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Don't paste the AI, please

dontpastetheai.com

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Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#541

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

infamouscow wrote: post #518
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your customers or colleagues are asking questions answered by your documentation, it's often a good sign your documentation has some challenges: dense; intimidating; inaccessible; or not easy to search for the specific information you want. Take this valuable signal as a gift, letting you know there is an opportunity to improve the documentation. You could become known as a helpful person, rather than a maybe-effi…

So how exactly are you supposed to distinguish needing to improve the documentation from the fact that half the population—through no fault of their own—might be fundemenetally incapable of understanding the documentation? You can only polish something so much. Without a limiting principle this becomes unfalsifiable and an endless time sink.

if the person is incapable of, or unwilling to, read documentation which you think they should, you can ask them honestly about it, or ask your manager about it

if management feels this person is unqualified to be in their job, they can take care of the issue

"rtfm" or the AI equivalent is being snarky while dodging the issue that you should just talk about, which is that you think this person is asking you too many questions

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#542

Post by BeetleB »

chrisweekly wrote: post #380
mhaberl wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the day I learned the hard way that sending a long reply to an email just ensures the other side won't read it. You can't assume that you dealt with their request effectively that way Then I guess you didn't deal with much of the empty-headed-managment type much. I learned a different lesson: Write a long email that took time to reason and write, precise and complete text. You get a short reply that is a re…

> "Write a long email that took time to reason and write, precise and complete text." Respectful hard disagree. Emails should be limited to five sentences. "I didn't have time to make a shorter reply" as an apology / disclaimer for rare exceptions. In virtually every case, anything longer belongs somewhere better than email (Slack, wiki / knowledgebase, docs site) or merits a realtime conversation. My PoV is shaped b…

So far, searching email has been more effective than searching anything else (Wiki, Slack, etc).

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#543

Post by bazmattaz »

disillusioned wrote: post #17

Heh. Just got done writing (by hand!) a Principles of AI Use document for my (ironically) AI enablement firm, the first of which is: Write as yourself. You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. Communicate them directly to us. Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else, and worse, risks skipping that step for your…

Is the problem that the response sounds like AI? Or the response is incorrect? Or too verbose? Or a mix of all three or something else?

What if the response was perfect and sounded exactly like your colleague. Would you care if it was AI generated then?

I think there could be a world where a colleague could just ask its (finely tuned) AI tool of choice to respond for it and colleagues would hardly notice as the output would be so good!

I can’t help but think that that world would be so much more productive as we would spend less time in slack answering messages and more time doing more important work.

However there are two very important things that need to be in place for this to happen: - colleagues have to have their AI tool know all of the their context on their projects….etc and and in-depth understanding of how they write - colleagues must review (and tweak if necessary) the output

My guess is that the problems you are seeing is that your colleagues are failing on one or both of these points

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#544

Post by CuriouslyC »

dang wrote: post #476
CuriouslyC wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't do this here.

Sure. While we're tone policing can we put an end to the ad nauseam (unintentionally ironic) regurgitation of "if you couldn't be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it" please?

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#545

Post by SamuelAdams »

bazmattaz wrote: post #543
disillusioned wrote: post #17

Heh. Just got done writing (by hand!) a Principles of AI Use document for my (ironically) AI enablement firm, the first of which is: Write as yourself. You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. Communicate them directly to us. Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else, and worse, risks skipping that step for your…

Is the problem that the response sounds like AI? Or the response is incorrect? Or too verbose? Or a mix of all three or something else? What if the response was perfect and sounded exactly like your colleague. Would you care if it was AI generated then? I think there could be a world where a colleague could just ask its (finely tuned) AI tool of choice to respond for it and colleagues would hardly notice as the outpu…

Its like reading reddit comments now. Many of them are generated by AI and bots, and they sound just like real people. Or advertisers masquerading as regular people recommending specific products.

It used to be fairly obvious (using em dashes, etc) but now AI writing, with the correct guidance, is very much the same as regular conversational writing.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#546

Post by Sardtok »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #499
geysersam wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it passive aggressive?

when people write me ai slop. i either ignore. or if i trust them i just say “don’t use ai slop”. anything softer is passive and morally judgy too. i’m not here to tell them what’s globally right, only how i want them to interact with me.

Ignoring them is more passive aggressive than the answer he gave.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#547

Post by Kwpolska »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #60
disillusioned wrote: post #17

Heh. Just got done writing (by hand!) a Principles of AI Use document for my (ironically) AI enablement firm, the first of which is: Write as yourself. You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. Communicate them directly to us. Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else, and worse, risks skipping that step for your…

It's sad that there is a chance people put your guide into AI and ask it to "summarize"

I'm wondering how much data is available in the enterprise admin panel for Claude. If you could somehow tell an employee pasted this text into the AI, that would be useful as grounds for termination.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#548

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

ako wrote: post #530
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your response when someone asks a job-related question is to paste AI, then you're the one telling your boss that AI can do your job. Asking questions is part of the job. Answering questions is part of the job. Collaborating with other people is the most important part of the job . Some junior technical folks early in their career might bristle at this: "my job is to write this code I'm writing, and anything else…

I see it differently: if you’re not willing to consider how you could be better/faster/more productive with AI, you’re unwilling to adapt to the future, and not flexible enough. You’re going to slow down your employer. Most business text does not benefit from a user spending time on phrasing it, it’s not literature.

> if you’re not willing to consider how you could be better/faster/more productive with AI, you’re unwilling to adapt to the future, and not flexible enough. You’re going to slow down your employer

That's for their manager to judge. You can maybe share your opinion on the matter, and let them decide. Until then, collaboration is more important than your personal IC work, and usually more effective than 1 person working heads-down and another struggling.

Newer devs invariably discover that the "write the code" part of the job is just a small part of being an engineer, and less value-added than collaboration. Big successes are achieved when you make others successful, rather than isolating yourself and focusing only on your own work and your own success.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#549

Post by khaosdoctor »

shimman wrote: post #451
RugnirViking wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hope you wrote all those em dashes by hand you asked claude to remove in the latest commit in the repo. And all the ones on the website

Yeah looking at the repo it's clear the entire thing is sloppified. I don't know what point the creator is trying to make but sincerity on being human isn't it.

I asked it to write the initial version and then refined it later on, there was an AI review on it yes, but anyway, hope the point is made

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#550

Post by conductr »

prepend wrote: post #485
conductr wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree back. Email has multiple contexts when I would say that short form is ideal and should be the default but at times a thoroughly long form email is needed. Or, honestly, you just need to create a document at this point. It could be a slide deck or word/markdown/excel/etc (depends on context) and this should be in the email. But email is key. My experience is that people search subject lines, conversation…

I’ve found that a two-prong approach works best. Detail in the email, expect people to read it or fail. And include a reference to a wiki or some more detailed version that can be collaborated on and extended. So the email isn’t the primary source, the wiki is (really some markdown in git). But the email is the thing that people organize and find over time.

This probably differs a bit by your exact profession and circumstances. I could see devs and technical people (most of HN readers) to prefer and have success with this when operating with like minded peers. It doesn’t scale much outside that. If you work with people outside of tech/dev minded people, those who are not used to RTFM type info seeking, it’s going to be an uphill battle.
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