341–350 of 453 posts
> 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.
Came here to say this as well. I've written and read full human-written essays on slack before AI. With that said, I don't disagree with the article. Don't use more word when few work.
But this should not be an excuse applicable to an LLM.
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I'd prefer just "I don't know." I can ask Claude on my own.
Some years ago, answering "just google it!" was considered rude in some forums. It was asumed that some people didn't have enough googlefu, so googling for them was considered a good help. Also, almost all StackOverflow could be boiled down to a "RTFM" and close the questions. Today there might be people who can't extract enough juice from LLMs, so it is not entirely useless to say "I was able to extract this info fr…
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Except 99% of the time they are asking it's because they explicitly need a real opinion or the info couldn't be found via LLMs. But instead of giving an "I don't know", they paste back an wall of text with an incorrect answer that the sender hasn't even read or verified to be true. At least with "I don't know" the asker can move on to someone who might know faster.
It reminds me of how LLM hallucination is attributed to "I don't know" being underrepresented in training data, and it being a better strategy to guess on evaluations rather than admit not knowing. Different reward function, but the same behaviour emerges.
The idea is that you generate fake llm transcripts using your classical training data. E.g. look at some training data, generate q/a transcripts. Generate radom questions, RAG against your whole dataset and look for relevant stuff, if there is nothing there, train a "I don't know." reply.
A moderately sized LLM operating some tools to access more information behind the scenes, perform tests and correct its own errors can write transcripts simulating a much larger and smarter llm.
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'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'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…
Saying "I don't know" is 100x less shameful than asking a clanker for an answer and pretending it's yours. If they don't realise this they won't last long
I wish that was the case for people with insincere communication practices. On the contrary, they seem to embody the sociopath stereotype that ultimately climbs ladders.
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 w…
Partly, I admit, I just tend to be wary of shame as a tool. "Someone said something I dislike" has a long history of being abused. Conversely, even something like your gum example, one can point at concrete harms like littering and forcing others to clean up after you.
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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".
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 w…
Head over to Reddit and look for the obvious AI-generated engagement bait. There are usually a bunch of people earnestly responding without even realising they aren’t talking to a real person. Sure, some of those are also bots, but a huge number of them are real people too.
Average people aren’t good at noticing this stuff. They might not deliberately seek it out, but when they are exposed to it they like it enough to voluntarily spend their time on it.
> In the case that the listeners are greatly outnumbered by the speakers
I think it’s quite likely that the people who appreciate receiving slop outnumber the people who don’t.
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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.