It seems like you are pretty invested in Stack Overflow. At best I got marginal use out of it so I don’t care for the site one way or another. For most questions where I’d use Stack Overflow (dev stuff) for I simply get a just as good of an answer or hint much faster using Chat-GPT so much so that I just use that to start with, or if it’s a unique problem to an organization I work for I can’t use Stack Overflow really anyway because the question is too specific.
A flow in the past might have been Google “question content or error message or something” -> Stack Overflow links to browse through until something plausible shines through -> problem solved
Now it’s more like Chat-GPT (problem probably solved, or additional details to Chat-GPT) -> Google -> Stack Overflow
Even if tools like Chat-GPT were half as good as Stack Overflow they are vastly more efficient and since I know what I’m doing or looking for I can sniff out how plausible something is (no difference with Stack Overflow today).
I get that you have had a great experience on the site and truly it delivers value for a lot of people!
But I don’t see how such things keep the lights on at Stack Overflow.
The reason the OP is relevant is because even if you think you can identify the answers today it won’t be long before you can’t. It follows the principal that it’s easier to destroy stuff than build it.
If Stack Overflow wants to survive in any form it probably needs to Verify Human and eliminate any method in which someone can interact with the site (content-wise) except hands on keyboard.
Personally I’ve found the so-called human responses to be +- useful compared to Chat-GPT on any given topic I use it for and the only way I come to believe they’re human responses is because of the time stamp.
For example you say:
> …LLMs will pretend like they know what they're talking about and give you the run-around endlessly, providing random, plausible-looking nonsense for as long as you have patience to put up with it
I honestly think you can just plug in “contributors to most Stack Overflow questions” in to this sentence and it’s equally true.
You are focusing on the 1% of cases like in your example. I’m looking at most cases.
A flow in the past might have been Google “question content or error message or something” -> Stack Overflow links to browse through until something plausible shines through -> problem solved
Now it’s more like Chat-GPT (problem probably solved, or additional details to Chat-GPT) -> Google -> Stack Overflow
Even if tools like Chat-GPT were half as good as Stack Overflow they are vastly more efficient and since I know what I’m doing or looking for I can sniff out how plausible something is (no difference with Stack Overflow today).
I get that you have had a great experience on the site and truly it delivers value for a lot of people!
But I don’t see how such things keep the lights on at Stack Overflow.
The reason the OP is relevant is because even if you think you can identify the answers today it won’t be long before you can’t. It follows the principal that it’s easier to destroy stuff than build it.
If Stack Overflow wants to survive in any form it probably needs to Verify Human and eliminate any method in which someone can interact with the site (content-wise) except hands on keyboard.
Personally I’ve found the so-called human responses to be +- useful compared to Chat-GPT on any given topic I use it for and the only way I come to believe they’re human responses is because of the time stamp.
For example you say:
> …LLMs will pretend like they know what they're talking about and give you the run-around endlessly, providing random, plausible-looking nonsense for as long as you have patience to put up with it
I honestly think you can just plug in “contributors to most Stack Overflow questions” in to this sentence and it’s equally true.
You are focusing on the 1% of cases like in your example. I’m looking at most cases.