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Don't paste the AI, please

dontpastetheai.com

551–560 of 632 posts

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#551
post #35

I’m not convinced tbh, a lot of my colleagues messages are “x broken” or “I do y” … no context whatsoever, and then I have to coax their context for making these decisions. Since people started using Claude now I get full context of everything… might be too much sure, but to be honest over-communicating seems better than under-communicating - sure it’s boring and tedious but that shifts the blockage to me. Otherwise…

Everyone is also assuming that each person's Claude has the exact same context.

e.g. a DevOps person's LLM may have very different context than a marketing person.

In other words, if I'm in marketing and the website is down, I would rather hear from the DevOps claude than my claude.

(sure, there can be MCPs etc etc that everyone can share but it might not get converted into a level of detail that I can understand).

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why write all that when just: we do not use AI in client or intercompany communications? Like is your insight that copying and pasting something is not understanding it? Do people seriously not known this? There is no need to Socrates when writing policy docs. Maybe this is why people ignore reading your actual voice messages that you feel a need to also justify this basic request. Sometimes the human voice thinks to…

Because if you think and act as your colleagues are just disposable soldiers that must follow direct, simple orders, then your org will eventually be made of that kind of people. And maybe GP doesn't want that.

"That kind of people"? What do you mean? People who communicate clearly, don't over intellecutlize or wank their ego and actually get things done? Why is a soldier bad?

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#554
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to say, "Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else" is something that I don't think I really internalized until you wrote it in that way. Which I think is evidence of what you are talking about.

This reminds me how I've had to tell people to try to type better and nt us wird abbrvs, even if it means they can type it faster. Because if you want 100 people to read it, then every second you waste for the reader is worth you fixing up your message for over a minute. It's very likely that proper punctuation and capital letters help the reader, then it doesn't matter than not using them is faster to type. I'm sure…

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Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are lazy as hell, and I've noticed it's getting worse. My old team called this "remote brain execution" (because we work with Bazel and they have something called RBE) where folks would just drop questions in Slack and just ask the team to solve it for them. We were taken aback by how little work people would do before doing this. We developed the phrase: "What have you tried so far?" to try and counteract thi…

In many cases someone else already knows the answer and your interruption of them is less time lost for the company than you looking up the answer.

These are software engineers asking questions about the code they wrote. They're able to figure it out.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#556
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worki…

This is not counter collaboration, collaboration can also benefit from the use of AI.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you think and act as your colleagues are just disposable soldiers that must follow direct, simple orders, then your org will eventually be made of that kind of people. And maybe GP doesn't want that.

"That kind of people"? What do you mean? People who communicate clearly, don't over intellecutlize or wank their ego and actually get things done? Why is a soldier bad?

People blindly following orders (aka policies) because they must follow them. A (company) policy should always has well explained rationale behind it, if you want to treat fellow employees like thinking adults.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#558
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 worki…

This is not counter collaboration, collaboration can also benefit from the use of AI.

AI is not a suitable substitute for collaboration – we are discussing the case of sending AI summaries (1 human asking, 1 LLM answering through a meat proxy), instead of collaboration between 2 humans

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#559
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed and it’s more than that. Comprehension, understanding, and validation. It also erodes trust in the person pasting the information. You asked a human for their advice- based on their judgment. If they don’t take the time to validate the answer provided by ai, they literally have no judgment. A transparent proxy has zero value.

They're acting as a meatbot being piloted by the AI. Could call them skroders. It should be the other way around-- you give the AI instructions and it does stuff. Any time the AI is giving you instructions and you do stuff, that should be a big red flag.

I've been thinking about the Blight and [spoilers!] the skroderiders a lot lately. If you have read Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories, I have also been thinking a lot about "goodlife" when I see some of the things that get posted. If you haven't, you might like them.

Re: Don't paste the AI, please

#560
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> talk, don’t write” people is based on their inability to logically think through, structure, and communicate their ideas and, instead, would rather connect directly and hope the solution emerges from a conversation. That is a remarkably direct way to dismiss the value of brainstorming. :) Also consider that when content is easy to produce and distribute at scale people stop reading with any kind of attention - ther…

I don’t think there’s only writing. I agree that brainstorming serves a very important function. But I’ve never encountered someone trying to brainstorm over email. If I did, I would certainly want to talk, instead. I was referring to someone saying that said it’s almost always better to talk than write. Good “content” is very hard to produce. It’s not a commodity. Again, I work in science and tech where truth is dif…

You missed my point.

As a possible reader of your email I’m facing dozens of emails every day, my default reaction is to skip past and “read it later”. Maybe you did put a lot thought into it, how would I ever know? If you show up in person I will know you are invested into it.

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