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The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

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Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#241

Post by xivzgrev »

I wonder if AI is making us dumber

I can have AI pull some analysis - sql query, crunch some numbers and bam, some precise sounding number.

But then I question it, and then it says "you are right, I didn't check that"

How did I know what to question? By doing the friction work of querying myself, calculating myself, and then getting questions from leadership.

I worry about the younger generation. They spit out Claude results fast, people question it and they say "ok I'll take that back to Claude".

I suppose they'll eventually learn to do their own sense checking because they still have the friction of presenting to others.

And maybe my model is a thing of the past. Everyone is now going to be a manager (of agents) fresh out of school. They aren't doing the work anymore but they will need to set clear goals, validate work and hold agents accountable.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#243

Post by arjie »

dwedge wrote: post #113
zamadatix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name to believe things as obvious as "a long form news article cramming every AI trope it can fit from start to finish" being AI written. At this point I'm surprised when a news article isn't largely AI written, let alone one using the default tone! I don't even mind it as much as others seem to, it's just turning into more and more…

> Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name I kind of assumed it is, given how it suddenly seemed to start getting namedropped in multiple comment threads. And it's often in response to someone saying content is obviously LLM (with examples) and the shill wedges pangram into the conversation "omg you're right, I didn't believe you but I checked this new product and wow…

I mention pangram because it’s good at what it does. Otherwise, people like to claim “That’s just how I’ve always written. I always say That’s the seam and the seam undercuts the other pillar. It’s not just correct, it’s also verified lol; it’s just how I speak” and it’s obvious bullshit. Depending on the politics of the poster, people will also support this kind of garbage, but it’s all drivel.

The authors are so often dishonest that it’s hard to believe that the things they’re saying are anything but a random hallucination.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#244

Post by zzzeek »

huurtehoog wrote: post #217
giva wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find quite useful to write down my understanding/opinion and ask an LLM to find errors and write objections to it.

I have done that as well. Not a single time I asked an LLM for any sort of analysis that I could trust upon verification so I stopped doing that. If I need verify, much easier to just ask for suggestions of papers and books and do the analysis myself.

I guess this is subject matter dependent, certainly the LLM should be able to cite the papers/books for which it's deriving its critique. if it can't, then you know the advice it was giving is of poorer quality. I do that all the time

I guess there's a whole suite of skills that allow LLM use to be more or less useful. (I dont actually "guess" this, I sort of am pretty sure of it at this point, so it makes me wince when people call for total AI blackouts in education...would be better if they were part of an overall media literacy curriculum since people are going to be exposed to these things whether they think they're little infallible people, or complex systems with lots of caveats)

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#245

Post by mpalmer »

xivzgrev wrote: post #241

I wonder if AI is making us dumber I can have AI pull some analysis - sql query, crunch some numbers and bam, some precise sounding number. But then I question it, and then it says "you are right, I didn't check that" How did I know what to question? By doing the friction work of querying myself, calculating myself, and then getting questions from leadership. I worry about the younger generation. They spit out Claude…

Oh it is, no question. All the people who come to AI with years of expertise are feeling it - what happens to all the people who never get the chance to develop it?

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#246

Post by Matumio »

chunky1994 wrote: post #178
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

But isn't there value to refuting what Claude is saying if it deserves to be refuted? The way I see it, if I was repeatedly getting sophisticated but subtly wrong arguments about my work that require me to understand why said argument is wrong, that's essentially drilling down to specifics of what precisely needs to be true to solve the problems I am aiming to solve. There is enormous value to this precision, isn't t…

Yes but it's annoying to collaborate with a Claude proxy person who thinks to have it all sorted out and who will question everything you say but not really listen, just itching to get back to Claude to confirm or deny what you said.

