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Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

noslopgrenade.com

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Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#91

Post by 1shooner »

Biganon wrote: post #17
joenot443 wrote: post #11

This is slop too though, right? > Pasting a massive AI-generated response into a chat or email where a human would write one sentence. It destroys the medium itself. Nobody writes essays in Slack. It's only possible because of AI copy-paste. > It's like calling someone and asking "What time is the meeting?" and they read you a 10-page analysis of calendar management best practices. You asked a simple question. They l…

What makes you think this is AI slop?...

The heading " Why it's wrong" and the structure:

>Worse: it's a conversation killer. There's nothing to respond to. Your wall of text suppresses dialogue. They can't reply, can't push back, can't clarify. It's a weapon disguised as helpfulness.

This is slop. What it's saying is not even true, it's just punchy.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#92

Post by a1o »

coder97 wrote: post #86
bluGill wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you start every response off with "that is a great question"? I don't know any human who does. "that is a great question" is reserved either for really hard questions, or sarcasm. The majority of questions are not great, they are just things the asker needs a simple answer.

I have only heard this phrase in american tv shows and movies

People use that too when speaking in real life when they are stalling a bit to conclude their internal thoughts before providing an answer.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#93

Post by ceejayoz »

donatj wrote: post #20
SwiftyBug wrote: post #8

> Nobody writes essays in Slack I 100% write long texts in Slack. I always try to provide as much context as possible when reaching out to someone with a question or request.

Honestly, speaking as a friend, and as someone who's been at this a very long time, maybe stop doing that? It doesn't foster conversion and I personally find it kind of a hostile/disrespectful communication style. It's much harder to have a proper back and forth with a firehouse than it is a few sentences at a time. It declares authority "these are the facts" rather than "let's discuss ideas" and if you haven't fully…

> It's much harder to have a proper back and forth with a firehouse than it is a few sentences at a time.

Sometimes, a back-and-forth is not needed, and the entire response is necessary for someone to understand to interact with.

This is when I open up a text editor, draft it, and paste that into Slack.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#94

Post by hsuduebc2 »

The sheer audacity of using generated slop like this is something that always amazes me in a bad way. You can always tell.

Every time someone uses answer like this it shows that he doesn't even want to discuss something with you and possibly knows nothing about the question asked. So the answer it self could potentionally be bogus or straightforward lie. It's just rude. It's even more rude that when someone tells you to google answer instead.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#96

Post by projektfu »

bdcravens wrote: post #58

The other day I found the worst podcast I think I've ever tried to listen to. AgentStack Daily, which apparently sums up AI stories (mostly focused on OpenClaw and the like), using computerized voices. I don't even have an issue with it being AI-generated. However, the content is delivered so fast and monotone that it's impossible to listen to, and every episode is 40 minutes or more, every day. A brief daily summary…

AI-generated podcasts are terrible. I came across one that was supposed to be summarizing FAA training material and it was unearthly and fast-paced, with pointless "humanization" umms and aahs, and in a weird conversation style. It's doubly bad because it's important to get things right, and if you just yolo the AI summary, you don't really know if it's getting everything right.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#98

Post by mr-wendel »

This is very reminiscence of the whole LMGTFY (let me google that for you) phase of things. At a job in a while back, when front-level support reached out to senior staff for help the two golden rules were:

  1. Do NOT answer right away. If they wait, there is a good chance the next message is "Oh wait, I figured it out" (e.g. they googled it finally)

  2. Send them a google link w/ the search term showing the first result.
Granted, this was a bit tongue-in-cheek and we did a LOT of trainings to help facilitate actual learning. Still, it was far too easy for senior staff time to get burned up by folks making minimal effort to think for themselves so friction remained.

While the site makes a good point, they miss the most important point, IMO, which is inferable by the example of a good response. The good response is better principally because it contains business-contextual information, which AI can never provide without proper prompting (and if you know to provide that, you prob don't need the AI answer):

  "We need pub/sub for the notifications feature."
I'm not anti-AI, but good answers include historical business context to explain decision making. Sometimes if you're lucky, code comments contain this in relevant sections :).

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#99

Post by mcphage »

fusslo wrote: post #82
nikeee wrote: post #67

When I'm encountering some WoT like that, I'd like to have a button like "view source", but for "view prompt". Most ai generated messages or docs are unnecessarily verbose and just reading the prompt would suffice. I don't really get why some people seem to think that it's somehow better to have their bullet point prompt as a huge text. It just wastes my time. And probably only makes it look like it took more effort…

"WoT" hmm.. Wheel of Time? never got into those books personally

Just, pull your braid and smooth your skirt for a few times, and you'll get into the spirit of them.

Re: Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

#100

Post by naravara »

donatj wrote: post #20
SwiftyBug wrote: post #8

> Nobody writes essays in Slack I 100% write long texts in Slack. I always try to provide as much context as possible when reaching out to someone with a question or request.

Honestly, speaking as a friend, and as someone who's been at this a very long time, maybe stop doing that? It doesn't foster conversion and I personally find it kind of a hostile/disrespectful communication style. It's much harder to have a proper back and forth with a firehouse than it is a few sentences at a time. It declares authority "these are the facts" rather than "let's discuss ideas" and if you haven't fully…

How long have you been at it? Because some of us grew up writing letters with pen and paper, sending them to people in the mail, and getting something back a week or two later. You just have to actually sit down and READ closely what people are saying, sometimes multiple times, to make sure you are clearly understanding what they’re saying rather than skimming everything you encounter for information to extract.

It is actually quite easy to communicate a problem in the middle of a wall of text. You simply refer to the phrase and then explain why it doesn’t hold. It is also fine to simply present your perspective to people without invitations to “discuss ideas.” You can open a discussion if you want, but if I’m telling you something then you can rest assured that those are the things I believe to be true, and if I am uncertain about any conclusions I will include caveats to indicate uncertainty. You have free will and are perfectly capable of taking or leaving anything being said to you.

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