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Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

blog.yaelwrites.com

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Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#21

Post by Animats »

Aurornis wrote: post #11

The subtitle is: > I already did. They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article. This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this. For the first case, the s…

When I post a technical question in Forums, I usually add something like "Tried Copilot, got useless answer ...". The trouble with asking an LLM is that there are a huge number of people (this predates LLMs) who post answers on forums along the lines of "turn it off and turn it on again" LLMs pick that up as the consensus solution.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#22

Post by gunalx »

bvcp wrote: post #13

this is just effort equilibrium something that wasnt as effective with “google it”. but ask a low effort question and get “ask claude” as a response is entirely appropriate. junior developers on my team are often asking questions about our code base without even attempting to explore or self direct. “ask claude to look at and explain how its designed the key files and dependencies so that i can better understand it”…

I find a llm in a harnes combined with manual ripgrep exploration is really effective of getting codebases. But you font always want to find what you find.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#24

Post by andy99 »

ventana wrote: post #3

One of the ways not to get LMGTFY / Ask Claude as a response is to provide more information and proof of work when asking a question. Compare: — What's the best way of doing X? — Ask Claude. vs: — I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? I believe a normal senior engineer won't suggest to talk to Claude in this case.

I’m assuming this person did ask in the second way, it’s hard to imagine someone working through a problem that has already tried a bunch of stuff just going in cold and not providing any context and saying “How do I do X?”

Good advice obviously if it’s not being followed already but also likely over-simplifying the problem. Also a normal person on the receiving end would probe a bit about what has already been tried. Which to be fair makes the whole thing a bit weird and does sound more like she’s being brushed off.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#27

Post by apical_dendrite »

theorchid wrote: post #12

I once wrote a similar essay on this topic. When I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer: https://orchidfiles.com/im-tired-of-ai-generated-answers/

This drives me absolutely crazy. My colleagues send me huge PRs to review (say 2000+ lines). I don't just paste comments from the LLM, I ask the LLM to review it, but I also review it myself. I only include ideas from the LLM if I think a) the LLM has gotten the issue right and b) it's worth having the developer take the time to address the issue. I always write the comment myself so I can add relevant context and put it in my own voice.

Then, after I've put in all this work, the developer just replies with a copy-paste of what the LLM thinks about my comment. I have no idea if the developer read or understood my point. I have no idea if he agrees or not. It doesn't just seem disrespectful to the effort I put into the review, it also leaves me in a difficult position as a tech lead because I have no idea if the person who is ultimately responsible for this code understands the code, my feedback on the code, or the changes that the LLM made to address my feedback. If you're responsible for a feature, I want to be able to feel like you're thinking critically about how that feature works. Right now, I just feel like you're blindly doing everything that I tell you. It also feels like I'm shouting into the void. We're colleagues, we should be able to have a conversation about technical subjects!

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#29

Post by apical_dendrite »

yesfinally wrote: post #23

[flagged]

This is fucking dystopian.

You're telling me that the people that I hired and that I work with don't have any knowledge or opinions of any value, and 90% of the time I can just ask a machine instead of talking to them.

If that's the world we live in I fucking hate it. It's so solipsistic and dehumanizing.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#30

Post by cogman10 »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #27
theorchid wrote: post #12

I once wrote a similar essay on this topic. When I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer: https://orchidfiles.com/im-tired-of-ai-generated-answers/

This drives me absolutely crazy. My colleagues send me huge PRs to review (say 2000+ lines). I don't just paste comments from the LLM, I ask the LLM to review it, but I also review it myself. I only include ideas from the LLM if I think a) the LLM has gotten the issue right and b) it's worth having the developer take the time to address the issue. I always write the comment myself so I can add relevant context and pu…

Yeah, I don't love this part of the work. Especially since it's completely exploded out the text of basically everything. I'm also suspicious that the person that generated that text didn't read any of it.
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