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Don't be a meat proxy

gruhn.me

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Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#701

Post by notnullorvoid »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #8

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

It'll only get worse unless companies start having strict policies around it, making repeat offenses fireable. Juniors should have a little more wiggle room, but there's no excuse for senior engineers to participate in such carelessness.

This is the kind of thing that spreads. If you have to deal with it all the time you're going to start dissociating out of necessity.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#702

Post by DenisM »

javcasas wrote: post #566
ffsm8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my dayjob there is a person spearheading ai across the enterprise. They generated lots of documentation across the whole stack and now makes all PO/BAs read it if it's correct. So not just 300 lines - he unironically generated thousands of lines of "documentation" and is now making hundreds of people review it for him Complete brainrot Au psychosis is getting seriously outrageous at this point Thankfully I'm a dev…

I am that person on the blast radius. The most effective response I have found is dumping the documents into the AI, and asking it to review them, then posting back the AI response. Any resistance to this is met with a "But I'm also using AI as the board demands!"

Diabolical. I’m not sure if I’m frightened or fascinated… , I’m thinking of where can this lead if applied iteratively. Like, slop supernova followed by by a slop brown dwarf?

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#703

Post by peheje »

millipede wrote: post #698

At my $work, people do this frequently, but instead of it just being insensitive, they have their personal Slackbot responding on their behalf. After I realized I wasn't even talking to a person, I've stopped opening their DMs.

[dead]

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#705

Post by DenisM »

lukeschlather wrote: post #685
ffsm8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my dayjob there is a person spearheading ai across the enterprise. They generated lots of documentation across the whole stack and now makes all PO/BAs read it if it's correct. So not just 300 lines - he unironically generated thousands of lines of "documentation" and is now making hundreds of people review it for him Complete brainrot Au psychosis is getting seriously outrageous at this point Thankfully I'm a dev…

How correct is the documentation? You seem to be coming from the same standpoint as a lot of people in this thread which is "don't make me read AI output, I can prompt the model myself" but what this person is doing sounds much more sane - have highly skilled subject matter experts prompt the AI once, generate all the answers you might want, and review them carefully for correctness using all available context. That…

I kinda dislike where your comment leads, but I can’t argue with the logic either. Time for self-reflection I suppose.

Maybe a better way of doing this is to ask the experts to do the work? But then again, someone who does not understand the subject could ask better or at least different and more approachable questions.

I guess one reason I object to this is asymmetry - it takes someone a minute to take an hour of my life with no back pressure mechanism. Previously asking a question required effort and signified commitment.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#706

Post by notnullorvoid »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #30
richforrester wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a senior exec pick up his phone, punch some words into AI, then as-it-was-generating-a-response flip it around and put it in front of me. This shit has progressed well past seriousness and into the absurd

It’s truly unhinged behavior that has me questioning how much longer I want to remain in the industry. You always knew that 80% of the people on any team or in any large company just didn’t care. But now you see who these people are out in the open. I had a guy with more senior title say “I love the new api and cli. Is anyone working on the docs? Because I can take a crack at them” then goes to generate 12 markdown f…

> has me questioning how much longer I want to remain in the industry.

It's not a bad time to take a break from it. Keep yourself from cognitive decline, then in 2 or 3 years when the industry has come to its senses you'll be able to impress in a sensible interview. Compared to the slop addicts that won't know how to tie their own shoes without asking Claude each time.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#707

Post by snickerer »

72deluxe wrote: post #456
datakan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My VP boss calls me 6 times a day to help him understand his copilot responses and asks why we aren't doing what copilot says we should do. I then have to spend multiple hours explaining why. His peers call him to understand their copilot responses which he then copilots and calls me to help interpret. On and on and on

This sounds like true hell. I am very sorry.

No, that's not hell yet. The boss in this case knows their own limitations and asks the technical person to help. True hell is when the boss thinks AI most be more knowing than the human. 'But Claude said it, do it!'

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#709

Post by DANmode »

hoppp wrote: post #348
eddythompson80 wrote: post #8

I deal with this all day long at work and it’s exhausting. People almost acting like no one has thought of it “I asked Claude what happened, and it spit out this 300 line response. Can you read it for me and see if it’s right?” What kills me is you might expect this from a busy high level manager that doesn’t really understand the technical details and they just point the AI to an error they got. They don’t know how…

If they can't even read a claude response then how are they still employed?

Hiring is hard.

In some jurisdictions and orgs, firing is harder.

Re: Don't be a meat proxy

#710

Post by DenisM »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #322
chii wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The foundational knowledge is lost, meaning that even if we do look at the code, we won't understand it anyway. but this is similar to a lot of other technical fields that have width and depth. People would not understand assembly any more and blindly trust the output of the compiler. People now can only design a part of a CPU, and not the entirety. Chip manufacturing is so complicated that there's probably no sing…

> People would not understand assembly any more and blindly trust the output of the compiler. This was OK as long as you understood enough Assembly to debug it. Even though I haven't written much Assembly directly, I can still debug it when there are compiler bugs, which does ocasionally happen. If you lose the ability to both write and debug code then things get much worse. If no one at a company can do that, then y…

This might grow bigger than cobol.

There will be a large number of companies that will be staffed entirely by vibe coders and when an issue crops up that cannot be debugged by them a consultancy will be brought it. The consultants will use their superior agentic skills supported with actual coding and software archeology experience.

Some other companies will have both vibe coders and systems engineers on staff.

I’m just making this up, it probably won’t be like that. But it’s interesting to think about it.

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