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Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

blog.yaelwrites.com

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Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#141

Post by zem »

Aurornis wrote: post #11

The subtitle is: > I already did. They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article. This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this. For the first case, the s…

I fear that it's more insidious than that - that the questions the OP is asking are already things that the other person has decided (consciously or otherwise) that they no longer bother thinking about themselves and just outsource the effort to the nearest LLM

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#142

Post by zem »

Animats wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #11

The subtitle is: > I already did. They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article. This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this. For the first case, the s…

When I post a technical question in Forums, I usually add something like "Tried Copilot, got useless answer ...". The trouble with asking an LLM is that there are a huge number of people (this predates LLMs) who post answers on forums along the lines of "turn it off and turn it on again" LLMs pick that up as the consensus solution.

I ran into a pretty funny instance just yesterday - I was upgrading my windows partition to windows 11 and I asked claude if there was any chance it could corrupt my linux partition in the process. claude confidently said that yes there was a known failure mode where if the recovery partition was not large enough for windows 11 it would silently resize it, damaging the neighbouring partition. it even told me what system command it used to do so.

I googled the command and when the gemini prompt came up I said that claude had told me it might be run during the upgrade and damage my linux partition. gemini said "there is no such argument to that program, the other AI is hallucinating, and here is the knowledge base article that probably caused it to go wrong", which was actually pretty impressive, and amusing in the way it used both the term "hallucinating" and the phrase "the other AI".

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#143

Post by dwaltrip »

yaelwrites wrote: post #111
dwaltrip wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first paragraph screamed AI to me. I'll try to dissect each bit, see below. It's hard to put it into words... --- Send an e-mail + pick up the phone . Mismatched analog. First one is outgoing, second is incoming. Yes, I know you can pick up "to make a call". In which case, then we have the classic LLM pattern of eliding details that matter to make it sound "smooth" (like blended cardboard smooth, glug glug). some…

Wrong, those were all me. (I just checked the draft.) The only part I tweaked was the conclusion, plus I broke up a few paragraphs that were too long. I often leave out details and specifics or make things purposely vague because I am writing about real people.

Heh, fair enough! It seems you may have been infected with the LLM aesthetic :)

Increasingly common these days... I've caught myself more than a few times.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#144

Post by scotty79 »

> I already did.

It's not about what you did or didn't do. It's about not being competent enough to help you and directing you to the more competent available entity. If it couldn't help you I won't be able either. Next time you lead with the information that you already asked the best available paid LLM, if you don't want to be directed there. Or explain your problem to a rubber duck instead because I won't be any more helpful.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#145

Post by [deleted] »

nullc wrote: post #140
yaelwrites wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, those were all me. (I just checked the draft.) The only part I tweaked was the conclusion, plus I broke up a few paragraphs that were too long. I often leave out details and specifics or make things purposely vague because I am writing about real people.

I feel sorry for your future writing prospects, because it looked like AI to me too: I insta-slop-back-buttoned on "so I scheduled one with someone senior enough to have real scar tissue, the kind you only get from watching a decision go sideways in a boardroom." Thanks for the the correction-- often when people say they weren't using AI they are very clearly lying, so it's hard to get useful corrections on this poin…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#146

Post by yaelwrites »

dwaltrip wrote: post #143
yaelwrites wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, those were all me. (I just checked the draft.) The only part I tweaked was the conclusion, plus I broke up a few paragraphs that were too long. I often leave out details and specifics or make things purposely vague because I am writing about real people.

Heh, fair enough! It seems you may have been infected with the LLM aesthetic :) Increasingly common these days... I've caught myself more than a few times.

Heh, no problem. I will say the rule of three is something I've been taught over and over again... in speaking training, in a class I took on fundraising, and most recently in a book I read. (See, I just did it again!) Book was by Mehdi Hasan.

