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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#181

Post by kccqzy »

rororournouh wrote: post #142
mediaman wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it likely performed well in A/B preference tests with chat users. I've noticed Claude does far fewer listicles than ChatGPT. I suspect that they don't blindly follow supervised learning feedback from chats as much as ChatGPT. I get Apple vs Google design approach from those two companies, in that Apple tends not to obsess over interaction data, instead using design principles, while Google just tests everythi…

I’m given to understand that Anthropic uses something called Constitutional AI, where there is a central document of desirable and undesirable qualities (as well as reinforcement learning) whereas OpenAI relies more heavily on direct human feedback and rating with human trainers evaluating responses and the model conforming to those preferences. I also much prefer the output of Claude at present.

Yeah and for much of the HN crowd, we aspire to have better tastes than the average. So if the supervised learning uses average human trainers it will most likely be seen as having poor taste for much of HN.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#182

Post by alexanderchr »

fallinditch wrote: post #33

Increasingly, there is a disconnect between established operational/corporate systems and the new AI-enhanced powers of individual workers. The over-production of documents is just one symptom. It's clear that organizations are struggling to successfully evolve in the era of worker 'superpowers'. Probably because change is hard! Perhaps this is indicative of a failure of imagination as much as anything? The AI era is…

Case in point.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#183

Post by eestrada »

randusername wrote: post #74

> The cost of producing a document has fallen to nearly zero; the cost of reading one has not, and is in fact rising, because the reader must now sift the synthetic context for whatever the document was originally about. This resonates. It's a spectacular full-reversal kind of tragedy because it used to be asymmetric the other way . Author puts in 10 effort points compiling valuable information and reader puts in 1 e…

There was a hidden benefit in the old way: it avoided people making effort for things that weren't important. It took effort to make signal cut through noise. When it was low effort, it was obvious it was just noise and could easily be ignored.

Now low effort noise can masquerade as high effort signal, drowning out the signal for things that actually matter.

Direct relationships of trust matter more than ever now. You can't just trust that if something looks high effort that it actually is. You need to know the person producing it and know how they approach work and how they treat you personally. Do they cut corners all the time or only for reasons they clearly communicate? Do they value high quality work? Do they respect your time?

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#184

Post by supertrope »

awakeasleep wrote: post #72
Swizec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Minimum word lengths are the greatest dis-service high school and college have ever done to future communication skills. It takes years for people to unlearn this in the workplace. Max word counts only please. Especially now with AI making it so easy to produce fluff with no signal.

Minimum word lengths were really a terrible idea and I wonder what arguments were used to get all the teachers to buy into that system.

Journalists and writers are often given a deadline and a target length. "Give me 500 words of copy by the end of tomorrow." The editor and publisher of a magazine need to get all words and graphics ready by a strict and regular deadline.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#185

Post by JohnMakin »

The “not helping experts” thing is a bit myopic. Everyone, no matter what a rockstar you are, has weak areas or areas of tedium that can be automated. For me, and it’s hindered me in my career in the past, was organizing a lot of tasks at once, communicating changes effectively across orgs (eg through jira), documentation, ticket management - this is a non concern now and the efficiency gain there has been incredible. The core things I do well, yea, it doesnt help a ton with other than can type way faster than I can (which is still really good).

If I’m having it do stuff I’m unfamiliar with, it does tend to do better than I would or steer me at least in a direction I can be more informed about making decisions.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#186

Post by Merad »

danaw wrote: post #129

i have a strong suspicion that the most productive software teams that leverage llms to build quality software will use it for the following: - intelligent autocomplete: the "OG" llm use for most developers where the generated code is just an extension of your active thought process. where you maintain the context of the code being worked on, rather than outsourcing your thinking to the llm - brainstorming: llms can…

> intelligent autocomplete

I'm curious how much value others are finding in this. Personally I turned it off about a year ago and went back to traditional (jetbrains) IDE autocomplete. In my experience the AI suggestions would predict exactly what I wanted < 1% of the time, were useful perhaps 10% of the time, and otherwise were simply wrong and annoying. Standard IDE features allowing me to quickly search and/or browse methods, variables, etc. are far more useful for translating my thoughts into code (i.e. minimizing typing).

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#187

Post by xoxxala »

chao- wrote: post #135
Swizec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Minimum word lengths are the greatest dis-service high school and college have ever done to future communication skills. It takes years for people to unlearn this in the workplace. Max word counts only please. Especially now with AI making it so easy to produce fluff with no signal.

I write the words that I hear in my head, as though I am speaking. With the exception of timed, in-class essays, I always turned in papers far in excess of any minimum during high school. In college, I took a constructive writing course because I thought "Hey, easy A!" After the second or third week, the professor told me that, while the class had a word minimum, I would also be given a separate word maximum . She sa…

I design boardgames and it's easy to write a lot of rules. It's more difficult to write concise rules. Most of my time is spent editing rules to their absolute minimum.

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter." - Blaise Pascal

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#188

Post by chao- »

lynguist wrote: post #161
chao- wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write the words that I hear in my head, as though I am speaking. With the exception of timed, in-class essays, I always turned in papers far in excess of any minimum during high school. In college, I took a constructive writing course because I thought "Hey, easy A!" After the second or third week, the professor told me that, while the class had a word minimum, I would also be given a separate word maximum . She sa…

But how is your writing fast enough that you don’t pause and drown the hearing in your head?

When writing on paper, either I will pause thinking enough, or will sometimes lose where a thought was going. I am much faster at typing than writing, so I end up with more, then edit/delete afterwards (if I feel like writing well). I am much worse at writing long-form thoughts than I was back in college, now that 99% of what I do is type.

An odd tradeoff of my verbal-based writing seems to be that I am a fairly slow reader. I read aloud in my head, albeit a bit faster than I could speak, but I still hear the words as an internal monologue.

When discussing this a few times with friends, I've learned how different everyone's experiences are when bridging thoughts=>speaking, thoughts=>writing, thoughts=>typing, and text=>thoughts (or even text=>understanding).

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#190

Post by chao- »

Swizec wrote: post #158
chao- wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write the words that I hear in my head, as though I am speaking. With the exception of timed, in-class essays, I always turned in papers far in excess of any minimum during high school. In college, I took a constructive writing course because I thought "Hey, easy A!" After the second or third week, the professor told me that, while the class had a word minimum, I would also be given a separate word maximum . She sa…

I write a lot and have on several occasions tried dictation as an initial draft authoring step. It was trash every time. Good for thinking through a concept but unsalvageable in the edit phase. Easier to throw away and rewrite now that you know what to say. Nowadays I like conversation as an ideating step. Talk to a bunch of people, try to explain yourself until they get it, see what questions they ask. Sometimes in…

Hmm... when I really care about the quality of something, I basically write what I think/speak, then try to edit it down by half. I don't find it unsalvageable, but the editing does require an order of magnitude more time than the initial draft of thoughts vomited into the keyboard.
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