AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read) • Hacker News Board

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#151

Post by purplethreads » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

Impossible to know unless you did read.

TL;DR works because I can see the length at a glance

And you cannot tell all AI. Only mainstream crap like ChatGPT and Gemini which is full of cached tropes and boilerplate formats so it all sounds the same.

My custom invoicing software automates notes based on years of my previous notes and tasks I did - looks nothing like AI.

Use a real library and local model, mess with settings, there is a lot more to this than the mainstream consumer apps.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#152

Post by VCFundedGenYer » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

The irony of making such a bold progressive statement while still being on X and not Mastodon....

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#153

Post by scarecrowbob » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

gortok wrote: post #36

The part that astonishes me is that in the year of our common era two thousand twenty-six that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person. If I'm reading something on the internet, I'm either reading it to learn, or I'm reading it to be persuaded. If I wanted the LLM to teach me (thank you, no), I would ask an LLM. I'm reading your website/newsletter/email because I…

Getting an AI response from folks has a very "let me google that for you" kind of feel.

If you're not familiar with the concept... https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=lmgtfy

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#154

Post by runjake » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

I guess I'm in the minority. I don't mind an AI response if it's informative, concise and well-crafted.

The problem is that those kinds of responses are rare in the tech world. But when you have someone competent at the helm, it's much better than reading human slop.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#155

Post by jeremyjh » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

rfgplk wrote: post #132

jeremyjh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s not it. Its easy as competent engineers for us to forget how terrible most people are at prompting AI, or reviewing and correcting AI output. Raw output from typical prompts is garbage. If I start reading something that no one even bothered to edit well enough to tone down the AI speak, odds are its garbage and I don't need to spend more time engaging with it than the author did.

But the point is that it's garbage because of the low quality of the information, and not necessarily because an LLM made it. I do agree that most people don't know how to prompt.

Right, and I’m not going to spend the time trying to gauge the information quality when I already know the person who sent it didn’t think it was important enough to edit - or isn’t capable of it.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#156

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

noman-land wrote: post #113

LPisGood wrote: post #56

My coworkers continue to dump hundreds of lines of AI documentation in every PR and every other line of code has between one and ten lines of AI generated comments, talking about the real unlock and how things are byte for byte identical on the load bearing path or how the acceptance ladder is misleading. Features are coming out and metrics are improving, but we’re basically in a post readability code base, with the…

Have you considered talking about it? You're in a professional environment collectively working in a new way with a group of people. It's up to somebody to have opinions about what does and doesn't suck. If you silently go along and don't say anything you're dooming yourself and all of us to a lifetime of this garbage.

[deleted]

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#157

Post by Alien1Being » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

ramdump wrote: post #60

The fear I have is that I accuse of AI without being 100% certain. I've not found a good way around this except to talk to the person.

Pangram does a decent job of AI detection.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#158

Post by m132 » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #48

I really like the point I read somewhere the other day; instead of sending me the AI output, just send me the prompt you used to generate it. That is the only part that contains only the information you are trying to convey. The rest is just guesses flowery language added, and it confuses the actual message being sent.

I like how some people take offence at that

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#159

Post by Alien1Being » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

AI generated text should be treated as spam and automatically filtered out.

Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

#160

Post by platevoltage » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #43

Eventually, AI will be a far better writer than a human is, and then nobody will want to read the human generated subpar writing. AI writing is rapidly improving. Human writing, on average not so much.

I'll take "subpar" human writing, music, art, or whatever any day of the week.