I won't add to comments on the usefulness or quality of AI Assist.

But I can say it's out of character with the network, and I believe SE is "quiet quitting" the community to become another chatgpt frontend.

This has always been a network of humans asking questions, and humans answering them. AI Assist now places human "answerers" in competition with another type of answerer: AI.

And it's not a fair competition when AI is pinned to the top of the page and offers plausible-sounding quantity over quality. If SE expects this to just happily co-exist with human answers, ... how? Where are the hero callouts explaining how the world's top experts are here at your fingertips in this community? Well SE doesn't care about the community unfortunately. This will drift one way or another, and given the trajectory, will turn SE into humans asking questions and getting AI answers at maximum throughput. Bravo, a chatgpt frontend.

So why is it out of character? (off the top of my head...)

• Most obvious: Official policy has banned generative AI. And that policy has been useful and well-received. AI Assist not only reverses that course completely, but promotes it to the top of the page. Make it make sense, considering the rigor that has gone into creating policies tuned for this Q&A format.
• Even if attribution works perfectly, it demotes SE from an often primary source of knowledge to secondary. What used to be the definitive source now is reduced to aggregate slop
• Reputation is an important feature of the site; not a zero sum but at least it's comparable and thresholds mean something as we compare human against human. Adding a giga-answerer that is effectively a black hole of reputation feels more like a cancer than a feature.
• SE has spent years refining workflows and rules carefully tuned to interactions between askers & answerers. Introducing this basically clobbers a bunch of this consideration. And will the AI participate in these meta discussions? Or is SE expecting the community to carefully advocate for AI Assist in shaping policy. I'm not saying that change is bad in general, but this is a flag worth noticing.

IMO SE is just "quiet quitting" the community.

I won't add to comments on the usefulness or quality of AI Assist.

But I can say it's out of character with the network, and I believe SE is "quiet quitting" the community to become another chatgpt frontend.

For a Q&A system let’s be honest about just how huge of a change this is to the format. And this is amplified by the fact that the contributors are so against it. It not only changes how information is exchanged, it will be impossible to have constructive discussions with the community about it’s refinement over time. Think about what message that sends to those contributors that made SE what it is today. Its a hostile and alienating change.

This has always been a network of humans asking questions, and humans answering them. AI Assist now places human "answerers" in competition with another type of answerer: AI.

And it's not a fair competition when AI is pinned to the top of the page and offers plausible-sounding quantity over quality. If SE expects this to just happily co-exist with human answers, ... how? Where are the hero callouts explaining how the world's top experts are here at your fingertips in this community? Well SE doesn't care about the community unfortunately. This will drift one way or another, and given the trajectory, will turn SE into humans asking questions and getting AI answers at maximum throughput. Bravo, a chatgpt frontend.

So why is it out of character? (off the top of my head...)

• Most obvious: Official policy has banned generative AI. And that policy has been useful and well-received. AI Assist not only reverses that course completely, but promotes it to the top of the page. Make it make sense, considering the rigor that has gone into creating policies tuned for this Q&A format.
• Even if attribution works perfectly, it demotes SE from an often primary source of knowledge to secondary. What used to be the definitive source now is reduced to aggregate slop
• Reputation is an important feature of the site; not a zero sum but at least it's comparable and thresholds mean something as we compare human against human. Adding a giga-answerer that is effectively a black hole of reputation feels more like a cancer than a feature.
• SE has spent years refining workflows and rules carefully tuned to interactions between askers & answerers. Introducing this basically clobbers a bunch of this consideration. And will the AI participate in these meta discussions? Or is SE expecting the community to carefully advocate for AI Assist in shaping policy. I'm not saying that change is bad in general, but this is a flag worth noticing.

IMO SE is just "quiet quitting" the community.

I won't add to comments on the usefulness or quality of AI Assist.

But I can say it's out of character with the network, and I believe SE is "quiet quitting" the community to become another chatgpt frontend.

This has always been a network of humans asking questions, and humans answering them. AI Assist now places human "answerers" in competition with another type of answerer: AI.

And it's not a fair competition when AI is pinned to the top of the page and offers plausible-sounding quantity over quality. If SE expects this to just happily co-exist with human answers, ... how? Where are the hero callouts explaining how the world's top experts are here at your fingertips in this community? Well SE doesn't care about the community unfortunately. This will drift one way or another, and given the trajectory, will turn SE into humans asking questions and getting AI answers at maximum throughput. Bravo, a chatgpt frontend.

So why is it out of character? (off the top of my head...)

• Most obvious: Official policy has banned generative AI. And that policy has been useful and well-received. AI Assist not only reverses that course completely, but promotes it to the top of the page. Make it make sense, considering the rigor that has gone into creating policies tuned for this Q&A format.
• Reputation is an important feature of the site; not a zero sum but at least it's comparable and thresholds mean something as we compare human against human. Adding a giga-answerer that is effectively a black hole of reputation feels more like a cancer than a feature.
• SE has spent years refining workflows and rules carefully tuned to interactions between askers & answerers. Introducing this basically clobbers a bunch of this consideration. And will the AI participate in these meta discussions? Or is SE expecting the community to carefully advocate for AI Assist in shaping policy. I'm not saying that change is bad in general, but this is a flag worth noticing.

IMO SE is just "quiet quitting" the community.

I won't add to comments on the usefulness or quality of AI Assist.

But I can say it's out of character with the network, and I believe SE is "quiet quitting" the community to become another chatgpt frontend.

This has always been a network of humans asking questions, and humans answering them. AI Assist now places human "answerers" in competition with another type of answerer: AI.

And it's not a fair competition when AI is pinned to the top of the page and offers plausible-sounding quantity over quality. If SE expects this to just happily co-exist with human answers, ... how? Where are the hero callouts explaining how the world's top experts are here at your fingertips in this community? Well SE doesn't care about the community unfortunately. This will drift one way or another, and given the trajectory, will turn SE into humans asking questions and getting AI answers at maximum throughput. Bravo, a chatgpt frontend.

So why is it out of character? (off the top of my head...)

• Most obvious: Official policy has banned generative AI. And that policy has been useful and well-received. AI Assist not only reverses that course completely, but promotes it to the top of the page. Make it make sense, considering the rigor that has gone into creating policies tuned for this Q&A format.
• Even if attribution works perfectly, it demotes SE from an often primary source of knowledge to secondary. What used to be the definitive source now is reduced to aggregate slop
• Reputation is an important feature of the site; not a zero sum but at least it's comparable and thresholds mean something as we compare human against human. Adding a giga-answerer that is effectively a black hole of reputation feels more like a cancer than a feature.
• SE has spent years refining workflows and rules carefully tuned to interactions between askers & answerers. Introducing this basically clobbers a bunch of this consideration. And will the AI participate in these meta discussions? Or is SE expecting the community to carefully advocate for AI Assist in shaping policy. I'm not saying that change is bad in general, but this is a flag worth noticing.

IMO SE is just "quiet quitting" the community.