The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by fapjacks » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

oniony wrote: post #108

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…

"I also hear a lot more questioning people in their domains and challenging opinions, then hearing what I can only imagine are fragmented pieces of conversations they had with an LLM thinking through some argument. Then there’s silence when you discuss shortcomings, then they come back later with their memorized fragments of what you said, combined with memorized fragments of the LLM response to the argument." We hir…

The worst thing about AI is that it's camouflage for stupid people. And it often gets combined with utter confidence in some position because they're too stupid to know the machine is confidently wrong.

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

#272

Post by simianwords » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

kaffekaka wrote: post #133

simianwords wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is amazing and it will democratise information. A lot of times the concept ends up being simple with a lot of jargon exists as a gatekeeping method. Well of course the incumbents wouldn't like that rando from outside gets to understand and speak about things they worked on for many years. Sure he doesn't get it right 100% but he's in the correct direction.

Partially true, but only partially. It also makes people believe they understand more than they do, because every answer comes so easily to them. But the LLMs are easily steered and tend to agree with what you want them to say.

> also makes people believe they understand more than they do, because every answer comes so easily to them. But the LLMs are easily steered and tend to agree with what you want them to say.

Well agree to disagree but my load bearing claim is that a lot of "effort" that the original people put are mostly useless. If you can get information without having to do that effort, you haven't lost anything. For example an archivist finds an 18th century spoon or something and he went through a lot of bureaucratic hoops and logistics to get it. After getting hold of the spoon, you and him are on the same epistemic level because the logistics added ~0 to the truth.

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

#273

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #98

fidotron wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics, and to a large degree pure mathematics, has attracted a critical mass of the personality type that needs to feel like the smartest person in the room in any given situation. It has given them a slightly notorious reputation in academia.

From a one-time physics grad student, I do think there advantages to being ... like this. The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's goi…

    > we treat understanding new systems as something approachable

And, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers don't?

    > from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me.

Humblebrag alert! This has little to do with being a physics grad student, and much more to do with your motivation.

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

#274

Post by chunky1994 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #268

chunky1994 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to you in the context of the GP. > The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it…

> You only responded to - * I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.* > Your response claimed that I am denying the validity of your experience, when I made no such statement. But it is exactly what you are doing in the exact quote of yours you even put there. I am being nice, but it's quite c…

I'm being nice too and all I've been trying to do in this thread is point at a distinction between GP's point and yours which you seem unwilling to engage with.

It is valuable to ask questions about why things are the way they are in order to understand the fundamentals of it vs we should change these things because I am 'smarter than you' and I don't understand why things are done this way (which I called dumb, and not smart). Perhaps the issue is that these two behaviours are easily confused.

I had to write the long comment to illustrate this difference. I'm saying in mine and GP's definition doing what you are suggesting people usually do is not smart, its dumb, and that is not what GP or I are suggesting people do.

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

#275

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

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,…

>I'm not against fact checking, but it absolutely felt like a punch in the gut coming from a non-dev. There was no "trust" there.

Maybe I'm just cynical but I don't think I ever see that much trust for anyone's opinion or expertise; devs think managers don't know what they're doing, managers think devs don't, people on HN think lawyers are wrong when they state their legal opinion, devs think other devs are wrong about their areas of expertise even though they have no reason to think that, hell I've worked with people who basically lie for some reason about technical issues that they have no expertise in, in order to get some benefit that is unclear to me. I've also seen people of great technical expertise gaslight industries in order to derive very clear benefits for their employers, so I'm not sure why there should be trust.

I'm sure that various AI agents will maybe add another interesting wrinkle to this, but I sort of feel like you must have had a nice life up until AI if that was feeling like a gut punch.

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

#276

Post by chunky1994 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

Matumio wrote: post #246

chunky1994 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Yes it is annoying, however I find that it gives me a much better grasp on the things I am explaining to a "proxy" Claude person. Basically, I would never have stumbled upon the arguments that I'm being presented with as I would never have prompted Claude in the specific way that a proxy Claude person would.

I find a lot of value in understanding how they have misunderstood things and clarifying those concepts.

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

#277

Post by xnx » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

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…

Probably more to it, but that's a pretty weak example. There are a lot of reasons text files might be better suited storing data vs. the overhead of a database.

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

#278

Post by fidotron » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

chunky1994 wrote: post #274

fidotron wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only responded to - * I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.* > Your response claimed that I am denying the validity of your experience, when I made no such statement. But it is exactly what you are doing in the exact quote of yours you even put there. I am being nice, but it's quite c…

I'm being nice too and all I've been trying to do in this thread is point at a distinction between GP's point and yours which you seem unwilling to engage with. It is valuable to ask questions about why things are the way they are in order to understand the fundamentals of it vs we should change these things because I am 'smarter than you' and I don't understand why things are done this way (which I called dumb, and…

> It is valuable to ask questions about why things are the way they are in order to understand the fundamentals of it vs we should change these things because I am 'smarter than you' and I don't understand why things are done this way (which I called dumb, and not smart).

But you expressed doubt of stated (and frankly not even remotely subjective) experience, so if we dropped you in an organisation your immediate response to anything you don't understand is "That doesn't match my mental model, so I doubt it actually happened", followed by either everyone giving up or you insisting everyone persuade you of absolutely every last detail of everything. It's enormously tedious, and the reason it comes across as arrogant is the demands put on everyone else to explain everything to you because you clearly see everyone else as incapable of the same level of insights that you are, all the while you are telling people what they experience is them being mistaken.

Just look at the way you questioned whether or not I could tell if someone is actually smart or not. It's just plain insulting. And it's not just me, it's everyone that has this same experience which forms the basis of the stereotype.

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

#279

Post by _1 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

tty456 wrote: post #236

varjag wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the arrogance when barging into unfamiliar domain that was previously reserved mainly to physics grads seems to have spread everywhere. I also had people opining on my expert area via their LLMs and the problem is they can't even ask the model the right question, let alone evaluate the nuance of their answer.

Hilarious. Do they preface the conversation with "Well, Claude said..."?

With my younger coworkers it's their defence when I push back on them.

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

#280

Post by neutronicus » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #273

neutronicus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a one-time physics grad student, I do think there advantages to being ... like this. The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's goi…

> we treat understanding new systems as something approachable And, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers don't? > from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me. Humblebrag alert! This has li…

I guess all I'm doing here is arguing that a little hubris can help a person avoid being timid, and far be it from me to say that computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers have not been imbued with any hubris by their educations.