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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

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Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#291

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jasonkester wrote: post #61
eddythompson80 wrote: post #8

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

I just can’t understand why this is not a fireable offense. Like, I can see getting a strong warning the first time somebody notices you do this, then if you persist you’d have to be let go. Just like anybody else who is clearly not doing their job. Why would you tolerate this sort of behavior at your company?

I get it’s annoying and I personally hate it but firing someone for it is ridiculous. Are you expecting everyone to rewrite everything from an AI before they share it because that doesn’t sound a good use of company time either.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#292

Post by zmgsabst »

freehorse wrote: post #263
throw310822 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You took all this time to reformulate the question, add the relevant implicit context, and do back and forth BUT you did not have time to reformulate the answer to something human readable that YOU own and can take responsibility for? This does not make sense to me. Nobody said not to consult an llm while formulating an answer. But if you give an answer, own it. Don't throw slop grenades.

…yes?

The amount of text isn’t equal and the benefit is primarily that I can push the LLM into a basin you don’t know the keywords for — something that takes a few minutes to type a couple sentences and me scan the results to make sure they’re roughly on track. And much, much less time than me trying to (re)write a treatise on a topic.

Dropping you an LLM reply is the equivalent of dropping you a link and telling you to learn about the topic — and appropriate in roughly the same circumstances.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#293

Post by rightbyte »

globular-toast wrote: post #222
raincole wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking What? Have you, uh, ridden a bicycle before...?

Thousands of miles on foot and tens of thousands on bicycle. Walking is essentially zero effort, so I don't see how cycling can really be easier, unless you are going downhill. People cycle because it's faster, not because it's easier. People drive because it's easier (many people still drive even if it takes longer than cycling).

There is no way bicycling is not less effort unless it is very hilly or bad roads? Random people have no problem keeping up with marathon runners on bikes.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#294

Post by vidarh »

inigyou wrote: post #260
vidarh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up the Flynn effect. You're right in the first paragraph, but wrong about the direction.

The Flynn effect ended several years ago and started reversing.

Even if that turns out to be true, rather than it starting to hit a ceiling where we can expect it to not consistently go in a single direction it does not alter anything I wrote, which addressed a comparison between 1956 and 2026.

The claim of a "lack of intelligence in modern times" is flat out contradicted by the data. It'd take a lot of regression to get back to 1956 levels.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#295

Post by anonym29 »

I do this often for stupid questions. It's like sending someone a lmgtfy link.

Don't waste my time by asking me a question that:

A.) I know no more about than Claude, and

B.) You could have answered yourself using Claude

All of the questions I respond to this way fulfill both A and B. Responding with "Claude said" is both more polite than most ways to respond to such questions, and a subtle hint to the other person that they should be using the LLM first for those types of questions, rather than coming to me first.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#296

Post by jeremyjh »

dwarhl wrote: post #267

I do it, on purpose: it teaches people to do basic research by themselves, and not hit me with questions they could have gotten with a simple chat with their llm. It's a kind of RTFM for current days.

That isn't the takeaway. The takeaway is that when someone asks for your input you give them Claude's. Why do we have you?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#297

Post by jasonkester »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #291
jasonkester wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can’t understand why this is not a fireable offense. Like, I can see getting a strong warning the first time somebody notices you do this, then if you persist you’d have to be let go. Just like anybody else who is clearly not doing their job. Why would you tolerate this sort of behavior at your company?

I get it’s annoying and I personally hate it but firing someone for it is ridiculous. Are you expecting everyone to rewrite everything from an AI before they share it because that doesn’t sound a good use of company time either.

No. I’m expecting everyone to answer direct questions that they are the only one who can answer by thinking up the answer with their own brain then writing or speaking that.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#298

Post by jspdown »

simmerup wrote: post #136
throw310822 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can also respond ‘I don’t know’ instead of doing the equivalent of responding with the first page of an ‘I feel lucky’ google search

This is a very good analogy. You have to do way more effort to make sure it's correct than if you have asked it yourself with a controlled context. I generally don't want to feel lucky when I ask questions to coworkers.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#299

Post by globular-toast »

hk__2 wrote: post #145
globular-toast wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing machines with motors. Many machines do things that simply are not possible without. A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking, but it enables you to go faster than you can run. Menually operated sewing machines produce stitches that would be infeasible by hand. Motorising any of those machines could be considered lazy, though.

> A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking Of course it is, at equivalent distance.

I did not say anything about distance. I said cycling enables you to go faster than you could possibly travel without it (ie. faster than you can sprint). What you do with that speed is up to you, but most use it to get to places in less time or get further in the same amount of time. The point is it's not about laziness, it's about unlocking new capabilities.

If cycling were just about laziness then you'd see people cycling at walking speed everywhere, which you never see.

Since we're kinda talking about LLMs too, it's interesting to note that while cycling really does enable you to go faster than you can run, LLMs do not enable you to type at 1000 words per minute. LLMs are more like a teleport that only lets you describe your desired destination, you cannot simply enter a coordinate to get exactly where you want to go.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#300

Post by mlrtime »

jasonkester wrote: post #61
eddythompson80 wrote: post #8

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

I just can’t understand why this is not a fireable offense. Like, I can see getting a strong warning the first time somebody notices you do this, then if you persist you’d have to be let go. Just like anybody else who is clearly not doing their job. Why would you tolerate this sort of behavior at your company?

Let me give you a scenario and see if it is in this same fireable offense line:

An Ops person who deals with company code base but is not a SWE in the code base regularly has to work around issues with this software (They are OPs). However they have read access to the source.

In the past, they see a bug and open a jira with how it was found for the dev team, and it may or may not ever get looked at.

Now ops can point claude to the repo and it can most likely [but not always] find the issue.

So this ops person can do most of the work of reproducing the bug and finding the problem/solution but doesn't understand the code. Should they not produce the findings for someone else to read/validate? Should they go back and just open the ticket the old way?

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