Hackernews isn’t work, obviously, but “it’s impossible to engage deeper with the material because the author doesn’t really exist” is sort of a problem for a discussion site. If the human coauthor puts in enough work, they can make sure the doc really reflects their views and their understanding, but in my experience that’s much less common.
You can't have a discussion about it, how it was done, because for 80% of cases it's "the AI did it".
I don't think this is that interesting or useful for HN, because indeed it's a discussion site.
It would be different if the vibe coded thing didn't come as a "look what it made and its vibe written README" but instead as a human written blog article about "how I made this thing using AI, what models, prompts and harnesses, how the experience was etc etc etc" --- again that would be something interesting to have a discussion about.
But otherwise what is there to say except "yeah cool that's cool that the AI made you that thing"
> it’s impossible to know whether misconceptions or gaps are because the author doesn’t understand the material deeply enough or the author does but the AI doesn’t and the author’s not proofreading carefully enough. Or if a surprising idea is raised — is it the authors insight, can they elaborate on it, where did it come from, etc?
Thanks for giving shape to a general annoyance, in my case with code, that I only recently started noticing.
When discussing code with my colleagues, especially with those that I do not know particularly well, I often relied on the quality of the code they produced to modulate how technical the conversation ought to be be.
Now, instead, I often see very complex code from people that I know wouldn't have been able to produce it themselves, and I have no clue how to engage with it, how to review it with them, how detailed can my comments be etc.
It's pretty annoying.
FWIW, same problem with PRs or PoC that I have to work on; now my first question is, "did you know about his behaviour?". The first step, getting a decent spec, is delayed to after a first draft implementation is already pushed...
Perhaps AI-written articles should include the prompt as hidden text on the page. Or include a link with the prompt embedded, that causes the AI to spit out the same article that you could then ask questions about.
It doesn’t matter. The human responsible for the written piece is … responsible for the written piece. If someone is willing to use AI to supplement their own intellect and/or writing abilities, then they need to take ownership of the mistakes, misconceptions, etc., that come along with that, the same as an author who does all the work themselves. The problem you’ve identified here is that the human responsible for the writing is not fully taking responsibility for the writing.
This is well researched in both neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
But you are correct that it's also a feedback issue.
I don't read AI articles because if the writer didn't spend mental energy on it then why should I.