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Don't paste the AI, please

dontpastetheai.com

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Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#361

Post by RIMR »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #262

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 dialog…

It sounds like you're approaching this narrowly for how you specifically communicate in your line of work, and not really thinking of the broader spectrum of how people communicate professionally.

If people provided me the information you just listed, it wouldn't help me at all in what I do.

Sometimes a customer emails asking a question answered by the documentation. I am not paid to paraphrase the documentation, I am paid to get customer requests out of the door quickly, so I'll be sending links to the documentation. If AI gets that request out of the way faster, good.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#363

Post by NateEag »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #173
wccrawford wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they user types "x broken" or "i do y" into Claude or ChatGPT with no context, that's absolutely no better than just sending it to you. I'd argue that it's worse because now you have no idea what the actual original context was, just the AI's hallucination of it.

You'd think two decades of StackOverflow would've teached people how to ask a good question.

Alas, what it taught people was to describe others who want to help them ask better questions as "gatekeepers".

Maybe SO really is full of rude, condescending gatekeepers - I haven't asked questions there much.

I haven't personally seen much evidence of it, though, despite decades of winding up there when searching for programming information.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#364

Post by john_strinlai »

mhaberl wrote: post #353
jillesvangurp wrote: post #308

The complaint here is about lazy answers. But what about all the lazy questions? What's the equivalent of "Google it yourself" these days? When you ask something of somebody, the expectation of the other side to drop everything and do work for you isn't always appropriate/balanced/appreciated. The underlying problem here is that communication is hard; especially if it's not face to face. People can't read your mind o…

> Back in the day I learned the hard way that sending a long reply to an email just ensures the other side won't read it. You can't assume that you dealt with their request effectively that way Then I guess you didn't deal with much of the empty-headed-managment type much. I learned a different lesson: Write a long email that took time to reason and write, precise and complete text. You get a short reply that is a re…

>This is true 100% I would even say: "Never reply on anything instantly that is not an absolute emergency, ever"

you can shorten this to "never reply instantly", because an "absolute emergency" will never be communicated by email.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#365

Post by nchmy »

lelanthran wrote: post #318
hobom wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good.

> OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good. And yet, he was unable to do the same (see his link). He demonstrated that he was able to more clearly articulate his point than the LLM he conversed with.

Again, youve missed the point entirely

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#366

Post by nchmy »

hobom wrote: post #312
lelanthran wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... I think your linked chat demonstrates quite well why you are wrong. The sender's burden is a few lines of text "Write me $FOO, conclude with $BAR". The recipients burden is an order of magnitude greater, trying to find your conclusion in hundreds of lines of text. After all, your initial line: > B…

OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good.

Indeed. Further, that neither human nor AI output is inherently good or bad. The crucial factor is whether a competent, thoughtful human has been involved in one way or another - to guide, review, steer, etc...

Moreover, that a thoughtful human can know their own tendencies and limitations, and have the AI help mitigate them.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#367

Post by mromanuk »

> The person on the other side has the same tools you do. If they wanted the generic answer, they would have gotten it in four seconds. They asked you because they wanted your take on it... Your context, your taste, your judgement.

I beg to differ. Most of my life, as “the computer guy” — basically since I was a kid — I’ve always been surprised by how lazy people can be, and how they often prefer to ask “the computer guy” or some other human trusted source rather than work out the answer themselves.

There was even a website called “Let Me Google That for You” back when Google was a trustworthy source of answers, precisely to point out how easy it was to find the answer yourself. Obviously, that didn’t stop people from asking, and I don’t think LLMs will either.

People will continue to turn to “the computer guy” — aka you. And if your judgement is that copying an LLM response verbatim is the best answer, then yes, you’re fulfilling your role perfectly well.

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