision regarding the use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, on the platform. The key points include:

Ban on Generative AI: The community has decided to prohibit the use of generative AI for answering questions on Stack Overflow. This is due to concerns about the quality and reliability of AI-generated content.

Quality Control: The decision aims to maintain high standards for answers, as AI-generated responses may lack accuracy and context, potentially leading to misinformation.

Community Feedback: The policy was influenced by feedback from the community, emphasizing the importance of human expertise in providing reliable answers.

Future Considerations: The post suggests that while the current stance is a ban, the situation may be revisited in the future as the technology evolves.

Overall, the policy reflects a commitment to ensuring that the content on Stack Overflow remains trustworthy and valuable to its users.

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[–] breadsmasher 32 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is this post just highlighting the policy thats existed for 2 years, or has the policy changed?

[–] Carighan 45 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It has now been finalized as of yesterday, from what I understand. Previously it was a work-in-progress policy change they were still unsure about, and now it's decided that this is the way going forward.

I reckon sadly at least part of the reason will be that they are in a partnership with OpenAI, and feeding generated stuff into a GenAI breaks the model, so they need to keep SO as non-AI as possible.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah this is just them trying to prevent model collapse (stemming from pollution of training data by ai garbage). The moral thing to do here is to not give a fuck and upload as much AI garbage as possible to poison their dataset. Fucking assholes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

“Avoid model collapse” aka “avoid giving garbage answers”. If they’re gonna use a lot of energy to train an AI, why not at least make the product good-ish?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you allow them to make money with their garbage, they will be incentivized to keep going. I want them to go bankrupt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Until we manage to unite the workers in revolution, groups shouldn't be attacked solely because they're trying to make more profit for a little amount of harm. It's nearly the only way groups can survive if they're bent on being a company.

[–] Feathercrown 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Does the harm that does to the community not factor into your moral calculus?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I does factor that in and my answer is to abandon ship or mutiny. By contributing to their ecosystem you validate their sense of not having done anything wrong.

As we have seen with reddit, the next step here is closing off API access and banning searchengines and crawlers from using the sites resources. At that point there is little value left in the platform just like with reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Stack Overflow only pretends to care about their community and I'm tired of contributing the greater good of the technical community at large (edit: by contributing to Stack Overflow). Stack Overflow has a track record of ignoring Meta. Why even have it if you're not going to listen?

[–] Feathercrown 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok, but why would you know that and then go harm the community yourself too?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not advocating for maliciously using AI generated content to make Stack Overflow worse, I'm just saying I feel no motivation to seek questions to answer there nor to waste my time posting good questions there that I research and find no duplicates of only for them to be closed.

[–] Feathercrown 1 points 2 weeks ago

Ah, I confused you with the person I had originally replied to