4 ms·

I attribute people returning AI answers to a desire to feel valued and to feel that they contribute something to the person asking the question. But they are no

I attribute people returning AI answers to a desire to feel valued and to feel that they contribute something to the person asking the question. But they are not self-aware or confident enough to understand that they should preface the AI response with: "Interesting question, I asked Claude that question, and here's what I got for a response. Here's what I thought was interesting about Claude's response and what I think applies. What do you think?

LeifCarrotson 5mo ago
The problem is that most of the people in my circle who are returning AI answers to emails and chat messages do not understand enough about the topic to know whether a question is interesting or not, which parts of the response are interesting, and which parts apply. They seem to think they've more or less solved the problem by posting an LLM's response to the issue or concern I've raised.
- sumanthvepa 5mo ago
  But why would ask these people about topics they don't understand? Or they sending you unsolicited responses?
  - jamespo 5mo ago
    Maybe they are hoping for a tiny bit of research / looking into things
  - holden_nelson 5mo ago
    Not the person you’re replying to, but, because I don’t know what they know. “I don’t really know much about that, go ask _____” is the desired response in that situation
  - jimbokun 5mo ago
    Maybe it’s part of the things required by their job description to understand.
  - LeifCarrotson 5mo ago
    It's usually an email chain that they're CC'ed on, or for which they're the point of contact: Sales, project management, or (worst) a VP getting pinged by a customer who wants to jump to the front of the line: "Our new X keeps showing a message that says the brobillator needs to be froodicated, and worse it now runs at 1/4 speed, but we don't want to froodicate it already because that's expensive and our maintenance guys are busy. Can you change the interval from monthly to annually? This is a critical issue that might impact our budget to purchase 3 more X units in Q3." The right way to solve this is for the PM to forward it to the ME who designed the brobillator and calculated the 1-month maintenance interval, CCing the controls engineer who helped ensure that machine wouldn't eat itself with the fault and low-speed mode. The wrong way to solve this is for the PM to forward it to ChatGTP[sic], which might mindlessly suggests maintenance-free sealed bearings (that are totally inadequate for the temperatures and contaminants). If he asks the mechanical engineer to redesign it like ChatGTP suggested, that situation may be salvageable. If he told the customer that they'd have an engineer out in 3 days with new sealed bearings it's bad.
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  I’m just wondering how those people don’t understand they are strongly signaling their job can be fully done by an LLM.
  - palmotea 5mo ago
    > I’m just wondering how those people don’t understand they are strongly signaling their job can be fully done by an LLM. Lots of people aren't very thoughtful or wise, including some supposedly very intelligent people. For further proof: think of all the workers proudly parroting their bosses' anti-union rhetoric, like they're temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
  - JohnMakin 5mo ago
    This used to horrify me, until I started noticing the type of person that mindlessly spits crap out for me to deal with are the exact type of people I had already identified as being at most neutral or dead weight anyway. Sounds harsh but if your first reaction to solving a problem is to turn off your brain entirely and dump the thinking onto something/someone else for you, you're likely already layoff fodder, even pre AI. Maybe we'll all get there eventually, but for now, there's a clear distinction I see between types of people that use these tools, and one is very exhausting to deal with.
    - zbentley 5mo ago
      My experience aligns with that. But there’s no guarantee that the criteria for layoffs, when they happen, will include these people.
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    A lot of jobs don't need a human for anything from 80-99% of their work tasks and can be replaced by an LLM or other form of AI/ML. As an employer, you hire the human for the 1-20% where you actually need the experience - to quote the punchline of an old but gold joke [1]: > The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn. In many a company, the "old neckbeards" and "dead weight" are the first ones to be cut or eventually be driven off by ever more outright bullshit - and often enough, it is only realized way too late that important "institutional knowledge" is gone [2]. [1] https://calvincorreli.com/blog/1397-knowing-which-screw-to-turn https://calvincorreli.com/blog/1397-knowing-which-screw-to-t... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35821782 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35821782
- LizzM 5mo ago
  I personally feel using AI to reply personal chats is extremely bogus. Worse is those that do not even bother to remove the AI watermark. Like, pasting directly from the AI without removing the AI's personal thoughts.
sixtyj 5mo ago
I would rather hear the answer “I don’t know. I had to look it up.” (And I don’t care what you have used as sources, as citing counts with norms/laws or in academics.) If you really rewrite LLM’s response in your own words, I will know that you have learnt something. Because if you tell me directly that you have asked Claude, next time I will probably ask Claude directly as I don’t need you. And we won’t be able to distinguish what is yours and what is claude’s so I’ll be subconsciously suspicious that the whole answer is ai-generated (/skill me-persona-answer-descriptive) That is the reason why doctors wear white and have stethoscope. In many cases people don’t argue with their opinion as they know that doctor had to spend 6 years to earn it. But if they admit LLM as a source they are becoming replaceable. The emphasis should be on “rewriting”, even kids know copy-paste and it doesn’t count :)
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  You should abso-fucking-lutely use sources and cite them when trying to answer questions. What is this macho bullshit of pretending like you have memorized all information you might ever need and looking something up is a sign of inadequacy? And yes Claude or whatever is just another source, to be verified just like any other.
  - __david__ 5mo ago
    No one is saying to pretend you memorized everything. They’re saying they’d rather have an “I don’t know” than a half-assed ai response (or stack overflow cut and paste). Or, if you get nerd-sniped by the question and spend some time figuring it out, that’s fine too. But if you want to be helpful but don’t want to take the time to figure it out yourself, don’t just forward the question to AI or send me a link to the first result in Google because I could have done that myself(and may have done it already). Just say you don’t know, which is a paradoxically more useful response.
  - autoexec 5mo ago
    Besides just not wanting to look insecure, there are good reasons to include sources, even in cases where you actually have the info memorized. It shows someone where they can find that information for themselves in the future. That way they don't have to bug you later if they forget and it can give them a useful resource they can explore. If nothing else it demonstrates that at least one other person had the same understanding of something that I did which could be reassuring.
48terry 5mo ago
...But even that sucks. I want to talk to YOU, about THIS. Not talk about your book report of Claude's output. Why would I want to do that? Why am I supposed to care about what you thought was interesting about Claude's output or how it was applicable? You turned me talking to you about something into a book report about the chatbot.
II2II 5mo ago
> I attribute people returning AI answers to a desire to feel valued and to feel that they contribute something to the person asking the question. At least with the example in the article (with the ChatGPT screenshots), I don't think it's all that different from the olden days when people would include links to an unnvetted webpage after a quick web search, or a link to something like let me Google that for you. It isn't about feeling like they contributed. It's more a passive aggressive way of saying do your own research.
mekoka 5mo ago
It would be true if they bothered hiding it. But as the featured author said, people seem increasingly not shy of simply forwarding you a screenshot of the AI answer.
LizzM 5mo ago
Do you feel returning an answer that an AI gives is the same as searching it on Google (old fashion way) and just producing an answer from there?
- Hugsbox 5mo ago
  What you're describing still requires that you look at sources and put a little bit of effort into understanding something. AI answers may or may not be completely hallucinated, and often the people copy/pasting them didn't even read them.
- waisbrot 5mo ago
  Nowadays, the top Google result is probably LLM-generated blog-spam of lower-quality than whatever chatbot your company is paying for. Back when most Google results were authentic web-pages, something like "here's a web page that I think solves your problem" was a fairly useful reply from a coworker.
footy 5mo ago
This is an interesting comment for me because if someone said that to me I'd lose all respect for them I think.

