Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 880 posts

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#241

Post by lttlrck »

ponector wrote: post #199
necovek wrote: post #54

I've already asked a number of colleagues at work producing insane amount of gibberish with LLMs to just pass me the prompt instead: if LLM can produce verbose text with limited input, I just need that concise input too (the rest is simply made up crap).

Chatgpt very useful for adding softness and politeness to my sentences. Would you like more straight forward text which probably will be rude for regular american?

Yes. I can't stand waffle from native or non-native speakers. Waste of electrons and oxygen :-) that might just be me however. Know your audience ;-)

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#242

Post by [deleted] »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

[deleted]

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#243

Post by eric_cc »

pessimizer wrote: post #232
eric_cc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

If you used a wheelchair every day, your legs would atrophy. Regardless of the existence of other ways to exercise your legs which you also will not do, because you're a person with working legs who chooses to use a wheelchair.

You’re describing an extreme so let me counter with a different “what if” extreme: If , every day, you use a wheel chair for five minutes and run for several hours followed by 200 squats then your legs will not atrophy. My point is that writing papers is only one way to work your mind and using llm’s for this does not indicate how you use your mind overall.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#244

Post by palata »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #125
jsheard wrote: post #74

I'm far from the first to make this observation but LLMs are like anti-compression algorithms when used like that, a simple idea gets expanded into a bloated mess by an LLM, then sent to someone else who runs it through another LLM to summarize it back to something approximating the original prompt. Nobody benefits aside from Sam Altman and co, who get to pocket a cool $0.000000001 for enabling this pointless exercis…

Depends on what you are looking for. I’ve turned half baked ideas into white papers for plenty of praise. I’ve used them to make my Jira tickets seem complicated and complete. I’ve used them to get praised for writing comprehensive documentation. Part of my performance review is indirectly using bloat to seem sophisticated and thorough.

If your organisation is such that you have to do this even though you are competent for your job, then they deserve it. They lose money because they do it wrong.

If your organisation is functional and you are abusing it by doing that, then you deserve to get fired.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#245

Post by deadbabe »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Someday, LLMs are going to cost actual serious money to use and people will have “LLM bills” to pay every month just to have some semblance of a brain at work. Maybe a portion of salary can just be deducted directly from a paycheck to pay for LLM tools.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#246

Post by bdangubic »

cwalv wrote: post #219
bdangubic wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather be homeless in Philadelphia than work where you work

This kind of "perf review" hacking works ~everywhere; how well it works correlates with how entrenched the organization is (i.e., how hard it is for new players to disrupt). You don't have to play the game the same way to work there. But it helps to accept that others will play it, and manage your own expectations accordingly.

But it helps to accept that others will play it

Feel for you or anyone surrounded by such others but it is most definitely not everywhere - that is used to justify your presence in a place of work you should not be

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#247

Post by palata »

cwalv wrote: post #219
bdangubic wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather be homeless in Philadelphia than work where you work

This kind of "perf review" hacking works ~everywhere; how well it works correlates with how entrenched the organization is (i.e., how hard it is for new players to disrupt). You don't have to play the game the same way to work there. But it helps to accept that others will play it, and manage your own expectations accordingly.

> This kind of "perf review" hacking works ~everywhere

I don't have tons of examples, but in my experience:

* This worked in toxic environments. They deserve it.

* This doesn't work in a functional environment, because they don't have those bullshit metrics.

If you have to rely on those tricks, it's time to look for another job.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#248

Post by SchemaLoad »

necovek wrote: post #54

I've already asked a number of colleagues at work producing insane amount of gibberish with LLMs to just pass me the prompt instead: if LLM can produce verbose text with limited input, I just need that concise input too (the rest is simply made up crap).

This is how I've felt about using LLMs for things like writing resumes and such. It can't possibly give you more than the prompt since it doesn't know anything more about you than you gave it in the prompt.

It's much more useful for answering questions that are public knowledge since it can pull from external sources to add new info.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#249

Post by theturtletalks »

AI has changed how we learn by making the process of improving work much easier. Normally, learning involves writing a draft, finding mistakes, and fixing them over time. This helps build critical thinking. AI, trained on tons of refined data, can create polished work right away. While this seems helpful, it can skip the important step of learning through trial and error.

The question is: Should we limit AI to keep the old way of learning, or use AI to make the process better? Instead of fixing small errors like grammar, students can focus on bigger ideas like making arguments clearer or connecting with readers. We need to teach students to use AI for deeper thinking by asking better questions.

We need to teach students that asking the right questions is key. By teaching students to question well, we can help them use AI to improve their work in smarter ways. The goal isn’t to go back to old methods for iterating but change how we iterate altogether.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#250

Post by cwalv »

bruce511 wrote: post #15
Ancalagon wrote: post #8

I fully support the author’s point but it’s hard to argue with the economics and hurdles around obtaining degrees. Most people do view obtaining a degree as just a hurdle to getting a decent job, that’s just the economics of it. And unfortunately the employers these days are encouraging this kind of copy/paste work. Look at how Meta and Google claim the majority of the new code written there is AI created? The world…

You get what you measure, and you should expect people to game your metric. Once upon a time only the brightest (and / or richest) went to college. So a college degree becomes a proxy for clever. Now since college graduates get the good jobs, the way to give everyone a good job is to give everyone a degree. And since most people are only interested in the job, not the learning that underpins the degree, well, you get…

> However, while 90% will miss the opportunity right there in front of them, 10% will grab it and suck the marrow.

Learning is not just a function of aptitude and/or effort. Interest is a huge factor as well, and even for a single person, what they find interesting changes over time.

I don't think it's really possible to have a large cohort of people pass thru a liberal arts education, with everyone learning the same stuff at the same time, and have a majority of them "suck the marrow" out of the opportunity.

Post reply on HN