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Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

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Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#331

Post by pibaker »

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.

It might be a difference in culture, but I definitely remember people saying you should say stuffs like that to encourage others to ask more questions. The rationale is if you are in a more powerful or senior position, like a college professor vs a student, other may be not feel comfortable asking questions because they fear appearing dumb or inappropriate and it hampers communication.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#332

Post by akst »

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 get what you're saying here but I do think an actual dreams are at least a bit more interesting then AI output.

But I do think such a comparison (to emphasis how unhelpful sharing tailored AI text with others is) would be useful.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#333

Post by crimsontech »

misswaterfairy wrote: post #14

> Use AI to make things clearer, not longer. Let it sharpen your thinking, not replace it. If someone sends me an AI generated email, chat message, or message substantially influenced by AI[1], one of two not mutually exclusive things will happen: 1. I ask them not to use AI as I want to hear from a human colleague about their human thoughts, not a robot; 2. The message gets deleted. I try as best I can to teach and…

I usually respond with AI;DR so they don’t expect a response.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#334

Post by andrewljohnson »

A lot of organizations right now are dealing with the "Claude says..." problem.

It's not that you should never include any AI generated text in a conversation with other engineers, but you mostly shouldn't.

AI is a tool to help you understand/debug/review yourself, but you shouldn't be conferring authority to your AI (because it doesn't understand anything and is often wrong in the text it spews), and you shouldn't be running an AI for other people, they should run it themselves.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#335

Post by andrewljohnson »

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…

This sounds like a broken culture to me. Teams shouldn't tolerate it... it is both harmful and contagious.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#336

Post by ineedasername »

This is unfair to those of us who’ve been writing walls of text to simple questions all our lives. I demand AI be the ones who start writing shorter things. Then I can go back to people ignoring my accidental wall building— accident because lots of times you’re a page in still going on things you see as relevant and— well, you see how things can get away from a person. But I want people to ignore me for what I write, not for thinking i don’t have anything worth ignoring in the first place.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#337

Post by ineedasername »

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, they are saying

Wittgenstein termed precisely this sort of practice a “language game”.

With the rest of his work (Philosophical Investigations in particular) it is a hugely useful lens through which to view and significantly better understand the use and function of language in all its forms.

Given that language is becoming a ubiquitous UI and UX and glue for just about everything, I highly recommend it, and as a work of philosophy it is much more accessible to laypeople not of the field than some other important works in the area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#339

Post by wisty »

signatoremo wrote: post #311
SoftTalker wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer just "I don't know." I can ask Claude on my own.

No. "I don't know" may be interpreted as "I don't care". Adding additional info may be a way to say "I do care". Similar to sometimes we say "I don't know, but I googled it, and I got this". Also, LLM's answers can be good if the prompts are good, so can still be helpful.

Turning up to a potluck with no food says "I don't care".

Turning up to a potluck with a bag of garbage you got for free in the dumpster on the way says "I don't care, and I'm so dumb I think you're too dumb to know this is trash".

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