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Should I be reporting AI-generated nonsense responses?

TDK
Guru

In instances where they don't answer the question, or where they answer it incorrectly, I have been reporting these. Should I keep doing so?

Does the ST community have a stance on whether or not AI-generated reponses are allowed? Is that stance in the guidelines and if not, can we put it there?

For example, clearly this is ChatGPT generated nonsense:

TDK_0-1702069354794.png

Another one, same thread even.

TDK_1-1702069376813.png

At first glance it seems like these answer the question, but they fall apart under inspection. These two are obvious, some are less so.

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Peter BENSCH
ST Employee

@TDK @waclawek.jan 

Thank you very much for reporting AI generated spam! We are now able to automatically block and remove a lot of URL posting spammers. But recognising AI spam interspersed in threads is still a challenge from time to time.

We are happy to receive reports from users of the respective threads, who should now also be informed by the community by email if this is allowed in their settings.

Thanks again and happy hunting spam!

Regards
/Peter

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21 REPLIES 21

> Should I keep doing so?

I do, but, incidentally, in reporting exactly one of the above posts, I asked the same question (even worded similarly) together with the report...

Now policies on this site are decided by what appears to be part of ST's marketing, who then don't make their decisions based on strictly technical considerations and have followed "modern trends" in the past (see "modern feel and look" etc.) While those posts here are quite clearly just attempts at spam sanitized by the "first poster can't post links" (which sometimes appears not to work for reasons... ) policy, thus even marketing will dismiss them; a non-technical person may be lured to think they may be useful, both by the fad, and the apparent "knowledgeability" of these posts (underlined by the particular language it was taught to use, which again appeals to many nontechnical people - not coincidentally, it was designed to do so, these things are aimed to sell to masses primarily).

Regardless, my personal position is clear: by its principial working, there's no Intelligence in AI, thus it can't contribute wisdom. Where it appears to do so, there's already a substantial lack of basics, which I believe is not the case here. Would ST be willing to invest substantially in the basic, well-structured learning material accomplished by concise examples, rather than just pushing "libraries" and clicky generators, the difference between real knowledge and the glorified web search engine AI in fact is, would be crystal clear to anybody.

This is not to say AI can't be useful, just not in places where many people think now they may be - and they are deliberately made to believe so by the AI promoters.

As a particular example, AI is said to know to program, and is said to replace programmers in the near future (remember, AI needs to be sold, so needs to appeal to managers, who have the powers to buy). Those, who are scared by this perspective, should think 1. whether they do real programming with putting in structures and algorithms or just fill in forms; and then 2. whether they really want to work under management which can't recognize their value.

The fact, that AI appears to be able to lightning fast put together programs which do apparently impressive stuff tells much about the programming environment of today. It's dominated by tools which "does things" for the programmer, who does not need to and is not even willing to take responsibility for, so he's told he does not need to worry about documentation (which in turn does not even exist materially). This created a world, where doing outwardly impressive things requires excessive search among the vast amounts of libraries and functions, just because there does not exist a well structured documentation for them (as an example, see "doxygen" "autodocumentation" plague) nor a coordinated, comprehensive set of (again, concise and well-documented) examples. The mechanical search engine may appear to win in such environment.

Or, to put it into context of mcus, the value of programmer is not in the ability to type printf("Hello, world"); ,  but the ability to use that in the variable peripheral environment of mcus, the ability to use it in context e.g. while debugging, the ability to recognize where is it inappropriate to use (e.g. in memory-constrained applications, in interrupts), the ability to replace it with any other method as appropriate.

AI surely can type printf("Hello, world"); very quickly.

Have a nice weekend!

JW

 

Peter BENSCH
ST Employee

@TDK @waclawek.jan 

Thank you very much for reporting AI generated spam! We are now able to automatically block and remove a lot of URL posting spammers. But recognising AI spam interspersed in threads is still a challenge from time to time.

We are happy to receive reports from users of the respective threads, who should now also be informed by the community by email if this is allowed in their settings.

Thanks again and happy hunting spam!

Regards
/Peter

In order to give better visibility on the answered topics, please click on Accept as Solution on the reply which solved your issue or answered your question.
Peter BENSCH
ST Employee

@TDK 

Forgot to mention: thanks for the second example of a spammer, which I was able to remove from the threads thanks to this friendly hint. If someone inadvertently replied to the spammer there, I will remove that reply from the thread as well so that future readers are not confused.

Regards
/Peter

In order to give better visibility on the answered topics, please click on Accept as Solution on the reply which solved your issue or answered your question.

> spam sanitized by the "first poster can't post links" (which sometimes appears not to work for reasons... ) policy

Had no idea that was a thing. I was wondering what the point of posting those answers was. I guess sneaking in a link makes sense, but then if that link was scrubbed it never showed up.

If the responses answered the question, I wouldn't care as much, but they're just non-answers. Like "ensure correct configuration," just generic advice with no specific meaning. Not unlike what you get sometimes when you call up customer support lines and they ask you to delete your cache, as if that will cause your device to start working again somehow.

> a non-technical person may be lured to think they may be useful, both by the fad, and the apparent "knowledgeability" of these posts

And that is ultimately why I think they are bad. They give the appearance of knowledge, yet none of the substance. It's just a facade.

 

 

> The fact, that AI appears to be able to lightning fast put together programs which do apparently impressive stuff tells much about the programming environment of today.

I haven't really seen this myself. There are certainly programmers who are only able to write code by finding an example and modifying it (and sometimes not even that) rather than writing anything themselves. So, I can see where AI-generated programs might help. Technology isn't there yet. Even if it were there, a lot of people can't explain what they want enough to have someone else write it anyway. Getting requirements is like pulling teeth in my experience.

 

Anyhow, thanks for the comments. Cheers.

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Thanks @Peter BENSCH, I'll keep reporting. Cheers.

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Lina DABASINSKAITE
Community manager
Community manager

Hi @TDK , 

Thanks for bringing this up & your efforts on reporting, it does not get unnoticed, and we take relevant actions. 

Does the ST community have a stance on whether or not AI-generated reponses are allowed? Is that stance in the guidelines and if not, can we put it there?

Yes, we are working on this and announce the guidelines soon.


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Please flag all posts you see using Generative AI bots

Where did this post disappear too? Posted 4 days ago, and now disappeared down the memory hole. Google still finds it, but I had to really try..

https://community.st.com/t5/guidelines/why-having-generative-ai-writing-responses-on-the-st-community/ta-p/619353

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TDK
Guru

I just reported a good 5-10 different AI responses that came in the past 10 hours or so.

I wonder if requiring a manual approval for a user's first post would be beneficial, along with a note to such users. Many other forums have this policy.

If you feel a post has answered your question, please click "Accept as Solution".

Was there an AI response to this thread, too?

waclawekjan_0-1702832766918.png

and it's "access denied":now.

That's hillarious, and I'm genuinely sorry I couldn't see it.

JW