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AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

rickmanelius.com

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

#591

Post by badsectoracula »

stordoff wrote: post #235
supermatt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this? https://claude.ai/share/99bfee0f-bab9-4593-aabb-377e71f1151d

FWIW, I tried to read the AI version first, and found myself bouncing back to the prompt multiple times. The AI version just reads as flat, impersonal, and as if it has had all the corners sanded off (both in style and content). The prompt conveys much more about what _you_ want to say, and is easier to read without zoning out and losing interest. If you must use AI in this way, I'd tell it to take a _much_ lighter t…

I find amusing that both Claude and ChatGPT realized the "hackers" in "a lot of people on hackers that like to complain about stuff" was about "Hacker News" :-P

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

#592

Post by account42 »

dspillett wrote: post #139
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…

> that it's not universally offensive and reviling to post an AI-generated response to another person There has even been an advert extoling the behaviour (I forget which phone OS brand it was for, which is a shame as I might like to try avoid buying anything from them): "if a friend asks a question and your phone can answer directly, shouldn't it?", to which my gut reaction is "absolutely fucking not, it shouldn't".…

> I forget which phone OS brand it was for, which is a shame as I might like to try avoid buying anything from them

That it is plausible to have come from any of the major ones just means that they all should be avoided. Which is of course not a very practical insight.

> unless it seems they have a fake them taking calls, no doubt that'll be a thing sooner rather than later

That would be the point where our friendship is over (or rather I acknowledge the fact that it was already over) and I delete & block the contact.

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

#593

Post by fireflash38 »

supermatt wrote: post #162
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.

How is this? https://claude.ai/share/99bfee0f-bab9-4593-aabb-377e71f1151d

I think it's hilarious how AI took something personal and the very first thing it spews out is a classic AI-ism.

Do you read over what the AI spits out? Do you read over what you write?

It takes time to do either, and both are the things that I think are actually useful.

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

#594

Post by hypertexthero »

> If, however, prose is LLM-generated, this social contract becomes ripped up: a reader cannot assume that the writer understands their ideas because they might not so much have read the product of the LLM that they tasked to write it. If one is lucky, these are LLM hallucinations: obviously wrong and quickly discarded. If one is unlucky, however, it will be a kind of LLM-induced cognitive dissonance: a puzzle in which pieces don’t fit because there is in fact no puzzle at all. This can leave a reader frustrated: why should they spend more time reading prose than the writer spent writing it?

> This can be navigated, of course, but it is truly perilous: our writing is an important vessel for building trust — and that trust can be quickly eroded if we are not speaking with our own voice.

From https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576#_llms_as_writers

Be careful not to [give up your own voice][1] to the [machine][2].

[1]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/you-are-not-a-gadget-jaron-lani...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh20cMEgvqc

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

#596

Post by cindyllm »

27183 wrote: post #440
LPisGood wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m trying to say is that they can generate many more hundreds of lines of code and comments than I can reasonably review. Maybe the comments do make sense they’re just five lines longer than they ought to be. Multiply that by 20 times and then add in 150 lines of documentation that is not technically incorrect. Not to mention that the response to each review will come with its own set of new comments and new do…

Your bosses don't want you actually reviewing it anyway. They want you to approve the PR . Just give them what they want. I'm currently not working in tech, but I will again sometime within the next year or so, and I've been reflecting on my career in light of the recent AI madness. I think the biggest mistakes I've made over the last decade+ in tech as a software engineer have been caring . I've worked at small, med…

[dead]

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

#597

Post by account42 »

ithkuil wrote: post #550
gspr wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I go to a restaurant and find out I got a reheated meal I'm going to be upset no matter how much quality control the chef does of the reheating. That's just not something I would ever go to a restaurant for.

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

#598

Post by gspr »

ithkuil wrote: post #550
gspr wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

No. It very much isn't about outcome. It's about interpersonal relationships.

> People should learn to tame their AI tools/harnesses in such a way to produce quality output (code and prose)

The quality isn't the problem. The quality is that something that needs to be "tamed" is writing words that the "tamer" expects me to read.

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

#599

Post by account42 »

Ampersander wrote: post #543
jerezzprime wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, it's like people have forgotten that junior contributors you can't trust yet often have net negative productivity due to the time you need to invest to review and guide them.

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

#600

Post by account42 »

fragmede wrote: post #262
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…

It takes energy to generate the LLM response. If you read the already generated response instead of generating your own, we burn less coal.

Now add the energy needed by the human to read the response (not to mention his finite lifetime) to your calculation.
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