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Timeline for AI Assist is now available on Stack Overflow

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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15 hours ago comment added lindes Thank you @Lundin, this response gave me a nice stress-relieving (stress from the existence of this feature) laugh, which was much-needed. Ash/staff, please at least consider taking the L and reverting this. The erosion of trust by this even existing is........ massive, I expect, based on how ratio'd you already are, how strongly I personally feel about this, etc.
2 days ago comment added Rebecca J. Stones I don't believe the AI ban was aimed at providing LLMs with better training data.
2 days ago comment added Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI @RebeccaJ.Stones They don't want you to use LLMs to create answers because they know that LLMs' garbage coefficient goes up drastically if they wind up ingesting LLM output. They see Stack Exchange as an excellent curated input feed for their precious overhyped Clippy.
Dec 5 at 6:38 comment added Rebecca J. Stones Hmm... Generative artificial intelligence (a.k.a. GPT, LLM, generative AI, genAI) tools may not be used to generate content for Meta Stack Exchange.. Has there been a change in policy?
Dec 3 at 16:51 comment added NoDataDumpNoContribution @user400654 "“We used usage data” just feels so weak." No, it doesn't. Usage data can be misleading especially without controls or some kind of behavior model behind it, but at least it's data. More than can be said of many other things. My criticism would be that this argument is applied only selectively. If usage data were an important factor, pet projects of the company (including but not limited to articles, discussions, ...) should have died much earlier than they actually did. They only sometimes go for usage. And what if usage now plummets even further? Close everything down?
Dec 3 at 16:49 comment added Catija Also, I'd mention that, while it's above the right sidebar, it's still technically in the center div, meaning that on narrow viewports, the Ask Question button doesn't get shoved to the bottom of the page, it stays at the top above the AI prompt field, becoming even more obvious. I still don't like the creepy way the prompt is worded but I don't think this change is that drastic.
Dec 3 at 16:47 comment added Catija As far as I can tell, while the Ask Question placement does change slightly for the homepage, it's consistent with where the button is on the Question pages, which are the pages more likely to be visited by people coming from a search engine. Honestly, I think the position on the homepage is changing because they've made the Homepage style the same as Question pages, with the heading bar extending above the right sidebar to give more room for the title text. I feel the button is still sufficiently visible, and the consistency with question pages may actually make it more findable.
Dec 3 at 16:07 comment added ꓢPArcheon @Lundin "the button must be hidden away out in the periphery along with the blog spam, to ensure that I ask my question to the AI rather than use the site as intended" - remember when I was assuming so much bad intent that the poor, virtuos company had to tell me that they totally didn't intend give to hide the Ask Human behind the Ask AI feature? Need a reminder?... "Assuming"... yea, because these changes apparently aren't a clear enough indication of the real intent.
Dec 3 at 16:02 comment added ꓢPArcheon @NoDataDumpNoContribution It is a proof that we need a company that put more effort in considering the effect of an update than an average LLM is capable to. Considering that the average LLM is a statistical parrot that outputs a sequence of words without any understanding of the meaning... this should be quite the indication about how much consideration was given to this change before going live.
Dec 3 at 15:04 comment added Lundin @user400654 A lot of sensible people will have opted out of tracking cookies and misc spyware indeed. Probably SO specifically got a heavy bias towards opting out, when the user base is approximately 100% programmers and similar tech-savvy types. So the usage data will be from the aimless cookie monster type of users, who always accept all cookies without blinking.
Dec 3 at 14:58 comment added user400654 “We used usage data” just feels so weak. Of course usage data from people who self select into using a thing will be generally positive, because only the people who have a positive experience will continue to use it. What positive effect has this has on the network, outside of 285k people using this widget in the past 7 months and it being used “6,4000”+ times a day? Why is that a good thing for the network or the community?
Dec 3 at 14:22 comment added Lundin However, lets ignore those dumb humans and their common sense. What matters here is that AI Assist doesn't like the new design, as evident from the output quoted above. This leaves us with one of the following two possible outcomes: 1) AI Assist is wrong and a bad tool not to be trusted 2) AI Assist is correct and this design was poorly considered. Do we go with 1) or 2) here?
Dec 3 at 14:13 comment added Lundin @AshZade ...and if they register, watch a tag, then want to ask a question, they must be left-handed. And therefore: move button to the extreme left. Ok I get this design now.
Dec 3 at 14:01 comment added Ash Zade Staff @WeijunZhou part of the redesign project is to optimize the homepage overall, including that button. You can follow that project if you're interested and have feedback to share on that.
Dec 3 at 14:00 comment added Weijun Zhou With this rationale, you may just as well remove the "Ask Question" button entirely from the home page.
Dec 3 at 13:59 comment added Ash Zade Staff If you visit SO and you have never signed up, you're taken to the Questions listing page. You'll see a prominent "Ask Question" button like your second screenshot. You'll click it and go through that process, including signing up when you post. You won't see the homepage unless you have signed up and are logged in.
Dec 3 at 13:56 comment added Lundin @AshZade Ok so if I just heard of stackoverflow.com and want to visit the main page to ask a question for the first time, the button must be hidden away out in the periphery along with the blog spam, to ensure that I ask my question to the AI rather than use the site as intended.
Dec 3 at 13:50 comment added Ash Zade Staff @Lundin I feel like I've answered the "why" several times. Button placements should be different based on the page you're on and what the main tasks are.
Dec 3 at 13:48 comment added Lundin @AshZade Rather: why did someone just sloppily toss it aside at a whim to make room for the useless AI prompt? And why is the button location all over the place depending on which part of the site I happen to browse? What is the design strategy here? As I have said before, the company needs to hire professional graphical designers for these things.
Dec 3 at 13:43 comment added Ash Zade Staff Is your question "why is the Ask Question button where it is on the homepage vs the question listing page for a given tag?"
Dec 3 at 13:40 comment added Lundin @AshZade I updated the answer with screenshots. Now if anyone can explain the rationale over this arbitrary placement of the Ask Question button aka the main input channel to the whole Q&A site, I would love to hear it.
Dec 3 at 13:39 history edited Lundin CC BY-SA 4.0
added 458 characters in body
Dec 3 at 13:06 comment added Ash Zade Staff I understand the point you're making but they are not similar in usage or value. I'll repeat what I put in the other comment: the homepage has very little usage to begin with and the links on it even less. The majority of traffic to posts is through search results (often with filters), the question listing page, or mostly directly to individual Q&A posts via search engines. We're experimenting adding this component there and the homepage is part of the redesign project. Expect it to change in general to improve its engagement across the board.
Dec 3 at 12:58 comment added Lundin @AshZade There was very little engagement for the Ask Question button? We might as well close the site down then.
Dec 3 at 12:55 comment added Ash Zade Staff Another poster flagged this as well and I commented that we used usage data to make the call to add it there and the homepage is in scope for the redesign project. The gist is that there was very little engagement for the components we moved further down.
Dec 3 at 8:01 comment added Lundin @NoDataDumpNoContribution It's rather in the category of: even a child could tell that this is a bad idea.
Dec 3 at 7:58 comment added NoDataDumpNoContribution Now I'm confused. Is this post a proof that we need more AI (because it's so smart) or a proof that we need to be more cautious (because its answer says so)?
Dec 3 at 7:45 history answered Lundin CC BY-SA 4.0
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