Earlier quoted context omitted.
"AI code looks good for you because you are a bad developer"?
Or non-developer.
.. but pretend to be a developer?
AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
541–550 of 729 posts
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
My "favorite" Claudism is when I critique its work and ask it to remove some unnecessary part of the design -- and then the diff has more green than red because it added comments about why the code is no longer there -- the code that was never in the mainline and never asked for!
Oh Jesus this. I've tried to include rules that tell Claude to only include relevant, evergreen comments but it's to no avail. I also love how it'll build local plans with phases, tasks, or decisions, then reference those numbers in those same useless comments.
Or when it references "item 06" from some plan you wrote as if it had any relevance to you whatsoever.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#543The 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…
To play devil's advocate here, it is possible for someone to simultaneously use AI to write and also not be a meat proxy. I'm not saying that is the norm, but I have written docs where the vast majority of the words come from AI, but I also spent multiple days on the substance and content.
Maybe if you only use the LLM to proof read or something? I don't know if LLMs are actually any good for this purpose, but it's something I came to think of when trying to answer your question.
I do think that it is very difficult to not be a meat proxy when you utilize an LLM for writing tasks. These tools are computer programs that generate text, so what else would you do with it than have it write for you? This is being a meat proxy.
Trying to avoid being a meat proxy can quickly eat the supposed productivity gains of using an LLM in the first place.
Like say I need to write an article about some subject and it would take me the entire day to complete this task without an LLM. I can get some sort of article out of an LLM by simply asking, I don't need to think about the subject myself at all. The LLM productivity promise is also fulfilled, because I did an entire days work in a minute or so.
Now if I also need to read and understand the work, and be able to defend it or explain it to others as if I produced it myself, then this will take a lot of time. If on top of this I need to edit the text to sound like me rather than an LLM, then I probably still need the whole day for this task and I have lost all the productivity increase that I sought from using the LLM.
It's the thinking that takes time when you write, not typing. But you can't do the thinking and avoid doing it at the same time.
The same idea applies to coding too. Doing code review and requiring the author and reviewer to read and understand the code basically eliminates all the productivity gains that using the LLM was supposed to provide. Throw out the reviewing, reading, and understanding and we can have each developer producing a thousand kloc per day, over 1000x productivity. If we don't throw those out, we are comparatively in the exact same spot as not using LLMs at all.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#544AI—DR
This bit in particular
> Look, I get it. It’s Q3 2026, and we should expect that everyone is utilizing AI at SOME point in their process (sourcing ideas, creating outlines, refining prose, etc.).
I stopped reading there.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh no, you said "landed"! It's dug into our brains!
I hate that I have to change the way I write to avoid AI-isms. I loved using "load bearing" to describe weird code that you think you can delete but is actually holding everything together. Now people think I'm just parroting what Claude said. It sucks. I want my catch phrases back, I guess this is how em dash users felt
I feel like a lot of these have been LinkedIn-isms or PR-isms long before they have been AI-isms so not much is lost.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#546I 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.
Yeah, my post is more than a year old at this point: https://blog.gpkb.org/posts/just-send-me-the-prompt/
A lot of people replying seem to be misunderstanding, though. The only point of human-to-human communication is to transmit thoughts from one brain to another. If you simply send me stuff from AI then I don't need you. I want to hear your thoughts. If you don't have any, then I don't need or want to hear from you. Your thoughts are entirely contained within your prompts. Just send me those.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are some, who couldn't be a part of the public conversation, precisely because of they inability to add anything to said conversation. LLMs enables them to post (or, rather, paste) something, in an attempt to trick others into believing they do have something to say. They think they sound smart now, because LLMs are "very much the “stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”"[1] So now we are flooded…
Wow! that comment you linked speaks to me. I was watching a review video for a game yesterday that was so obviously written by AI it was actually painful to listen to. I started reading the comments and there were several people praising this Youtuber on their great use of metaphor. Literally "subbed because you're such an amazing writer." It actually shook me to my core. If those were real people making those commen…
LLMs output the average of their training data. On average, people are tasteless and clueless. So it's to be expected that average and especially below-average people find LLM output appealing. Or the tasteless work of an average person.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, if he speaks against it he gets labeled "anti-AI" and laid off or not promoted. If he stays silent he retains his job. Corporate Capitalism's main innovation was virtualizing feudalism. Now anyone with a bit of cash flow can be a feudal lord with peasants to do his will. No need to maintain land or fight over it with other feudal lords. There's still fighting, naturally, but now the game isn't zero sum. The serfs…
> The serfs don't get any real say in this model I am a programmer but also in management, and if I knew my team thought like that I would be horrified. We absolutely care about what the team members want , like, hate etc. I for once would love someone to bring up stuff like this to me. As long as they are as open minded about things as they would like me to be, there is no issue. But it’s a serious issue to pretend…
> We absolutely care about what the team members want , like, hate etc.
Do the people above you in management care as much? It's the top levels of management that decide hiring, firing and budgets.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would a thousand times rather read your stream of consciousness, even though I disagree with it, than the bland pulp of the LLM output. In every way that matters, it's stronger and communicating far more. I don't agree that it's ableism to believe that you are far more worth talking to than a machine regurgitating attenuated averages.
You say this, but it's likely a lie. Maybe not for you, but for every N people like you that say it, a high percentage of them are lying. There's research on people's preference for AI generated content over human content when the provenance of the content is blind, which flips on its head when provenance is not blind. The truth is the actual "art" never mattered, most people are living in Plato's cave and they're sc…
> people's preference for AI generated content over human content when the provenance of the content is blind, which flips on its head when provenance is not blind
I don't think this shows what you think it shows. AI output (in short clumps) looks like human output; it's designed to do that. Naturally people will sometimes prefer it to other stuff that looks like human output, but crucially this shifts when they realise they're not actually being communicated with.
Re: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe the AI style as the next person. But I don't buy your argument: if a person used AI to produce a text it doesn't mean they haven't steered the I in the direction they wanted the conversation to go and (hopefully) review the output. That's an added value Yes, it would be nice if it was also pleasant to read
Steered it?! If I'm gonna read it, I want someone to have written it, not bloody "steered" it! "Why are you upset with this restaurant meal? Okay it wasn't actually cooked here per se, but the chef certainly reheated it and carefully monitored the microwave oven while doing so!" This crap just needs to end. "Steering" words at another human being is incredibly disrespectful.
big restaurants have many cooks that are trained and monitored by the chef, but the chef is certainly not necessarily prepairing your meal.
The chef is however responsible for the outcome so you're absolutely right to complain if the meal sucks and most of this AI written crap definitely sucks to read.
That said, it's not about the "principle" of having your meal cooked by the chef / the text written word by word by the human.
It's about the outcome. People should learn to tame their AI tools/harnesses in such a way to produce quality output (code and prose) and it's absolutely despicable that so many people are so eager to lower our standards in quality just because everybody else seems to be doing it.