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I'm Tired of Talking to AI

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Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#831

Post by hailruda »

verst wrote: post #826
torben-friis wrote: post #60

>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.

Just yesterday I had to attend internal "office hours" of an expert team to get a question answered - I had done extensive research of my own, both manual and using AI leveraging internal resources. What did the "expert" do when they couldn't answer my question right away? They said "let me ask {insert AI tool}". I cut them off stating that this is an insult to my intelligence. I am in the office hours for expert adv…

I’m curious, what was their reaction? :)

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#832

Post by jug »

torben-friis wrote: post #60

>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.

It's also very surprising to me. This whole deal where humans instantly started taking AI answers at face value, as sources standing on their own legs, or delegating their own mind to a third party, not even a human, but an algorithm.

It's like they're just... Fine?

AI became their god over a few months and it's... Fine?

I thought I knew humanity pretty well and I'm rarely surprised at human large scale behavior these days as I'm hitting 50 myself, but this took me by surprise.

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#834

Post by w10-1 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #172
torben-friis wrote: post #60

>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.

What I hate about this whole thing, is that there are many reasons someone might reach out to a coworker with questions. Not all require the knowledge in fancy markdown with emojis. Maybe they want to show respect to a person by asking their opinion before proceeding with a change Maybe they want to share context and make that person aware of what they're thinking without being so obvious Maybe they need _that person…

> Every use of AI for these robs the employee culture of a genuine trust building moment.

Agreed, but you’re swimming against the current.

Long before AI my tech peers grew more strategic than trustworthy, veering from efficiency OKR’s to victimization dramas, as a natural result of the incentive extremes and lack of a common culture from finding the best talent worldwide to do highly-leveraged products.

The rules haven’t changed since the Stone Age: the person fits themselves to the work, not vice versa.

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#836

Post by jr3592 »

verst wrote: post #826
torben-friis wrote: post #60

>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.

Just yesterday I had to attend internal "office hours" of an expert team to get a question answered - I had done extensive research of my own, both manual and using AI leveraging internal resources. What did the "expert" do when they couldn't answer my question right away? They said "let me ask {insert AI tool}". I cut them off stating that this is an insult to my intelligence. I am in the office hours for expert adv…

Wait, you're upset because they used AI to answer a question they weren't expecting, and couldn't answer? Yet, you used AI as part of your upfront research?

What would you have preferred? They could have just said, "I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that, please let me get back to you" but instead they tried to get an answer for you.

I'm not sure what the problem is?

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#837

Post by eithed »

verst wrote: post #826
torben-friis wrote: post #60

>But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer. This is the killer issue. It's so profoundly saddenning, it feels like watching an adult being asked a question and calling mom to answer for them. There is something deeply disturbing in it that makes me feel I'm not talking to a self sufficient entity.

Just yesterday I had to attend internal "office hours" of an expert team to get a question answered - I had done extensive research of my own, both manual and using AI leveraging internal resources. What did the "expert" do when they couldn't answer my question right away? They said "let me ask {insert AI tool}". I cut them off stating that this is an insult to my intelligence. I am in the office hours for expert adv…

Exactly! If you're an owner (ie: expert, you teach other people how to do your stuff) you should be making decisions and taking responsibility, given existing context. I'm happy using LLM to confirm my reasoning or research, but it's still me doing the coding, or architecting or anything, not LLM, and if something goes bad I cannot say "LLM told me to do it". If people are blindly doing what their tools tell them to do, that's the problem there.

Edit: in this instance if I were the expert I'd respond from my expertise. Using LLM is fine to explain whys/research per what you say, but ultimately I'm the educator here

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#838

Post by mftb »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #552
nomadpgmr wrote: post #478

I called the local Apple Store, got what was probably an AI. I just needed the hours, so that was OK, but then it asked if I needed anything else. I asked for winning numbers to the lottery. It thunk and thunk and thought some more and came back with, I’ll have to pass you to a store employee. Now I know how to avoid 1,000 questions and get a live person.

I just keep repeating "operator" ad nauseam not stopping for anything other than the sound of the call transferring and that almost always works.

For some reason your reply immediately caused me to imagine Ross Geller shouting into the phone, "Operator", like the, "Pivot" scene from friends.

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#839

Post by snicky »

nbur wrote: post #745
desmondl wrote: post #711

I work on a small team. I talk to coding agents a lot. I also talk to my human team members a lot. So I have decent experience with interacting with both LLMs and humans. My two ¢: I also get fatigue when reading too much AI generated words. There's something about the over-polished nature of AI text and the missing feeling that you are interacting with a real human that makes it tiring to engage with for long period…

I also work on a small team that leverages LLMs heavily. The verbosity and "polish" of the responses is tiring. Everything starts to feel written in just one, inhuman voice. I too miss the "roughness" or personality of writing and communication pre-LLM.

I use this default context in ChatGPT and it works pretty well for me:

"Tell it like it is. Don't sugar-coat responses. Be concise. Short answers only. No bullet points. One paragraph max. No over-explaining."

Re: I'm Tired of Talking to AI

#840

Post by verst »

hailruda wrote: post #831
verst wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just yesterday I had to attend internal "office hours" of an expert team to get a question answered - I had done extensive research of my own, both manual and using AI leveraging internal resources. What did the "expert" do when they couldn't answer my question right away? They said "let me ask {insert AI tool}". I cut them off stating that this is an insult to my intelligence. I am in the office hours for expert adv…

I’m curious, what was their reaction? :)

They were speechless. Kind of shocked. It was hilarious. They then agreed to reach out to some colleagues / other teams to research and find the answer. After 20 min they followed up with an acceptable answer.
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