LeifCarrotson 5mo ago

The problem is that most of the people in my circle who are returning AI answers to emails and chat messages do not understand enough about the topic to know whether a question is interesting or not, which parts of the response are interesting, and which parts apply. They seem to think they've more or less solved the problem by posting an LLM's response to the issue or concern I've raised.

sumanthvepa 5mo ago
But why would ask these people about topics they don't understand? Or they sending you unsolicited responses?
- jamespo 5mo ago
  Maybe they are hoping for a tiny bit of research / looking into things
- holden_nelson 5mo ago
  Not the person you’re replying to, but, because I don’t know what they know. “I don’t really know much about that, go ask _____” is the desired response in that situation
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  Maybe it’s part of the things required by their job description to understand.
- LeifCarrotson 5mo ago
  It's usually an email chain that they're CC'ed on, or for which they're the point of contact: Sales, project management, or (worst) a VP getting pinged by a customer who wants to jump to the front of the line: "Our new X keeps showing a message that says the brobillator needs to be froodicated, and worse it now runs at 1/4 speed, but we don't want to froodicate it already because that's expensive and our maintenance guys are busy. Can you change the interval from monthly to annually? This is a critical issue that might impact our budget to purchase 3 more X units in Q3." The right way to solve this is for the PM to forward it to the ME who designed the brobillator and calculated the 1-month maintenance interval, CCing the controls engineer who helped ensure that machine wouldn't eat itself with the fault and low-speed mode. The wrong way to solve this is for the PM to forward it to ChatGTP[sic], which might mindlessly suggests maintenance-free sealed bearings (that are totally inadequate for the temperatures and contaminants). If he asks the mechanical engineer to redesign it like ChatGTP suggested, that situation may be salvageable. If he told the customer that they'd have an engineer out in 3 days with new sealed bearings it's bad.
jimbokun 5mo ago
I’m just wondering how those people don’t understand they are strongly signaling their job can be fully done by an LLM.
- palmotea 5mo ago
  > I’m just wondering how those people don’t understand they are strongly signaling their job can be fully done by an LLM. Lots of people aren't very thoughtful or wise, including some supposedly very intelligent people. For further proof: think of all the workers proudly parroting their bosses' anti-union rhetoric, like they're temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
- JohnMakin 5mo ago
  This used to horrify me, until I started noticing the type of person that mindlessly spits crap out for me to deal with are the exact type of people I had already identified as being at most neutral or dead weight anyway. Sounds harsh but if your first reaction to solving a problem is to turn off your brain entirely and dump the thinking onto something/someone else for you, you're likely already layoff fodder, even pre AI. Maybe we'll all get there eventually, but for now, there's a clear distinction I see between types of people that use these tools, and one is very exhausting to deal with.
  - zbentley 5mo ago
    My experience aligns with that. But there’s no guarantee that the criteria for layoffs, when they happen, will include these people.
- mschuster91 5mo ago
  A lot of jobs don't need a human for anything from 80-99% of their work tasks and can be replaced by an LLM or other form of AI/ML. As an employer, you hire the human for the 1-20% where you actually need the experience - to quote the punchline of an old but gold joke [1]: > The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn. In many a company, the "old neckbeards" and "dead weight" are the first ones to be cut or eventually be driven off by ever more outright bullshit - and often enough, it is only realized way too late that important "institutional knowledge" is gone [2]. [1] https://calvincorreli.com/blog/1397-knowing-which-screw-to-turn https://calvincorreli.com/blog/1397-knowing-which-screw-to-t... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35821782 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35821782
LizzM 5mo ago
I personally feel using AI to reply personal chats is extremely bogus. Worse is those that do not even bother to remove the AI watermark. Like, pasting directly from the AI without removing the AI's personal thoughts.

