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AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)

rickmanelius.com

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

#631

Post by [deleted] »

wavemode wrote: post #416
delecti wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the ocean, it's the poster's own team. A simple "AI comments suck" in a sprint retro would be trivially easy and would at least start the conversation.

While I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, it is very similar to whenever anyone complains about things where they work. "Well, why don't you just raise it with management?" You're assuming that management 1) Understands the problem ("what are comments?") 2) Accepts that it is a problem ("how can more comments be a bad thing?") 3) Cares enough to solve the problem ("is this issue really a priority to solve…

[deleted]

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

#632

Post by prmoustache »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #429
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.

Would you prefer a 10k word discussion with an agent about a hypothesis with back and forth over data sources and such, analysis, etc, or a 2000 word AI essay condensate with the rough edges smoothed over manually?

It really depends if the rough edges are load bearing.

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

#633

Post by qarl2 »

wpietri wrote: post #623
qarl2 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that the anti-AI mentality around here is bizarre. I do not think that forwarding a listing from Google is bizarre. These seem like reasonable positions to me. I am very sorry if my voicing these beliefs makes you uncomfortable.

I'm not uncomfortable or upset. I'm just a long-time HN denizen pointing out some behavior I think is toxic to a healthy community. You're vigorously trying to make reasonable people look bad. I knew you wouldn't like me pointing it out, but the comment wasn't really for you. It's for the other reasonable people who are having to read or endure your bad behavior.

Yes, I agree - no comment in these threads is for the recipient. It’s for the audience. And I appreciate you engaging with me earnestly and thoughtfully.

But I disagree with your “toxic”. I think HN has a fear of conflict: the “civility” argument from politics/Clinton circa 2016. And look where we are today.

Sadly, conflict is sometimes necessary to resolve problems.

For example, right now, the anti-AI thing is pure madness. I understand it is based in fear, and I have sympathy for that. But much of human ugliness is based in fear, and sometimes conflict is necessary to get a community past its fears. Humans are stubborn.

So, again, I am sorry for your discomfort.

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

#634

Post by wpietri »

qarl2 wrote: post #633
wpietri wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not uncomfortable or upset. I'm just a long-time HN denizen pointing out some behavior I think is toxic to a healthy community. You're vigorously trying to make reasonable people look bad. I knew you wouldn't like me pointing it out, but the comment wasn't really for you. It's for the other reasonable people who are having to read or endure your bad behavior.

Yes, I agree - no comment in these threads is for the recipient. It’s for the audience. And I appreciate you engaging with me earnestly and thoughtfully. But I disagree with your “toxic”. I think HN has a fear of conflict: the “civility” argument from politics/Clinton circa 2016. And look where we are today. Sadly, conflict is sometimes necessary to resolve problems. For example, right now, the anti-AI thing is pure…

Again, bub, I'm not uncomfortable. I am saying you are a bad HN participant, making this place worse. I am not averse to conflict, but neither am I fond of dressing up an enjoyment of conflict and pointless drama as something that's somehow healthy.

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

#635

Post by thepra »

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…

I can already tell you for sure that those comments are a liability time bomb as soon as enough codebase changes and if the ai forgot to update those comments now it's gonna contextualise or hallucinate logic that doesn't make sense. It's work should be measured on the correctness and maintainability of what it generated, comments as soon as they become stale that's a ticking bomb.

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

#636

Post by danirod »

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

As someone whose inner (brain) chain of thought is messy, reading your prompt was a very pleasant experience. It might be dirty, it might not be polished, but reading this was like taking a dump of your thought, planting it on my brain, and letting me build upon it to understand your point.

I could not finish the output made by Claude. I tried, but having to translate back from "mouthy words" to "plain English" is tiresome.

I am not trying to say that I don't like well written words, a good book with carefully chosen words is a good way to spend an afternoon. But for LLMs, it feels very forced and not natural because it doesn't insert those words where it would make sense for a good author.

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

#637

Post by sdellis »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #334
platevoltage wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People say this, but AI artists keep getting listens on music platforms, doing at least as well as human artists if the listener is making a blind choice. https://www.promarket.org/2026/05/04/consumers-prefer-ai-mus...

Expressing a preference between two choices is not how I would measure what listeners want. What they should have been testing is whether the listener ends up playing the track over and over and singing along to every word of the track. I think you would end up with a very different conclusion if you measured passion and not preference. This study merely reflects what the companies want to measure.

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

#638

Post by stronglikedan »

stAInley wrote: post #585
stronglikedan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter. You'll come off as the baddie. It's the foreseeable future. Best just to learn how to interpret AI generated shit, or learn how to run it through AI and have it translate it to a more concise format without all the buzzwords. It'll take getting used to, but it'll save your career.

This reply is not directed to you specifically, but that attitude is why improvement doesn't happen. "My peers are all bad", "Management has no idea what's going on", "My boss is out of touch", "My staff keep screwing up". But if you're consistently seeing the problems while everyone else becomes defensive, you (that think that way) need to learn how to communicate effectively in a way that doesn't result in being 't…

When AI directives are coming from the top down - when everyone above you all the way up to the CEO is all in on AI - the writing is on the proverbial wall. I'm not saying it will be that way forever, but it is the foreseeable future, and those that don't jump on the train will be left behind. It's just life.

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

#639

Post by atomicnumber3 »

keosak wrote: post #548
brabel wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Correct. I do believe my _manager_ wants me to have a say etc. but I also know my manager has terrifically little power overall. "In management" just means you can't unionize and have to dance to the company tune.

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

#640

Post by atomicnumber3 »

munksbeer wrote: post #590
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #486

Earlier 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…

I was nodding to your post for a short period, then you just had to throw in the usual anti-capitalism zeitgeist rant. Reframe your context, pretend you're in a communist society, and you could be making the exact same point about speaking up against the grain being bad for you. It feels as though people are brainwashed by anti-capitalism sentiment at the moment, unable to see outside of that context.

I don't want communism, I want a functioning free market with socialist safety net policies and for strong anti-trust/monopoly regulations.

Mega corporations pervert free markets and democracy, and we have a huge number of mega corporations At this point.

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