Show HN: How much of Hacker News is AI?

(hnstats.com)

41 points | by beekthos 2 hours ago

16 comments

  • Dwedit 36 minutes ago
    The topic of an article being AI and an "AI-Generated Article" are two completely different things.
    • stronglikedan 6 minutes ago
      Agreed. "How much of Hacker News is about AI?" would have been a more accurate title.
    • chilipepperhott 10 minutes ago
      I don't believe that is their point.
      • stronglikedan 4 minutes ago
        It's not their point as stated in the description, but it is the point inferred from the title alone. "How much of Hacker News is about AI?" would have been better.
  • caminanteblanco 1 hour ago
    Would there be some way to see what percentage of the front page meets those qualifications? I don't browse /new very often, so I have less of an idea of how representative that is. It would be interesting to see if they trend similarly.

    Thanks for the cool project!

    • beekthos 1 hour ago
      Yeah, that's probably the main limitation right now. This is measuring /new, so it's every submission rather than just the stuff that makes the front page.

      lcamtuf's survey (linked in the footer) was looking at the front page, and the number there was quite a bit higher. So there's likely some effect from voting, although I haven't dug into that yet.

      I think Algolia has a way to filter for front-page stories, which should make it pretty easy to add. I haven't tested that yet though but will certainly look into it!

  • missingpackage 1 hour ago
    At first I thought about how many posts were written by AI
    • beekthos 1 hour ago
      Most of the time things make sense in my head until someone points it out haha. I should have written it as "related to AI" or something like that.
    • whatisthiseven 32 minutes ago
      Multiple times authors have been asked about AI usage on HN, because readers (rightfully) suspected it was AI written. I don't have a problem with AI written articles, or assisted.

      But then the authors lie or make ludicrous excuses for why their article "sounds" like AI. Then I check with Pangram and yep. It is completely AI written.

      You get a few free checks on Pangram each day or so. Just start checking and encourage people to be honest.

      AI has its place. Lying about it and misrepresenting it makes everyone dislike AI more, even as they use it themselves.

      • p-e-w 21 minutes ago
        > Then I check with Pangram and yep. It is completely AI written.

        “AI detectors” do NOT work reliably.

        Even humans who are ever-so-certain about being able to identify AI usage constantly embarrass themselves when that claimed ability is put to the test. Look up “AI Monet Instagram” for a social experiment where hundreds of cocksure users pointed out “AI signs” in what was claimed to be an AI-generated painting in the style of Monet, but was actually a genuine Monet.

  • rzmmm 1 hour ago
    It's remarkable how stable 20-30% show HN concentration is after late 2022, for the extended stats.
    • beekthos 55 minutes ago
      The Show HN volume went 805/month to 4,199/month over that same time period, so from 3.2% of all submissions to 13.4%, while HN overall only grew 1.3x. So the flat ~24% held through a 5x expansion in the denominator, which makes it a lot more interesting honestly.
  • lupire 4 minutes ago
    Who would do this project and not use an LLM to classify what counts as "AI"?
  • noxss 24 minutes ago
    Interestingly, we can deduce that the actual percentage will always be higher since not everyone uses those labels/words.
  • lanewinfield 30 minutes ago
    I expected this to call out the number of links that are obviously vibe coded, like itself!

    If you see:

    - ALL CAPS subheaders

    - a light beige background

    - burnt sienna anchor and/or highlight text

    - a "• LIVE" (or really any pulsing • symbol with an ALL CAPS follow-up)

    - tons of variation in font sizes (this one has 15 different text sizes!)

    - more typically, a lot of overexplaining

    ...you know it's vibe'd, specifically with Claude!

  • hartator 43 minutes ago
    Would be curious to see how many comments are AI generated.
  • Vaslo 13 minutes ago
    I tried to click on the link at work and it got blocked as "pornography".
  • bklosky 1 hour ago
    you could fetch the text from linked blog posts over time and run 'em through pangram, I bet >20% of blogs linked on HN today are totally LLM written
    • smokel 38 minutes ago
      An estimated 2,000 articles per month at 2,000 words per article would result in 4,000,000 words, which costs either $200 or $2000 to process at Pangram [1]. It might make life a lot more enjoyable for many users here, though.

      [1] https://www.pangram.com/pricing?category=developers

    • beekthos 45 minutes ago
      Several people have asked for this already, so I'll add it to my to-do list. I just want to be careful about flagging posts that appear to be written by AI. Perhaps I set certain thresholds of certainty to filter by. What I have currently is easily verified and matched by the words we are filtering for.

      It is also interesting to note that I have already received 5 AI written emails to the email I linked in the footer.

  • sharemywin 2 hours ago
    it would be cool to use embeddings to categorize into like 10-20 categories and get a giant pie chart
    • beekthos 2 hours ago
      Not a bad idea. I'd look at creating a separate page for embeddings. Crypto and NFT's would be the next best candidates to add. Something for me to work on over time.
  • xpct 1 hour ago
    Good. Now do what % of posts link to AI generated articles.
    • grey-area 44 minutes ago
      That would be a much more depressing statistic.
  • ChrisArchitect 49 minutes ago
    Related:

    How Much of HN is AI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728

    • beekthos 37 minutes ago
      Yes! This post was the inspiration and is credited in the footer.
  • philipwhiuk 16 minutes ago
    Recursive given that this is AI generated from another post on how much AI was on HN.
  • regexman1 2 hours ago
    Brilliant
  • noobplus 1 hour ago
    And so comes the AI comments as many as the AI posts just saying for fun
    • beekthos 1 hour ago
      Something to maybe track later would be /newcomments, but that would only grab the most obvious comments. People can certainly direct an AI to write in a style that sounds human, but I'm sure it'll still catch a fair amount.
    • ForOldHack 1 hour ago
      If you read a lot, you start to get a feel for phone typos vs AI hiccups. I can guarantee that is post was made by a brain designed to eat berries in a cave. Almost all the another posts look a bit scary.

      I think I misunderstood - how many posts were about AI vs how many posts were written by AI.

      I obviously am suffering from berry fog.

      • noobplus 1 hour ago
        Exactly yep. Maybe even more when time machine has been invented by that AI bot in far future I meant the number of comments by AI(-bots)