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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

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Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#531

Post by xpct »

deepsummer wrote: post #9

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?

This was common before LLMs as well. Instead of googling, they ask you, then you google in front of them and show them how easy it was to figure out. At least in my experience, they learn to google by themselves eventually, but there is some type of disconnect in being proactive.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#532

Post by a34729t »

impulsivepuppet wrote: post #97
jasonkester wrote: post #61

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…

You are absolutely right to push back...

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#533

Post by patrickmay »

gjulianm wrote: post #7

I try to not use AI to write text that's meant to be read by other people. I might use AI to understand and research beforehand, but the writing is mine. The most important reason is that writing allows me to check whether I actually understand what I am trying to communicate. Too many times I've started writing something and once the ideas need to be put in writing, I notice that there are concepts that I'm missing…

"Writing is nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is." -- Richard Guindon

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#534

Post by brlewis »

datakan wrote: post #351
chii wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's basically asking other people to do his job for him, because he knows that the AI doesn't truly do it well enough. I would say to him that if he wants me to do his job, he needs to pay me his salary.

My VP boss calls me 6 times a day to help him understand his copilot responses and asks why we aren't doing what copilot says we should do. I then have to spend multiple hours explaining why. His peers call him to understand their copilot responses which he then copilots and calls me to help interpret. On and on and on

Have you tried putting those explanations into your repo?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#535

Post by andai »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #8

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…

Did they ask Claude to do the job interview too?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#536

Post by metabagel »

sethammons wrote: post #355

"Claud said" is a hedge. It is abdication of responsibility. That said, a meat-proxied answer should come with more credibility based on the proxy. I'd put more weight into my developer proxying system information than my sale's intern. I am expecting the proxy to have given the response a sniff test

I appreciate "Claude said...", because it helps me assign an appropriate level of trust in the information.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#537

Post by bagacrap »

kooi wrote: post #497

It happens outside the developer world as well. People get information from Google AI mode and take it as 100% truth. In reality, blogs, reddit, and junk are often sourced link...which is fine if you inspect the sources...which some people don't! Have has examples of people AI-moding a questing and they get one answer based on how they asked. Then another person asks and they get another answer. Issue: People read wh…

I've seen it using a lot of Instagram lately too. I can't even check that source because I don't have the app installed.

When I do try to check the links, they often don't support what's stated. If I call out Gemini, it says something inane like "I don't actually use these links the way a human might --- I didn't misinterpret it because I didn't even read it!"

Recently I was searching for information about fig trees (the fruit). It kept telling me things that didn't make sense, luckily the links revealed it was answering about fiddle leaf fig trees (the houseplant). Unfortunately that was not a correctable problem --- it kept happening even after I pointed out the mistake. So I'm really not too sure what the purpose of the system is. You still have to read through the references in their entirety (if not paywalled!), and with skepticism. And then if you find a problem, AI isn't going to get back on track.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#538

Post by a34729t »

Apparently engineers are running out of tokens with our mediocre token budget, and there is talk of trying to run local LLMs.

Meanwhile execs get unlimited tokens...

And here I am, only automating the most mundane and boring stuff so I can program by hand, which I enjoy.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#539

Post by jedbrooke »

This is one of my pet peeves too.

Like when someone says “ChatGPT says: …” I just want to stop them and say “Look, you are a human with a functioning mind and thoughts and I’m sure YOU have something valuable to contribute here, I want to hear what you think, not what the bot outputs.”

Heck, even if you are just gonna prompt chatgpt, if you read and understand and agree the the output would be useful, feel free to rephrase it as your own (so long as you take accountability for it if it’s wrong, which I guess is often why people hide behind “chatgpt says…” in the first place, it allows them to pass accountability on to the machine).

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#540

Post by metabagel »

black6 wrote: post #365
horizion2025 wrote: post #321

I agree but to be fair, often people could have asked an AI to get their answer. Especially seniors are prone to this (thinking the AI could not possibly know this or other biases). The responder wrote they asked Claude so as to not take credit for the answer and also to indicate they did not vet it. Then the person asking can decide if they want to read the answer or not (often a 1 sec glean can reveal if it is prom…

"I don't know." is a better answer than "Claude said..."

"I don't know" could also mean they couldn't be bothered. It can't possibly be better than getting a response from someone who lifted a finger to help find an answer for you.
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