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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

401–410 of 786 posts

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 und…

> very competent who know when and how to use it and for what. More productive? Sure, to an extent. Being merely more productive is a tame claim for what some people unashamedly post here

People apparently can get a very different picture of the same site. Anti-AI people think this site's commenters are mostly pro-AI and vice versa. I'm generally pro-using-AI-in-proper-ways, and mostly have the impression that people on here tend to complain and grumble about AI mostly and are generally skeptical and dismissive of everything which is right in the HN tradition (the famous Dropbox comment etc).

Karpathy, Carmack, Terence Tao, Simon Willison etc. are all smart people and manage to use AI effectively and productively because it doesn't hurt their ego.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I get it’s annoying and I personally hate it but firing someone for it is ridiculous. Are you expecting everyone to rewrite everything from an AI before they share it because that doesn’t sound a good use of company time either.

It’s just a fancy version of previous tools. Imagine a coworker instead does a refactor by grepping the entire codebase and doing a find-and-replace.

Do they ensure that it didn’t accidentally overwrite something it shouldn’t have?

Or do they just throw up a PR and assume their little refactoring bash command works fine, then expect their coworkers to debug it for them?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#403
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my dayjob there is a person spearheading ai across the enterprise. They generated lots of documentation across the whole stack and now makes all PO/BAs read it if it's correct. So not just 300 lines - he unironically generated thousands of lines of "documentation" and is now making hundreds of people review it for him Complete brainrot Au psychosis is getting seriously outrageous at this point Thankfully I'm a dev…

Everyone I know, including myself, is simultaneously extremely pro-AI and anti-AI for this reason. I always put myself in the shoes of the reader when relaying Claudeslop. I either use it as a reference and write it by hand or make Claude edit it 10+ times until it's conveying only the needed information, and in simple, clear words, and without annoying Claudeisms.

we've been calling it meatware at work.

i just like dont read peoples md files they send me from claude anymore

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#404
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's even more worrying is that I've heared plenty of people defend it as, "Younger generations are just intelligent in different ways compared to older generations." I'm halfway through my 30's and this downturn started with my generation, halfway through the 80's. I hope I'm missing something, because I still need to see a benefit for lower attention spans, lower comprehensive reading skills and lower critical th…

You should point out then that "border collies are just intelligent in different ways, too"

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#405

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…

Where I work we call these people “very expensive keyboards”.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very competent who know when and how to use it and for what. More productive? Sure, to an extent. Being merely more productive is a tame claim for what some people unashamedly post here

People apparently can get a very different picture of the same site. Anti-AI people think this site's commenters are mostly pro-AI and vice versa. I'm generally pro-using-AI-in-proper-ways, and mostly have the impression that people on here tend to complain and grumble about AI mostly and are generally skeptical and dismissive of everything which is right in the HN tradition (the famous Dropbox comment etc). Karpathy…

Except I am not anti-AI.

You can see my comment history.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#407
A lot of odd takes on this, the only times I have said “Claude said: …” was equivalent to “let me google that for you” in the olden times. If someone asks me something and by pasting their question into Claude I get the correct answer it means that person needs to learn how to use the tools available to them better.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

what is often overlooked in corporate culture: if you take a step back, two coworkers refusing to cooperate, regardless of the reason, is a typical "corporate kindergarten" scenario for the manager to take care of. To avoid rushed or incorrect decisions, conflicts intentionally move through gradual escalation. If someone behaves unprofessionally, for example by submitting a code review they do not understand, the fir…

This, I totally agree with you having a call and letting them explain the changes. One of my coworker used claude to write and push PR's and the message was so cryptic, it's not really understandable. I got him on a call and let him explain the PR. He also actually couldn't really interpret the PR message. I warned him not do this again. Now he writes by hand. I think communication between humans should be written by only humans. AI is not really good at communication.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#409
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

At my current job I just asked a coworker in chat if the reply was his or LLM. He quickly owned up and the incidence of brokered LLM messages in chat dropped signficantly. Unfortunately people are being encouraged to use LLM in docs, emails, and presentations so it's probably a losing battle.

We have a LLM bot in chat that analyzes bugs when.you drop in a link and anything else if you ask it directly. It's actually quite effective: all the slop is now localized and can be ignored/blocked easily, and people no longer feel the need to copy and paste slop themselves.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people tend to forget that not only do we ourselves have different skillsets and can be amazing at one thing but horrible but another, but this also applies to other people in the world! Far all we know, there is an amazing developer out there who without LLMs, might have been the single best developer in the country, but even this person might not be able to figure out how to effectively work with LLMs. And…

> Far all we know, there is an amazing developer out there who without LLMs, might have been the single best developer in the country, but even this person might not be able to figure out how to effectively work with LLMs. And vice-versa too. If working with LLMs effectively means accepting subpar results or be a reverse centaur, then I’d be glad not to be able to work with them. I’ve never seen a good example where…

Many developers have narrow job descriptions, and the creative, productive uses of AI aren’t really obvious.

Where it shines is glueing systems together or building one-off automations that would take days, or weeks, to figure out. It’s for things you don’t have time to figure out or didn’t think were possible.

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