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AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

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Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#11

Post by theideaofcoffee »

The problem with most corporate work that these managerial idiots want replaced with AI is that is all so utterly useless. Reports written that no one will ever read, presentations made for the sake of the busy-ness of "making a deck", notes and minutes of meetings that should never have taken place in the first place. Summaries written by AI of longer-form work that are then shoved into AI to make sense of the AI-written summary.

I like the quote in the middle of the article: "creating a mentally lazy, slow-thinking society that will become wholly dependant [sic] upon outside forces". I believe that orgs that fall back on the AI lie, who insist on schlepping slop from one side to the other, will be devoured by orgs that see through the noise.

It's like code. The most bug-free code are those lines that are never written. The most productive workplace is the one that never bothers with that BS in the first place. But, promotions and titles and egos are on the line so...

AI in its current form, like the swirling vortex of corporate bilge that people are forced to swim through day after day after day to, can't die fast enough.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#12

Post by jjgreen »

donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

Ship it!

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#13

Post by matheusmoreira »

donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

> He spent most of his day explaining why this shouldn't be merged.

"Explain to me in detail exactly how and why this works, or I'm not merging."

This should suffice as a response to any code the developer did not actively think about before submitting, AI generated or not.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#15

Post by Terr_ »

theideaofcoffee wrote: post #11

The problem with most corporate work that these managerial idiots want replaced with AI is that is all so utterly useless. Reports written that no one will ever read, presentations made for the sake of the busy-ness of "making a deck", notes and minutes of meetings that should never have taken place in the first place. Summaries written by AI of longer-form work that are then shoved into AI to make sense of the AI-wr…

> Summaries written by AI of longer-form work that are then shoved into AI to make sense of the AI-written summary.

Also the problem where someone has bullet-points, they fluff them up in an LLM, send the prose, and then the receiver tries to use an LLM to summarize it back down to bullet-points.

I may be over-optimistic in predicting that eventually everyone involved will rage-flip the metaphorical table, and start demanding/sending the short version all the time, since there's no longer anything to be gained by prettying it up.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#16

Post by mholm »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #13
donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

> He spent most of his day explaining why this shouldn't be merged. "Explain to me in detail exactly how and why this works, or I'm not merging." This should suffice as a response to any code the developer did not actively think about before submitting, AI generated or not.

"You're absolutely right— This code works by [...]"

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#17

Post by givemeethekeys »

donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

The nephew has no programming knowledge.

He wants to build a website that will turn him into a bazillionaire.

He asks AI how to solve problem X.

AI provides direction, but he doesn't quite know how to ask the right questions.

Still, the AI manages to give him a 70% solution.

He will go to his grave before he learns enough programming to do the remaining 30% himself, or, understand the first 70%.

Delegating to AI isn't the same as delegating to a human. If you mistrust the human, you can find another one. If you mistrust the AI, there aren't many others to turn to, and each comes with an uncomfortable learning curve.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#18

Post by oblio »

donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/26/reading-code-is-li...

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... (read the bold text in the middle of the article)

These articles are 25 years old.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#20

Post by mavamaarten »

theideaofcoffee wrote: post #11

The problem with most corporate work that these managerial idiots want replaced with AI is that is all so utterly useless. Reports written that no one will ever read, presentations made for the sake of the busy-ness of "making a deck", notes and minutes of meetings that should never have taken place in the first place. Summaries written by AI of longer-form work that are then shoved into AI to make sense of the AI-wr…

So true. We used to appoint someone in the group to take notes. These notes were always correct, to the point, short and easy to read. Now our manager(s) are heavily experimenting with recording all meetings and desperately trying to produce useful reports using all sorts of AI tools. The output is always lengthy and makes the manager super happy. Look, amazing reports! But on closer inspection they're consistently incomplete one way or another, sometimes confidently incorrect and full of happy corpo mumbo jumbo. More slop to wade through, when looking for factual information later on.

Our manager is so happy to report that he's using AI for everything. Even in cases where I think completeness and correctness is important. I honestly think it's scary how quickly that desire for correctness is gone and replaced with "haha this is cool tech".

Us devs are much more reluctant. We don't want to fall behind, but in the end when it comes to correctness and accountability, we're the ones responsible. So I won't brainlessly dump my work into an LLM and take its word for granted.

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