I also recently reread a blog post I wrote a decade ago, and it had the "It's not X, it's Y" pattern over and over again.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#147

Post by yaelwrites »

nullc wrote: post #140
yaelwrites wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, those were all me. (I just checked the draft.) The only part I tweaked was the conclusion, plus I broke up a few paragraphs that were too long. I often leave out details and specifics or make things purposely vague because I am writing about real people.

I feel sorry for your future writing prospects, because it looked like AI to me too: I insta-slop-back-buttoned on "so I scheduled one with someone senior enough to have real scar tissue, the kind you only get from watching a decision go sideways in a boardroom." Thanks for the the correction-- often when people say they weren't using AI they are very clearly lying, so it's hard to get useful corrections on this poin…

Oh, no problem! But now I am thinking I may need to rethink using AI for light editing. I've gotten in the habit of that because I don't have a human editor for my blog, and I like getting that extra polish sometimes, but it's probably not worth it if it's going to make people not want to read.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#148

Post by al_borland »

jeffnash wrote: post #108
Aurornis wrote: post #11

The subtitle is: > I already did. They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article. This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this. For the first case, the s…

I agree 100%. I've been the resident 'tech guy' among my friends and family for as long as I can remember, and I thought that LLMs would be the definite end to all 'blurry picture of computer screen captioned with "what should I do"' texts, yet that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, LLMs made it worse, as it actually made me seem more knowledgeable; I would be the one asking AI on their behalf and responding with…

> encouraging them to ask me more.

This part is kind of on you. Editing before sending, or choosing which parts of the response to copy, is an important step.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#149

Post by al_borland »

perching_aix wrote: post #40

> I already did. Well the people who keep bugging me verifiably do not, so that's tough. On the off chance they do, they either spectacularly self-sabotage, or treat the response like they do a typical message box popup. So I'll be asked to essentially read the same thing out aloud, only for them to go "ok-ok". It's beyond insulting. I'll 100% keep telling people to ask an LLM when I suspect this shit. They do NOT re…

Even if they did ask the LLM, they might be bad at it, just like some people were bad at Google.

I used to stick people in front of a computer during interviews to see if they could do some basic stuff for an entry level sys admin position. If they wanted to use Google to look something up, that was fine. There were people who could not form a search query at all. It was painful to watch. Some of them would end up finding a blog post that had 4 of the 5 answers on it, but didn’t recognize what they were looking at, so they’d go back and keep looking. This was also painful. One guy wouldn’t even make an attempt and just left. I assume these types of people would also fail at asking an LLM.

Sometimes knowing the key words to use in the question matter a lot. Before LLMs, I would sometimes do some searches to try and figure out the correct term to search for, so that I could then make a proper search for what I needed. If someone is trying to fill in too many gaps in knowledge, this can be a real problem. LLMs can jump these gaps better, but still aren’t perfect.

I’ll have people come to me, not because they have a low opinion of me, but because they assume I know more of those words that they don’t know.

There have been several cases where people don’t want to bother me and they have spent hours calling actual support lines, searching online, trying random stuff, and then I answer it in 30 seconds… like the plumber that knows which pipe to hit.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#150

Post by nullc »

yaelwrites wrote: post #147
nullc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel sorry for your future writing prospects, because it looked like AI to me too: I insta-slop-back-buttoned on "so I scheduled one with someone senior enough to have real scar tissue, the kind you only get from watching a decision go sideways in a boardroom." Thanks for the the correction-- often when people say they weren't using AI they are very clearly lying, so it's hard to get useful corrections on this poin…

Oh, no problem! But now I am thinking I may need to rethink using AI for light editing. I've gotten in the habit of that because I don't have a human editor for my blog, and I like getting that extra polish sometimes, but it's probably not worth it if it's going to make people not want to read.

You can do a thing where you have it point out spelling and grammar errors or point out awkward parts without suggesting changes. But take care that you don't let it apply them as it may make other changes silently (especially if you're not running in an agentic harness with patch tools).
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