Compare that to being asked for advice, to explain directly something you know or have done, with the expectation of the person asking to learn something. Like asking why some decision was made in the past, based on what information and context, instead of confidently saying that it was done wrong. Both will eventually get you the same information.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#247

Post by wrsh07 »

teiferer wrote: post #233
meowface wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually didn't. The construct is slightly different. I use LLMs all day every day. I think they're great. I just don't like humans who put their name to what an LLM did.

> You actually didn't. The construct is slightly different. Well I know that I did, so you are wrong with that claim, which sheds a strong (negative) light on other statements of fact that you posted in this discussion. You may disagree with me, or I may even have gotten something wrong, but just claiming I didn't read the article ... sorry man, I thought HN had higher standards than that.

I think they were referring to your fake llmism

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#248

Post by yieldcrv »

NichoPaolucci wrote: post #200
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

Wow, oddly similar thing happened to me. Anecdotally, I was working with a non-developer. She was building a reporting dashboard with Claude. I pointed out that the system she built was using the filesystem to store one line notes about the report, and I said "I would probably tell the agent to use a database for that, but it's not the end of the world if it works". And she replied "Claude said the developer's right,…

non-dev AI psychosis doesn’t bother me

I’ve seen how the market treats vibe coders that werent previoisly engineers. Coinbase’s CEO bragged about PM’s deploying code and everyone now thinks they are totally incompetent anytime a small UX problem occurs.

Engineers with prior experience now check a box, even if they are doing the same thing. Like a Compliance Officer or Cybersecurity professional checks a box

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#249

Post by wgd »

dwedge wrote: post #113
zamadatix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name to believe things as obvious as "a long form news article cramming every AI trope it can fit from start to finish" being AI written. At this point I'm surprised when a news article isn't largely AI written, let alone one using the default tone! I don't even mind it as much as others seem to, it's just turning into more and more…

> Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name I kind of assumed it is, given how it suddenly seemed to start getting namedropped in multiple comment threads. And it's often in response to someone saying content is obviously LLM (with examples) and the shill wedges pangram into the conversation "omg you're right, I didn't believe you but I checked this new product and wow…

Pangram gets brought up a lot because if I read an article and think it's blatant AI slop and want to communicate that fact, a natural impulse is to provide some sort of objective corroboration rather than just asserting that I have superior taste and thus am able to tell.

Also Pangram is basically the only AI detector that's actually put in the work to build an accurate classifier, so if you try to discuss AI writing detection without being specific that you mean Pangram you'll get half a dozen commenters screaming about how awful some of the snake-oil salesmen like GPTZero are.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#250

Post by wrsh07 »

teiferer wrote: post #237
sdthjbvuiiijbb wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "witch hunting" is just dishonest. That term implies a baseless overreaction to a heavily exaggerated or imagined threat. That's hardly what's going on here. Unlike witches, AI slop really is everywhere and it's pretty clear that this article is slop. I find complaining about AI callouts to be itself deeply distasteful although it would take some thought to put my finger on the exact reasons why.

Yes AI slop is prevalent. But the casualties that get thrown under the bus are also real, don't you agree? Is it really worth it to sacrifice those? In the name of the larger good? I'm arguing that we're losing something by doing so, as a community. > I find complaining about AI callouts If they are correct then I'm all for it. But just suspicions turned into statements of fact are not helping anybody. People used em…

The rule of thumb is simple: if most of a user or author's writing is consistently human-generated, then I think we are very happy giving them the benefit of the doubt if one article or snippet flags the actually good ai detector

Unfortunately, many of the largest voices against pangram simply don't like it because it gives their lies less credibility.

I don't mind reading llm writing, indeed, I read more llm writing per day than most. But if you're using LLMs to increase the level of slop (blog posts, comments, tweets, etc) then we should call people out.

It's a colossal waste of everyone's time and attention, and we should be mad about it.

Late edit: if people are actually writing and it's consistently flagged by pangram (this is a statement I have not yet seen validated), the pangram folks are extremely proactive and excited to understand what's going on. This notion that somehow the authors of slop are victims is complete nonsense.

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