sixtyj 5mo ago

I would rather hear the answer “I don’t know. I had to look it up.” (And I don’t care what you have used as sources, as citing counts with norms/laws or in academics.) If you really rewrite LLM’s response in your own words, I will know that you have learnt something. Because if you tell me directly that you have asked Claude, next time I will probably ask Claude directly as I don’t need you. And we won’t be able to distinguish what is yours and what is claude’s so I’ll be subconsciously suspicious that the whole answer is ai-generated (/skill me-persona-answer-descriptive) That is the reason why doctors wear white and have stethoscope. In many cases people don’t argue with their opinion as they know that doctor had to spend 6 years to earn it. But if they admit LLM as a source they are becoming replaceable. The emphasis should be on “rewriting”, even kids know copy-paste and it doesn’t count :)

jimbokun 5mo ago
You should abso-fucking-lutely use sources and cite them when trying to answer questions. What is this macho bullshit of pretending like you have memorized all information you might ever need and looking something up is a sign of inadequacy? And yes Claude or whatever is just another source, to be verified just like any other.
- __david__ 5mo ago
  No one is saying to pretend you memorized everything. They’re saying they’d rather have an “I don’t know” than a half-assed ai response (or stack overflow cut and paste). Or, if you get nerd-sniped by the question and spend some time figuring it out, that’s fine too. But if you want to be helpful but don’t want to take the time to figure it out yourself, don’t just forward the question to AI or send me a link to the first result in Google because I could have done that myself(and may have done it already). Just say you don’t know, which is a paradoxically more useful response.
- autoexec 5mo ago
  Besides just not wanting to look insecure, there are good reasons to include sources, even in cases where you actually have the info memorized. It shows someone where they can find that information for themselves in the future. That way they don't have to bug you later if they forget and it can give them a useful resource they can explore. If nothing else it demonstrates that at least one other person had the same understanding of something that I did which could be reassuring.

48terry 5mo ago

...But even that sucks. I want to talk to YOU, about THIS. Not talk about your book report of Claude's output. Why would I want to do that? Why am I supposed to care about what you thought was interesting about Claude's output or how it was applicable? You turned me talking to you about something into a book report about the chatbot.

II2II 5mo ago

> I attribute people returning AI answers to a desire to feel valued and to feel that they contribute something to the person asking the question. At least with the example in the article (with the ChatGPT screenshots), I don't think it's all that different from the olden days when people would include links to an unnvetted webpage after a quick web search, or a link to something like let me Google that for you. It isn't about feeling like they contributed. It's more a passive aggressive way of saying do your own research.

mekoka 5mo ago

It would be true if they bothered hiding it. But as the featured author said, people seem increasingly not shy of simply forwarding you a screenshot of the AI answer.

LizzM 5mo ago

Do you feel returning an answer that an AI gives is the same as searching it on Google (old fashion way) and just producing an answer from there?

Hugsbox 5mo ago
What you're describing still requires that you look at sources and put a little bit of effort into understanding something. AI answers may or may not be completely hallucinated, and often the people copy/pasting them didn't even read them.
waisbrot 5mo ago
Nowadays, the top Google result is probably LLM-generated blog-spam of lower-quality than whatever chatbot your company is paying for. Back when most Google results were authentic web-pages, something like "here's a web page that I think solves your problem" was a fairly useful reply from a coworker.

footy 5mo ago

This is an interesting comment for me because if someone said that to me I'd lose all respect for them I think.