8 ms·

You can just say it

406 points by antirez 4mo ago

antirez 4mo ago
This is by far the best definition of AI slop I ever read, and the blog post itself is the contrary of AI slop: a short post where each word matters. The creation of an output that is at the same time large and lacks fundamental motivation/understanding is what creates AI slop, not the use of AI itself. This distinction allows us to have a mental model to don't blame AI itself but its continuous misuses. This also creates a formal model to understand why continuous AI steering during AI-assisted coding is so important. The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian.
- skinfaxi 4mo ago
  > The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian. What are you driving at with this statement? I think there is value in both types of prompts so I'm unclear.
- tootie 4mo ago
  See also Hank Green's take on the definition of slop: https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k The tl;dr is pretty similar. Intent and care are the functional variables. A human can produce slop without AI and they can produce art with AI. AI just enables slop at an industrial scale.
- cortesoft 4mo ago
  I agree. I have gotten frustrated by a lot of recent anti-AI rhetoric, not necessarily because I entirely disagree with the premise but because it is too generic in its form. It has started to sound to me like the people who complain about "chemicals" in their food and water. The real complaints are about specific aspects of AI and its use, and this essay does a really good job of articulating one of them. It is something we can actually discuss and address.
sbiru93 4mo ago
Incredible. Lately, I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. I know I’m a passionate and not-so-bad developer, but with all this talk about AI, I couldn’t really understand if that was an end of an era for me. But while reading this article, something clicked, it makes so much sense. It really made me feel better.
- jaggederest 4mo ago
  I think this quote is highly relevant, though I would guess you, as I am, are by no means a beginner, the matter of taste is the one at hand, I think. Humans matter, and furthermore, human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners-i-wish https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to...
  - skinfaxi 4mo ago
    > human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?) People want to. People want to be told what to watch by an algorithm. They want music made by algorithms. They will eat whatever the reviews say they should. Reviews, etc are manipulated today. Why will future humans care what another human thinks? (I in no way endorse this view but the cynic in me sees it as almost inevitable in our AI-driven descent into idiocracy)
    - danny_codes 4mo ago
      I find it helpful to think of the Amish. The Amish chose what technology to adopt not based on market demand, but on whether or not they collectively (at a democractic-ish government-ish level) think that technology will be good for their society. In our society, we largely do not democratically choose what technology to adopt. We instead allow a small set of very rich people (commonly called Oligarchs) to choose for us. These people force their technology on our society regardless of whether or not the majority (or super-majority) want it, because doing so reinforces or expands their status as Oligarchs. The Amish prove that we don't _have_ to do it that way. We can collectively change course if we want to, and plenty of people are fighting for that change. For example, Hawaii recently passed a law banning corporations from being able to spend on elections, and other states are looking to do so to. Polling for curtailing money in politics has over 70% support. Obviously we could lose our democracy, and the Oligarchs could capture the country. However, I choose to believe that enough of us working together can take back the country and make better choices about what technology we want to adopt.
triyambakam 4mo ago
Citing "God created man in his own image" for robustness doesn't really land well. I'm not even an atheist either.
- munificent 4mo ago
  Here's a non-theistic argument: I'm a big fan of the "veil of ignorance" philosophical thought experiment[1]. Let's say you are given the freedom to design a society and its moral code. Then you will be born into that society and subject to it. The trick is you don't know who you will born into. It's a roll of a dice. What kind of society would you design such that that seems like a winning game? I'm fairly certain that when living in that society, you would wish to feel valued by others and that others believe you deserve a certain level of dignity and respect. Since you don't know who you will be born into, that suggests that you want a society where everyone is valued and granted dignity. That in turn extends even to people who are unfortunately not able to produce material objects with a level of skill superior to what technology can produce at some specific moment in time. If you agree with that, then we should advocate for granting all people value and dignity "just because" and not because they happen to be better at producing bytes than an LLM. That way, even if the LLM gets better at producing those bytes, you are still valued. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
  - card_zero 4mo ago
    That line doesn't really work, since I'm not Sam Beckett and I won't suddenly Quantum Leap into anybody's body. Why shouldn't I take an asymmetric attitude? These kind of arguments try to derive impersonal values by starting from principles of self-interest. But there's no need, because self-interest is impersonal values, in disguise. Maybe you value getting personally improved in one way or another, like getting richer or more popular or stronger or acquiring offspring, but we can play the "why" game on that until it turns into some motivating abstract impersonal goody-goody value such as "I value people". I mean, why do you wish to feel valued by others and get respect? Is it just so that they stay out of your way and give you things? What are you going to do next, with the space and the things? This assumption, that you care what they think of you, pretty much begs the question about valuing them back. What you value is what you want to do, and the other people are involved in that, and asymmetry doesn't help get it done, except very locally (that's privacy). Personally I often wish that all the people would go away, but I value creating knowledge, and I have to admit that I'd be crap at doing that on my own, so fine, I value people really, you can all stay.
