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Don't paste the AI, please

dontpastetheai.com

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Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#261

Post by nchmy »

ModernMech wrote: post #235
christophilus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, those people would be opposed to using spellcheck and grammar tools, too, I guess. I don’t think there’s a reasonable argument against using AI to spellcheck/check your grammar other than that it’s hugely inefficient.

The argument as I've heard it explained to me by someone with a banhammer: "One use of AI no matter how benign is not acceptable because usage is infectious; after even the most minimal use of AI, we can't tell what was AI and what wasn't, therefore the only acceptable position is no AI whatsoever"

Surely we can all agree that banhammer people are generally not a good standard to go by? Still, if you value participating in that space, you have no choice but to follow their rules

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#262

Post by sebastianconcpt »

To "They asked you because they wanted your take on it... Your context, your taste, your judgement." actually I'd ask even for more than that:

For any given I'd want:

- Your context - your taste - your judgement - clarify what bet encourages to support - be ready to elaborate your thesis of that bet

With that we have the basic complete building block that used one after another can model a basic lifecycle of a dialogue that can make progress towards something (a goal, a mission, something useful)

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#263

Post by michaeltenpow »

Yes - lazy AI answers from generic AI are lazy. Don’t do that please.

But this leading statement is not necessarily true:

“The person on the other side has the same tools you do”

Aren’t we all imbuing our AI with our own thought patterns? Folks I speak to spent a tremendous amount of time building tooling and (hierarchical) context around LLMs such that the output it produces is definitely not the same as what the stock model produces.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#265

Post by andai »

gexla wrote: post #103

I remember back in the day when you could apply this to Google search results. When I was freelancing, I had a number of people I worked with who would fire off fast questions, but they would still pay me for my time. Then I would return what was essentially a Google search result shortly after. Yes, I would send my own answer, not some paste from Google. But the point is. They had search, so why didn't they think to…

There's a couple pieces to this I've noticed.

First of all there's a skill to it. You learn how to phrase things, based on how other people probably phrased it. You learn how google modifies or ignores your queries... (or stops respecting modifiers...)

That comes with practice, and lots of it! I google so much that google regularly throws up the captchas (even when I'm logged in). I remember when Kagi first started, my friend sent me a link to their subscription, and it was like an order of magnitude less search than I did. (They increased it a lot since then.)

So it's skill issue, and skill is a function of volume. Most people barely ever google things. Which is the second thing I've noticed.

I'll often be with people, and they'll be like, "huh I wonder XYZ", and then just trail off, as if there was an implied "I guess we'll never know!" at which point I pull out my phone, bewildered, and simply look it up, and everyone looks at me like I'm an alien. (I do not understand socializing apparently.)

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#266

Post by nchmy »

MrGilbert wrote: post #221
nchmy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... From my experience, AI tends to sugarcoat and be very verbose in its' responses. Theses two combined mean I need to peel away a lot of text before I can get to the "real" point as a reader. So while I could use AI to craft a response, and then rework it to be more concise, I wonder if it wouldn't…

Agreed that AI's default voice is unproductive. But you can set/give instructions.

And, yes, it would be foolish and inefficient to try to get Ai to write absolutely everything. But it can certainly be helpful in many ways.

What is needed is discernment.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#268

Post by Hugsbox »

alchemism wrote: post #207
Hugsbox wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your agentic context is still going to shit out 3 pages where a sentence would suffice. Use AI all you want, and then WRITE THE ANSWER IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

If I’m answering your question, and you are not directly paying me for being an information desk, you are definitely getting the AI reply.

In that case why not just say you'd prefer not to answer and move on? They're asking for your input, not AI input - if you'd prefer not to contribute literally just say so.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#269

Post by skerit »

gwd wrote: post #47
seer wrote: post #35

I’m not convinced tbh, a lot of my colleagues messages are “x broken” or “I do y” … no context whatsoever, and then I have to coax their context for making these decisions. Since people started using Claude now I get full context of everything… might be too much sure, but to be honest over-communicating seems better than under-communicating - sure it’s boring and tedious but that shifts the blockage to me. Otherwise…

> Since people started using Claude now I get full context of everything… And I think this is where one key argument on the page itself I think fails: > The person on the other side has the same tools you do. Yes, the person on the other side has Claude; but in many cases, their Claude doesn't have the same context as my Claude. Saying, "This thing happened in an area of the code I don't have any expertise in. Below…

I agree that "The person on the other side has the same tools you do" might be technically true, I have myself encountered it often enough that they don't even use it at all.

People don't always want MY take on it, they just don't want to bother finding the solution on their own at all.

So in that case replying with a verbatim copy-paste of a Claude response has the same energy as a lmgtfy link.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#270

Post by SoftTalker »

disillusioned wrote: post #17

Heh. Just got done writing (by hand!) a Principles of AI Use document for my (ironically) AI enablement firm, the first of which is: Write as yourself. You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. Communicate them directly to us. Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else, and worse, risks skipping that step for your…

I think it's already a lost cause. The average person will see a request to not use AI or to "rewrite an AI answer in your own voice" as like asking them to learn to spell instead of using a spell checker.

I hate spell checkers, I disable them and I do manually double-check words that I'm unsure about. But I'm under no illusions that most people are going to see automatic spell-checking as useful and time-saving, and I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince anyone otherwise.

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