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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

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Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#251

Post by rad-b »

supermatt wrote: post #225

> NATS control-plane events: stream leader election / R3 quorum re-form during pod churn. Whats is wrong with this? I work with durable tracing (not using NATS, or k8s though) and this looks almost exactly what I would expect to see in a coordinator log after repartition of a storage cluster. Obviously I don't know what your actual context was, though.

Not the OP, but I understand the sentiment they’re trying to convey. I will frequently work with AI to get done something that is not in my immediate area of expertise. And this kind of speak constantly happens, where you can feel it trying to please its RLHF expert teacher by being as concise as possible. Works ok when you’re deep in the weeds of what you’re talking about, but otherwise just feels overwhelming. Kind of like a feeling you can get when asking someone who is more interested in proving they are smart and know the answer than they are interested in actually helping you…

And yes you can prompt it to take it easier as you’re not experienced in this, but it’s usually a boiling frog situation. You work on something, need a small thing ajdecent to it, and three messages deep Claude is speaking to you in tongues unbeknownst. You knew what was happening at every turn but still got lost somehow.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#252

Post by miki123211 »

On one hand, I understand the frustration; and if I know I'm dealing with smart people who are pretty capable of Clauding themselves and who won't ask me if they can ask Claude, I would never do this.

On the other... people really don't bother Googling or asking AI sometimes, and if the question doesn't require local context, that's a very appropriate response.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#253

Post by bonoboTP »

surgical_fire wrote: post #197
prymitive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of that is people who were always very insecure because they’re mediocre engineers. Previously asking questions or not understanding something was a bit painful but now you can hear “you’re absolutely right!” and make progress all day every day. Until you need to interact with actual humans and that’s why you try to minimise it, hiding behind ai generated content.

Maybe that's how you get people in HN claiming to be infinitely more productive now thanks to AI.

The ones who get more productive are either the very incompetent who get pulled up to the AI-floor level, or the very competent who know when and how to use it and for what. The midwits are too proud to use it and instead placate themselves that their precious skill is more special and immune to mechanization than it really is.

Many many people have jobs where their contribution is granting access to deliberately undocumented things, like knowing where the config files are and some such. They hate the idea of AI. For my non IT friends its great for diagnosing wifi issues. It's also great for competent network engineers. It's not great for those who gain a salary due to having memorized some actions or settings that they don't even understand much. Note that this group has also already resisted traditional script automation, just like US dock workers who resist automation.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#254

Post by mariusor »

throw310822 wrote: post #108
maccard wrote: 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]

> Then do it and don't ask questions.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be funny, but this is such an unintellectual take that it veers into caricature. Props if that was your purpose.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#255

Post by beng-nl »

EFreethought wrote: post #187
autumnstwilight wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an encounter with the opposite problem the other day, PM asked me if the library I was using for randomization was "secure" and I said, "Yes, I used the standard Java library for cryptographically secure random numbers that is already used in several other locations in this project," and he said, "But did you ask Claude if it's secure? It has to be secure!"

Asking someone to ask an LLM is peak laziness.

Beyond reverse centaur

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#256

Post by felooboolooomba »

8by3 wrote: post #33

Pre LLM's I used to get this from managers, but what they would do was quote verbatim from stack overflow or some random blog post of how to do a thing with no to little context or understanding of what they were talking about. And it always turned out to be from amongst the top three results from some popular search engine when describing the complex problem the company/team was facing.

Slightly different though if it comes from a manager, since his ass is on the line if the project isn't going well. Well, it should be on the line although they usually manage to make a random dev responsible for their mess even they had no say in it.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#258

Post by deepsummer »

Springtime wrote: post #247
deepsummer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually do so I understand what I am replying, but seriously, the latest Opus and Fable versions get it right more often than I would. The time of AI hallucinations is over, as long as they have the context.

Even Mythos can hallucinate[1] with a codebase to analyze. The argument I often see is that humans are fallible, too, but the issues we're seeing in this topic are about those who should know better—including in senior positions—heeding LLM responses/advice over human and concerningly not actually thinking about things at all. Ie: they're not being treated by many as just useful tools/tentative feedback but as author…

That's a bad example: it did not hallucinate about the codebase (which it had access to), but about a rule outside the codebase (which is not in the context, I assume). Yeah, missing requirements can cause it to rely on things it thinks are true. Same as humans do all the time when they lack context.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#260

Post by inigyou »

vidarh wrote: post #171
everfrustrated wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look up the Flynn effect. You're right in the first paragraph, but wrong about the direction.

The Flynn effect ended several years ago and started reversing.
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