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Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

noslopgrenade.com

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Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#261

Post by idle_zealot »

nlawalker wrote: post #128

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.). In this person's communication culture, they are…

> I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference

There's a way to tell if this is actually the case: can you find the members of this culture that like getting slopgrenaded? A communication culture needs both speakers and listeners. I see the speakers, I have yet to see the listeners. I could just be missing them though.

In the case that the listeners are greatly outnumbered by the speakers what you have isn't just a culture you exist outside of, you have a common faux pas. One of many, many rude and inconsiderate acts that are nonetheless common, like sticking gum under a table or catcalling. Something about the environment prompts antisocial behavior, and shame is one way to shift the environment and reduce the behavior. There are almost certainly more effective ways to change the environment and curb the behavior, but establishing a consensus on whether the behavior is acceptable or not for those in the know is an important step.

In case it was unclear I'm on the "it's not acceptable" side. Do share if you've observed someone appreciative of being grenaded in the wild, though.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#262

Post by low_tech_love »

I’m still holding on to my hope that LLMs will destroy verbosity and usher in an era of concise and objective human-written works. Especially in academia. In my research area people write 10-page articles that could easily have been 2 or 3, for no reason other than that 10 page is the publication limit most of the time and if you write less it’s seen as lazy or something. Not to mention 20-page journal articles with humongous literature reviews that everyone skips, and so many meaningless diagrams and sections. I still hope that LLMs will make people so tired of reading slop that they’ll beg you to please submit shorter articles.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#263

Post by andrei_says_ »

nlawalker wrote: post #128

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.). In this person's communication culture, they are…

“ I don't know, but here's my attempt to help.”

“I don’t know” would be so much more productive and respectful than “here, this may be useful or completely useless, figure it out on your own time. Took me 30 seconds to produce…”

A bit asymmetrical by time, signal to noise, and frankly, bs metrics.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#264

Post by low_tech_love »

bluGill wrote: post #72
SwiftyBug wrote: post #8

> Nobody writes essays in Slack I 100% write long texts in Slack. I always try to provide as much context as possible when reaching out to someone with a question or request.

Do you start every response off with "that is a great question"? I don't know any human who does. "that is a great question" is reserved either for really hard questions, or sarcasm. The majority of questions are not great, they are just things the asker needs a simple answer.

And worse, you use it so much that when the question is actually great, you can’t convey that convincingly anymore.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#265

Post by ethbr1 »

low_tech_love wrote: post #250
nlawalker wrote: post #128

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.). In this person's communication culture, they are…

I think you’re wrong in one thing: Reading through meaningless walls of text takes time and effort that I’m not willing to waste. So it’s not just accepting a different culture; it’s not “free”. Reading AI grenades is really stressful (at least for me).

This. The central issue is the bait and switch.

The bait: here is a ton of text

The historical implication: because there is a lot of it, I put a lot of thought and effort into writing it

The new normal: there is ZERO signal about the magnitude of human thought and effort that went into something on the basis of its length

... and what really pisses people off about that: when AIstas intentionally abuse that social contract to their benefit.

E.g. people who pass AI content off as their own, people who don't read their own genai before pasting to you, everyone on LinkedIn

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#266

Post by raincole »

nlawalker wrote: post #128

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.). In this person's communication culture, they are…

> In this person's communication culture

And it's a bad culture. Yes, there are good and bad cultures. Cultural relativism has its limitations.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#267

Post by mlinhares »

nlawalker wrote: post #128

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.). In this person's communication culture, they are…

I usually go the other way, sometimes ignoring the wall of text completely or just exiting the conversation. I find it incredibly distasteful when people do this (i also have access to all the same tools), specially because its a lazy response where they copy the conversation, paste it at the tool and just vomit the response back.

Its also usually the dickhead nobody likes that does it as well.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#269

Post by AlienRobot »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #259

AI conversations are like dreams: everyone has one they like and wants to share it with others ... but no on gives a crap about your dream/chat session, because it was uniquely appealing to you , and not them. Don't bore your co-workers (or others) with descriptions of your dreams, and don't throw a computer's dreams (AI chat logs) at them either.

I was writing a comment after some code I wrote and Copilot autocompleted saying "This is hacky, but..."

I thought it was funny so I put a comment above saying "This is what Copilot said about my code:" and it autocompleted a line after it saying "Copilot was correct, but..."

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