It's rude to show AI output to people • Hacker News Board

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#61

Post by Arainach » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #39

>> "I asked ChatGPT and this is what it said: ". > Whoa, let me stop you right here buddy, what you're doing here is extremely, horribly rude. How is it any different from "I read book and it said that..."? Or "Book has the following quote about that:"? I definitely want to know where people are getting their info. It helps me understand how trustworthy it might be. It's not rude, it's providing proper context.

A book is a credentialed source that can be referenced. A book is also something that not everyone may have on hand, so a pointer can be appreciated. LLMs are not that. If I wanted to know what they said I'd ask them. I'm asking you/the team to understand what THEY think. Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly clear that certain people and coworkers don't actually think at all very often - particularly the ones that just take any question and go throw it off to the planet burning machine.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#62

Post by stego-tech » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

Well said in a short, digestible post that’s easily shared with even non-tech folks. Exactly what a good post on etiquette should read like.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#63

Post by lupusreal » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #32

The author was thinking "boring and uninteresting" but settled on the word "rude." No, it's not rude. Emailing your co-workers provactive political memes or telling someone to die in a fire is rude. Using ChatGPT to write and being obvious about it marks you as an uninteresting person who may not know what they are talking about. On the other hand, emailing your prompt and the result you got can be instructive to oth…

> boring and uninteresting

Subjecting people to such slop is rude. All the "I asked chatbot and it said..." comments are rude because they are excessively boring and uninteresting. But it gets even worse than just boring and uninteresting when presenting chatbot text as something they wrote themselves, which is a form of lying / fraud.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#64

Post by smithbits » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

Yes. I just had a bad experience with an online shop. I got the thing I ordered, but the interaction was bad so I sent a note to their support email saying "I like your company, but I recently had this experience that felt icky, here's what happened" and their "AI Agent Bot" replied with a whole lot of platitudes and "Since you’ve indicated no action is needed and your order has been placed, we will be closing this ticket." I'm all for LLM's helping people write better emails, but using them to auto-close support tickets is rude.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#65

Post by Jtsummers » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #37

echelon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. What a good giveaway. I wonder what others there are. I occasionally use bullet points, emdashes (unicode, single, and double hyphens) and words like "delve". I hate it think these are the new heuristics. I think AI is a useful tool (especially image and video models), but I've already had folks (on HN [1]!) call out my fully artisanal comments as LLM-generated. It's almost as annoying as getting low-effort LLM…

Use two dashes instead of an actual em dash. ChatGPT, at least, cannot do the same--it just can't.

It can't use two dashes? Is that like how Data couldn't use contractions (except he did)?

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#66

Post by vouaobrasil » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

shreezus wrote: post #56

phito wrote: post #4

I really wish some of my coworkers would stop using LLMs to write me emails or even Teams messages. It does feel extremely rude, to the point I don't even want to read them anymore.

LinkedIn is probably the worst culprit. It has always been a wasteland of “corporate/professional slop”, except now the interface deliberately suggests AI-generated responses to posts. I genuinely cannot think of a worse “social network” than that hell hole. “Very insightful! Truly a masterclass in turning everyday professional rituals into transformative personal branding opportunities. Your ability to synergize aut…

Best thing you can do is quit LinkedIn. I deleted my account immediately once I first noticed AI-generated content there.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#67

Post by lupusreal » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #25

benatkin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Wow. What a good giveaway. I wonder what others there are. I occasionally use bullet points, emdashes (unicode, single, and double hyphens) and words like "delve". I hate it think these are the new heuristics. I think AI is a useful tool (especially image and video models), but I've already had folks (on HN [1]!) call out my fully artisanal comments as LLM-generated. It's almost as annoying as getting low-effort LLM…

Give away for what, old farts? That link contains a comment citing the jargon file which in turn says that the term is an old Usenet meme.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#68

Post by adamtaylor_13 » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

lvl155 wrote: post #38

While I understand this sentiment, some people simply suck at writing nice emails or have a major communication issue. It’s also not bad to run your important emails through multiple edits via AI.

The article clearly supports this type of usage.

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#69

Post by jmugan » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

This is exactly how I feel about both advertising and unnecessary notifications. "The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus."

Re: It's rude to show AI output to people

#70

Post by lxgr » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

I believe there was a very similar line of argument at the time photography was becoming popular. "Sure, it's a useful tool, but it will never be an art form like painting. It only reproduces what's already there!"

Yet today, we both cringe at forgettable food Instagrams and marvel at the World Press Photo of the Year.

I do fully agree with the conclusions on etiquette. Just like it's rude to try to pass a line-traced photo as a freehand drawing, decompressing very little information into a wall of text without a disclaimer is rude.