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If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

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Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#31

Post by Gigachad »

nonethewiser wrote: post #24
treesknees wrote: post #22

This exactly reflects my feelings lately. I have a specific coworker who has gone somewhat overboard - every single code review, answer to any question on email or Teams, every new story, even their personal opinions during a design or ideas meeting, are all direct AI output with no massaging or human touch or review. They're working on planning out an upcoming project, and I just get verbose and long documents to re…

Instinctively I think the move is to ignore it. I guess that would look different in different contexts. Obviously you have to communicate with your coworkers. But I think the solution has to essential be: "Im not going to read that."

Either that, or call them / walk up to their desk and pick a point from the wall of text and ask them to explain what they mean by it. Then watch them turn red as they have no idea what the message they sent to you means.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#32

Post by HKH2 »

esikich wrote: post #5
sublinear wrote: post #2

I think the real problem is that AI quality falls short of the wild promises. Labeling what is "AI" would be like highlighting in an email what I'm obligated to say by HR, my boss, etc. It doesn't make anything less boneheaded. Human effort was already low before AI and now it's even lower. Garbage in, garbage out.

I think this is because a lot of people think more is more. Wow look at all the detail and bullet points! No one on the receiving end actually wants that though. When I use AI to write, it's to boil it down to the minimum bits needed. I wish more people would use it that way.

Nah on the receiving end an AI makes a summary of it.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#33

Post by skydhash »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #10
esikich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is because a lot of people think more is more. Wow look at all the detail and bullet points! No one on the receiving end actually wants that though. When I use AI to write, it's to boil it down to the minimum bits needed. I wish more people would use it that way.

It's the empty calories of literature. More would be more if there actually was more but AI writing is making it bigger without adding anything actually more. It inserts loads of fluff and repetition that takes longer to read but doesn't exchange more information or ideas.

Lossy expansion of information.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#34

Post by niuzeta »

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at.

This single headline perfectly captures what I have been thinking. It's not that I reject AI content, but it takes _effort_ to review and weed out any mistakes. When your thoughtful reviews that take an hour(because the PR is typically large, and you want to be _right_ when you're pointing out a hallucination) gets an AI-generated response with AI-generated amendments, It doesn't feel _nice_. I feel dismissed and it has continuously trained me to subconsciously avoid his PRs. After all, the team is fully onboarded with AI, so it's not like there is a lack of PRs to review.

It looks like the sentiment isn't just isolated for me.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#35

Post by edot »

Groxx wrote: post #27
paytonjjones wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created the surveillance state to fight the surveillance state lol Edit: it's a joke people

I grant the lol-concept, but citizens monitoring their government is extremely different from governments monitoring their citizens.

Citizens monitoring their government is literally THE foundation of democracy (ok, maybe voting comes before it, but then you have to monitor who you voted for to see if they’re doing what you voted for).

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#36

Post by tremon »

Groxx wrote: post #27
paytonjjones wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created the surveillance state to fight the surveillance state lol Edit: it's a joke people

I grant the lol-concept, but citizens monitoring their government is extremely different from governments monitoring their citizens.

Indeed. One is expected in a healthy democracy, the other is essential for a totalitarian state.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#37

Post by mapontosevenths »

TFNA wrote: post #12
sshine wrote: post #3

> when [sending AI generated content to teammates], I take care to clearly label what is AI generated Reading AI-generated text for hours every day, it's obvious to me. I take care to make my messages easily readable. I don't care if they're AI-made, as long as they're short. I'm a very verbose person, and if I don't make an effort at being concise, I'm just as annoying as the average AI. Being flooded with AI text e…

Brevity is the big disaster of human-generated text since the rise of the phone as default device and the appearance of Twitter. To discuss matters with sufficient depth and nuance, one often has to write a few solid paragraphs. If people are now wincing at longform text because they automatically assume it was LLM-generated, then that bodes ill.

To add to this, there seems to be an inability to process metaphor and simile in the younger generations. Likely as a result of the same deficit. They've become very literal, and often mistake anything that's well written for AI slop.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#38

Post by imoverclocked »

Gigachad wrote: post #31
nonethewiser wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instinctively I think the move is to ignore it. I guess that would look different in different contexts. Obviously you have to communicate with your coworkers. But I think the solution has to essential be: "Im not going to read that."

Either that, or call them / walk up to their desk and pick a point from the wall of text and ask them to explain what they mean by it. Then watch them turn red as they have no idea what the message they sent to you means.

This feels like a BOFH response but I'm strangely not opposed to it; If you generate something, you should own it ... regardless of what tool you used to generate it.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#39

Post by jmyeet »

Obligatory Silicon Valley reference [1].

So this post is talking about at work but I think the principle goes well beyond that. Think of all the AI chatbots you have to deal with to get through to customer service at a company. Or get through ATS systems in hiring. If it isn't already the case, this will probably replace or supplement TAs marking assignments.

The problem is that AI makes these interactions too cheap for the party that already has disproportionate power. The cost for them to add another layer, another hurdle, another set of questions, etc is essentially zero. Yet everyone who wants to get through that system has to pay in a human cost.

I just thought of another good example. In the pandemic auditions in Hollywood went virtual for obvious reasons. But this never went away. Now, you might say it's convenient to not have to spend hours driving to Burbank for a 5 minute audition but anecdotally the taped audition seems to be much more work. It requires a lot of prep and more tech for good sound and audio. There are people who help people tape auditions, which has really just added another layer. Plus, instead of only locals, anyone anywhere can submit an audition so where you might've had 30 people previously, now you have 150.

And what happens to those profesionally-produced auditions? They get submitted and the casting director might pick 5 randomly to even look at. If there isn't already, there will also be an AI system that filters those auditions.

At least previously you got 5 minutes of actual time from a casting director, the actual director, etc. So it's actually way more inefficient for you now. Plus, if you're lucky enough to be looked at and they like you, you probably have to go for an in-person audition anyway so what's happened here? You've just added another layer and way more work.

Companies think they're "winning" here by saving labor but I think that's short-sighted. What'll end up happening is AI agents will rise to help people on the other side of that. You can think of using AI to cheat on school assignments as an example of that.

So what will we end up with? AI agents inundating AI systems, which just adds a whole bunch of inefficiency.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1gFSENorEY

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