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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

131–140 of 786 posts

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that the first time. But how often do you want to say that (in a public chat that their supervisors can read)?

Literally just ignore these people if they don't get the message. Let them complain to their supervisor and hopefully their supervisor will bring up the fact that you asked them to use AI instead. It's an easily defensible position. Some people need to learn the hard way. Public embarrassment is also good. I've done it and had apologies off people. They tend to get the message pretty quickly if they're made to look d…

> Let them complain to their supervisor and hopefully their supervisor will bring up the fact that you asked them to use AI instead. It's an easily defensible position.

That is not an easily defensible position at all. LLMs cannot give reliable answers, so it makes perfect sense to ask a human instead of the LLM. Any manager who would take the side of someone saying "just ask Claude" is a very foolish manager indeed.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#132
From what I have seen personally over the last 8-12 months, I find this kind of complain ironical in most scenarios. Most of the people complaining this are comfortable with their own usage and distribution of LLM generated content and feel good about it, where as when they hear it from some one else it feels burdensome

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#133
At a company I work for, I was recently discussing the need for an AI Code of Conduct plus a discussion - as this is exactly the sort of thing that started creeping in as soon as the corporate Claude account went live. In this case, the company isn't in a computer-related area, so this was essentially a 'normie' response to first having Claude available.

Interestingly, there seemed (small n) to be a correlation between this behaviour, and (my view of) people's existing competence, which might make sense.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's already happening. IQ is already stagnating or even going down

IQ is calibrated so that the average IQ is 100. If the average IQ is going down, something has gone very wrong somewhere

IQ is a relative measure not an absolute one. 100 IQ in 2026 can be massively different in absolute terms to 100 IQ in 1956.

If you look at old test papers - the lack of intelligence in modern times is very stark.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#135
The problem here is that the paradigm is AI-assisted development, but a LOT of people are treating it as "AI-independent" development instead, a.k.a "just send it to the agent and blindly trust whatever comes out of it", *including* deferring all responsibility / blame to the AI itself which is absolutely ridiculous.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#136
post #91

At my last job, a coworker did this to me. The first time it happened, I ignored it. The second time, I responded in public saying “thanks but I can ask Claude myself.” Nobody ever pasted me an LLM response again. YMMV with team size and seniority though

[flagged]

You can also respond ‘I don’t know’ instead of doing the equivalent of responding with the first page of an ‘I feel lucky’ google search

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#137

In my life, the bigger issue are people who are not asking Claude, but asking me. Because it would take 15 minutes to find out the answer myself, and 3 minutes to let Claude find it, I ask Claude. So how should I answer? Should I disclose that I used Claude to find the answer? Or should I act like I did it myself, appearing to have super-powers that I don't possess?

> Or should I act like I did it myself, appearing to have super-powers that I don't possess? Do you tell people you used a hammer to hit the nails? Do you go out of your way to explain to people that you don’t use your bare, bleeding knuckles to punch in the nails? Give people some credit and don’t treat them like idiots. Also don’t treat your LLM as some “super-power”, it’s just a fancy hammer and still hits your fi…

Is it not more akin to asking a handyman to go and do the work for you? They are the ones wielding the hammer, youve just sent them off to go and do it on your behalf without getting your hands dirty. If you then claim to take credit for it, I can see how that might be misinterpreted.

As I see said quite often, an LLM is deemed of a similar ability to a junior software engineer. If I were that junior and my work was repeatedly ripped off by my senior colleague, I would be pissed. Not that an LLM cares in this instance, but the original requester might want to know

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#138
When using AI to generate content, content of any kind - then I urge the author to evaluate the true cost for the organisation, not just for him or her. Using AI to generate 20 pages of documentation in 30 minutes looks good for you - but having 100s of people read through that slop will cost the organisation, not only in plain work hours, but also in lost trust, respect, joy of work as well a sense of purpose.

And yes, I've gotten '50 pages tech spec' docs sent my way from upper management -- as a 'help'....

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If someone asked you a question, it's most likely because they value you . Whether it's your skills, your domain knowledge, or something else, people ask you questions because they know you can provide some value. When you give them a Claude response, not only are you being rude, but you're devaluing yourself in the eyes of those around you. They learn that you can't be relied upon any more, and so they stop asking y…

If I asked a question to Claude, it's because I couldn't answer it myself, but also, because I used my skills and domain expertise to explain clearly the problem to Claude.

And if I paste back to you an answer from Claude, it means that I have read and evaluated what Claude wrote back, and I have extracted the part of it that most clearly contains the answer as well as the diagnosis- if I gor anything relevant.

Of course I could instead pretend I came up with the answer myself in 5 minutes thanks to my superior analytical skills, and write down two short lines that point to the solution without any explanation. Would you find it better?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#140

This is particularly frustrating on social media, and abases what might be good ideas. Too often, my Twitter experience now is - start reading a post with some kernel of insight - read some claudism in the post - stop reading immediately It seems like people turn over their raw kernel of insight to an LLM to give it polish, likely in order to increase its appeal to the audience. But most of that appeal is lost amongs…

I keep waiting for a company to start pushing an “anti-AI AI”, Apple being my most likely speculative candidate.

Flagging, highlighting, filtering, and avoiding AI slop online seems like a very lucrative capability to bake into some consumer hardware. Get your social media, and music services, back to the ‘good old days’.

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