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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

381–390 of 786 posts

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#381
The policy I set at my org is to put an organically written message at the top of your Claude blob. Something like:

tl;dr: ___human-written____

____claude blob here_____

Where the idea is that humans only read human writing, and Claude is able to share context between sessions with the jargon-riddled blobs.

Trouble is, I catch people every day blatantly writing the Tl;dr with Claude or ChatGPT.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#382
in the same vein, I have a coworker who's code reviews have magically transformed into stopping-the-world with all these great ideas for abstraction and insane edge cases... he must have gotten really good overnight!

but seriously, when I get a review like that, my first thought is that why would I read a summarized AI output, which I just did for 5 hours while whipping Claude to stop re-writing raft from scratch.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give you a scenario and see if it is in this same fireable offense line: An Ops person who deals with company code base but is not a SWE in the code base regularly has to work around issues with this software (They are OPs). However they have read access to the source. In the past, they see a bug and open a jira with how it was found for the dev team, and it may or may not ever get looked at. Now ops can point…

Replace claude code with your cousin or another employee as a thought exercise. So write to a colleague asking to finish what your cousin/another employee thinks needs to be done. I think most people would say describe the problem clearly so that I can solve it and be responsible for the fix or let your cousin/other employee finish the job and own the solution. This is offloading of accountability while denying credi…

Really, you are comparing the latest claude opus/fable vs my cousin with 0 knowledge of the application (user or developer)?

I'm not sure how to reply to that.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#384

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

> "I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?”

I would totally lose it if someone come up to me with that shit. Zero chance I would put up with it.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#385
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The foundational knowledge is lost, meaning that even if we do look at the code, we won't understand it anyway. but this is similar to a lot of other technical fields that have width and depth. People would not understand assembly any more and blindly trust the output of the compiler. People now can only design a part of a CPU, and not the entirety. Chip manufacturing is so complicated that there's probably no sing…

> Chip manufacturing is so complicated that there's probably no single person who could understand the entire process, from end to end. There are YouTube videos of a guy doing chip fabrication in his clean room shed. Just as I understand the assembly output of my compiler (… and no, I don't work in a low level language), he understands chip fabrication end to end. CS is not that wide, not yet. No, one cannot know eve…

> There are YouTube videos of a guy doing chip fabrication in his clean room shed

The fact this is "a guy", and probably there are very few people in the world who would be able to execute such a thing, probably should tell you how difficult that actually is. You're actually unintentionally making parent's point stronger, as obviously the production processes used for market products is much, much more complicated than what a guy in a shed does.

> Just as I understand the assembly output of my compiler

Fair enough, this is probably way more common than "person who understands the entire chip manufacturing process from beginning to end", but it's still something that less and less people know about, in a room of 100 average developers, probably few of them could realistically claim to understand all the assembly output of their compiler, if even they're familiar enough with that their language outputs assembly in the first place.

The range of skills in developers is enourmous, you have Klaus working as IT+web dev+database+admin in a tiny 2 person web shop, and on the other hand you have Anders who is a ML expert optimizing CUDA kernels, and everything in-between. That all (or even most) of them know the far end of what they currently know is wishful thinking really, Klaus doesn't need to know about what the NVCC compiler outputs, nor do Anders need to know about the specific constraints of mapping packaged products to order shipments, that's all fine.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#386
post #201
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking Of course it is, at equivalent distance.

Depending on speed of course. At some speeds drag will cause significantly more work.

… I dunno. Bikes aren't just efficient, they're the most efficient form of human movement. 60 W gets you 3 mph walking or 9 mph biking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

On my own bike, I don't think there is a pace that isn't easier. Even at slow speeds, it's not a whole lot of work. (And you can always change to a gear where it just isn't a lot of work to go slow. The challenge is more remaining upright, but a low gear and the barest of forward momentum will help that.)

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#387

I do this often for stupid questions. It's like sending someone a lmgtfy link. Don't waste my time by asking me a question that: A.) I know no more about than Claude, and B.) You could have answered yourself using Claude All of the questions I respond to this way fulfill both A and B. Responding with "Claude said" is both more polite than most ways to respond to such questions, and a subtle hint to the other person t…

So, don't ask you anything? Seems I'd rather have your opinion if you know more than Claude.

>So, don't ask you anything?

No. Don't ask me stupid questions that Claude knows more about than me, and that you could've answered yourself with Claude.

>Seems I'd rather have your opinion if you know more than Claude.

I get a lot of questions about subjects I know considerably less about than Claude, and the subset of those which can be answered by Claude (which isn't all of them, to be clear) are the questions I respond to this way.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who uses the word "obnoxious" are also obnoxious. There are many unpleasant words, you have to use some of them and people don't like any of them.

Would you refer to someone as a midwit in a typical office environment and expect your professional reputation to remain intact? If you were to do this on an ongoing basis for whatever reason, how long before you're asked to have a little chat with the folks in HR? Would you then attempt to explain it away as one of those unpleasant words that you just had to use? I want to be there for that conversation.

Different context, different politeness rules. I bet you're fun at parties. An online forum is a relaxed space, like a town pub. HR isn't breathing down our necks here. Personal attacks are a different sort of thing. Using a word to describe in a comment some abstract situations and kinds of characters you see at the office is not a personal attack.

There is not one single discourse norm to rule them all and calling out every little thing as too offensive is just annoying. Yeah, yeah there are no midwits, everyone is a unique little genius flower, yeah.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#389

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

I just can’t understand why this is not a fireable offense. Like, I can see getting a strong warning the first time somebody notices you do this, then if you persist you’d have to be let go. Just like anybody else who is clearly not doing their job. Why would you tolerate this sort of behavior at your company?

Because it's harder to fire managers. And even harder to fire executives.

Who goes when companies need to downsize? Rarely executives; they'll always find a way to be retained...hell, they're the ones with the power to decide who goes.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#390
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

I did a similar thing and I got reported to HR.
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