Goalposts

Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?

2018 Octoberesotericn

About manipulated YouTube comments and fears that bots online threaten democracy.

To me, this feels like a precursor to the actual issue that's going to happen.

Eventually, we won't be able to distinguish between real humans and bots online. No CAPTCHA will work, no Turing test, none of that stuff.

Message authentication (e.g. keysigning, or a centralised provider you trust) works for individual identities that you're already aware of, but the general case of trusting comments online?

Even without all of that, you've never had any idea whether the "person" replying to your comment is paid, or has a bias, or whatever else.

If, say, 30% of Hacker News commenters were "fake" in that future scenario, would we know? How would we know? Once we develop a method, can't that be gamed?

Online bots can't be told apart from real humans; no CAPTCHA or Turing test works anymore.

Has this happened?

Yes 78 (55%)Not sure 22 (15%)No 42 (30%)

Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.