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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

511–520 of 786 posts

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#511

> Read it, understand it, validate it, and then write a response in your own words In the past, avoiding this process was called plagiarism, and it was frowned upon, to put it mildly. Now, because the LLMs say it's OK, it's become the norm. The, "this is what Claud said", response also comes off like an appeal to authority. When these LLMs have no authority and get the basics wrong constantly.

Reminds me of "Appeal to Aithority"

> The LLMs says this, so it must be right.

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2025/03/10/appeal-to-aithority/

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#512

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.

Infinitely, that's a stretch.

Over the past year maybe 1.5x to 2.0x for me. As in: I can work on two projects at the same time with reduced amount of context switch. But that's it for me.

Maybe I don't have the brains for 1000x terminal agent coding, but 2 parallel projects seems like my saturation point.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#513

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…

This is because they don't trust you to do it. If whenever a problem came up you and the rest of the team were able to solve it and it didn't drag on into some forever bug, they wouldn't be second guessing you. Maybe they have long experience where you were too lazy to fix things or you bamboozled them with status updates that were basically fabricated? Don't act offended, it's quite common.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#514

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.

I’m not a developer, but when I watch devs whose work process is prompt, copy-paste, try to run, paste error into code, try to run, etc. I can’t help but think they’re unskilled. There’s no brain engagement, no understanding of the bigger picture, just being a worse slower agent.

This is my exact process nowadays when debugging some weird Linux wifi driver issue or something that came up after upgrade.

But that's because I don't have any real familiarity with the systems involved and I don't expect that gaining such familiarity will benefit me. If I am working on a system or product I'm responsible for at my job, it should be a different situation.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor nitpick with your first sentence: I do not believe "anyone with a bit of training" is an accurate way to describe what is required for pedaling a bicycle at 20 mph for 5 solid hours. At a time when I was in better shape than the average person, the most I ever worked up to was 40 miles, and it was brutal . In my entire middle-aged life, I have met exactly one person who believably claimed to have done 100 miles…

Well, I should say I live somewhere very flat. I'm certainly not talking about Tour de France style mountain stages. I'm not used to that at all. Also, for 5 hours most people will need to be in a good group/peloton. Doing it solo, like a time trial, is difficult. But I do think most people could get around 6 hours (16.7mph average) within a year of training in sportive conditions (ie. with some drafting, not strict…

With the additional detail and the numbers you provided, that seems reasonable. Steepness of hills is definitely relevant, haha.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#516

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…

Any non trivial coding task requires a conversation between human and ai. Just have devs commit (or provide however you like) their ai coding sessions. It then becomes obvious if someone has, or has not, reviewed the code, because then they discussed it. Bonus points: on very complex tasks, you can more or less resume the conversation, via session files. Same for schoolwork, research papers, and a lot more. The conve…

I want to suggest you read https://www.amazon.com/Advantage-Disadvantage-History-Hacket...

You can't just remember every conversation and ... something useful.

Indiscriminate memory buries you. What you need is "monumental" memories, which is also known as documentation. AI can be very effective in helping you manage that. That should be kept tight, just like code. You want to keep enough of a record of how you got to where you are that you are equipped to be effective in future tasks.

I would say that your suggestion is basically digital hoarding. Lets say there are 3 kinds of people, the person with OCD who keeps his house almost barren in the name of tidiness, the person who visits his possessions periodically with a critical eye, deciding what to keep and what to throw away, and the hoarder. When it comes time to solve some household problem, say hang a picture, which one of them will have what they need to do it (a hammer and a nail, maybe a little bit of wire) and be able to find it?

I think you might consider keeping the session history for a while, maybe a month or 3 months or 6 months, but have something that automatically deletes them after that.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#518

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…

I think many people did argue against these things when they were new. Compilers, for instance, were seen as a waste of the computer's resources and produced less than optimal code.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#519
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

devils advocate; why didnt you ask claude then? stop wasting people's time when you could get your own answers.

Because I wanted to ask a human who’s job it is to know, instead of an AI that might make things up and waste all our time.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this is nightmare fuel right before I go to bed omg

I have a friend who works in healthcare and he says patients now regularly pull out their phone and ask him to talk to their chatbot. Anything he says to them, they immediately repeat to ChatGPT and ask if it’s correct.

Given the state of the US healthcare industry and how little shit some doctors give (and some are legitimately overworked), this isn't as absurd as it sounds.
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