What a weird first world problem this guy has …
I'm Tired of Talking to AI
451–460 of 1001 posts
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#452>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.
What I hate about this whole thing, is that there are many reasons someone might reach out to a coworker with questions. Not all require the knowledge in fancy markdown with emojis. Maybe they want to show respect to a person by asking their opinion before proceeding with a change Maybe they want to share context and make that person aware of what they're thinking without being so obvious Maybe they need _that person…
In a small team, or an aware team, where AI is being used all the time and we are figuring out the best way to do it, i often just preface my messages with
- "from my ai to yours" where ive pointed my ai at some relevant context, and asked it to transform it for other ai context that a coworker needs
- "my thoughts prettied by AI" where i just polished up my own words, often for outside coms, but indicating that i wrote the bones of it.
- "i wrote this myself" in my case i tend to be very casual with my written coms, and ive been leaning into this in the past year rather than looking to correct it, as it gives the personal feel. but for cases where ive written more thoughtfully, i just flat out say that.
Helps my team is small. interested in how this could be translated to more widespread "company culture"
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#453I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt here. It reminds me of the Google search phenomenon others have mentioned, which culminated in the joke website "let me google that for you." But, I don't think the cause is necessarily that people are dumb or lazy. Both are factors, but another big one is that people are overwhelmed at work. Another question coming in may not be viewed as an opportunity to learn or help a colleague but as just another task to complete as quickly as possible so the task mountain doesn't grow higher. I'd like to think that we'll eventually use AI to automate a lot of the mundane stuff at work so people have the opportunity to dig into questions from colleagues and provide real answers and genuinely have a conversation when they do. I realize that's pretty optimistic and it may take a while to get there but people stopped sending me google search results years ago. That phenomenon was relatively short-lived and hopefully this one is too.
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#454>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.
"This is the killer issue"
I have to ask - did you use AI to generate this response?
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#455Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
I attribute people returning AI answers to a desire to feel valued and to feel that they contribute something to the person asking the question. But they are not self-aware or confident enough to understand that they should preface the AI response with: "Interesting question, I asked Claude that question, and here's what I got for a response. Here's what I thought was interesting about Claude's response and what I th…
The problem is that most of the people in my circle who are returning AI answers to emails and chat messages do not understand enough about the topic to know whether a question is interesting or not, which parts of the response are interesting, and which parts apply. They seem to think they've more or less solved the problem by posting an LLM's response to the issue or concern I've raised.
But why would ask these people about topics they don't understand? Or they sending you unsolicited responses?
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#457My employer's IT guy is now just someone who searches Claude for solutions, finds a company that does a niche thing and say "we spent X dollars discussing it, let's just hire this company and pay them $13,000 every year to handle the problem."
The problems are usually nothingburgers the IT guy doesn't understand (cookie banners). I cannot fight: 1. IT guy constant stupid takes on why we should throw money at a problem 2. a company that's only goal is to tell us we need X verification for $13k/yr or we'll be screwed
The verification is a cron job that checks cookies. Any time you try to discuss the issue he copy and pastes an AI text wall.
A lot, a lot, a lot of companies are going under because the fake-it-to-make-it people do not know what to do. And the C-Suite wants to contract out all expertise to some pointless corporation that won't help.
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#458[dead]
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're in a particularly fiesty mood you can lean into that. "If all you are is a proxy to an AI, exactly what value are you adding to the organization?" While most of us actually commenting are obviously firmly on the "don't do this" side, for any lurkers who may have done this in the recent past or are considering doing it in the future, I would advise you to consider this point for your own actions. If all you…
Organizations will become even less about adding real value and more about making the boss feel good about you.
So the oldest strategy becomes the newest strategy...
Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI
#460South park called this out in 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Learning_(South_Park)