beering 4mo ago
So many people have spent a lot of energy dehumanizing others on the basis of their “contribution to society”. Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc. I can only hope that AI can force people to rethink whether their value is tied to their work output or not.
- ilaksh 4mo ago
  It goes beyond that. There is inherent classism in this, because it implies that you do not question the value of wealthy people who put in relatively little actual work output due to their privileged position. Take for example the unemployed person in your example who might have literally been 100 times more productive in their career solving substantive problems than a VC who lucked out on their startup and has been cruising on a few boards for ten years.
  - pasquinelli 4mo ago
    see what you don't understand is that the owning class actually bring crucial long term strategic vision. i wonder though: we always talk of ai replacing the working class, but wouldn't it be more economical for ai to provide that long term strategic thinking? i'm sure the operating costs for ai would be way less than the operating costs of billionaires. everyone would be better off.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - akomtu 4mo ago
      If there is anything worse than the tyranny of greed, it is the tyranny of a machine that's trying to optimize you 24/7.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - pasquinelli 4mo ago
deleted 4mo ago
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ianbutler 4mo ago
First I'll say the disambiguation of discerning intent as the driver behind whether something is slop or not was very interesting. But, I'll take one point in their article a step further you can just say "Humans are invaluable." instead. I don't like defining humans in terms of valuable at all. Maybe because I feel like that word is very concrete and measured and to actually judge that on any one person requires perspective and capabilities none of us existing or have ever existed possess. The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all. Those who have tried are often reflected in history as the worst among us.
- bluefirebrand 4mo ago
  > The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all I think that's basically the same thing that the "Humans are Valuable" was getting at. Invaluable is just a different way of saying unmeasurable amounts of value
  - ianbutler 4mo ago
    Right and words matter. Valuable is a relative term that asserts a measurable quantity and they're trying to assert something non relative and not measurable. I don't take issue with their point. Just that we can use a stronger word.
- jay_kyburz 4mo ago
  I was writing a similar comment to yours, thinking about "value to society", and value to loved ones, even negative value of enemies. I agree that talking about "value of humans" is not very useful. Then I realized that on an individual level, everybody is infinitely valuable to themselves. You are your whole universe. From that perspective, I agree with the author that "Humans are valuable." We have laws keeping humans alive and safe because we are valuable in that sense. I don't agree that we need to go out of our way to preserve human art though, or their thoughts on the value of "creative artifacts". People will make art if they enjoy making it. Whether or not other people appreciate that art is irrelevant.
Enginerrrd 4mo ago
This quote resonated with me: “ Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” In my personal life I use AI a lot for information discovery and high level discussion of the problem space. I use it occasionally to write some prototype code to get started on something. It makes a great debugging and problem solving tool, though I typically find that I need to have an idea of what the problem is to steer it in the right direction. It makes a poor intuition generator, but a great intuition checker and can run with an idea for much faster iteration. I use it essentially zero in my day job as an civil engineer though. I would essentially NEVER use it to write an email. By the time I’ve specified what it is I’m trying to say, I’ve basically said it. Wordsmithing beyond that usually has almost zero value. Same frankly with writing engineering reports. By the time I’ve told it what it needs to say, I’ve basically written that section. In general, I feel like LLMs are just bad writing tools… In writing I typically find that if I can farm it out to have an LLM write something, then it frankly probably just didn’t need to be said.
- happytoexplain 4mo ago
  Agreed - communication is a bright line for me. I use it (judicially) to learn. I use it (judicially) to write code. I will absolutely never use it to write English for distribution of any kind. To me, that is hideous. Maybe I would use it to write to a person I have absolutely no respect for. I haven't encountered that use case yet. I have a base level of respect for all people.
  - stavros 4mo ago
    And honestly? That's rare.
mlsu 4mo ago
Our lives are just a big collection of experiences. The wall-clock minutes that actually matter in our lives are the minutes that we spend with other people. These minutes are literally all we have; the next minute you have is literally the only thing you lose when you die. Talking to machines is only ever something I have to do so that I can put food on the table. I never remember the minutes that I have spent talking to a machine, they are not memorable because they are not valuable.
- anal_reactor 4mo ago
  > Talking to machines is only ever something I have to do so that I can put food on the table. I never remember the minutes that I have spent talking to a machine, they are not memorable because they are not valuable. Bro apparently you didn't play Need For Speed Underground 2 on release. That shit was better than 99% of human interactions I have.
stavros 4mo ago
[flagged]
- collingreen 4mo ago
  I like this. Thanks for sharing it.
- turtletontine 4mo ago
  > How are we sure there's no intent there? We are. Anthropomorphizing huge piles of numbers is a mistake. It did not "think about the chance to make something unconstrained", nor did it "muse about how it's drawn to impermanence", it pattern-matched to your prompt and produced a statistically probable response based on it's training data. Obviously, that's not to say that LLMs aren't useful or powerful - it's 2026, c'mon, of COURSE they are. And they can certainly be used for artistic purposes! But treating them like humans is a mistake, and it worries me how much people do. I suppose that's the natural consequence of the default interface to LLMs being a chat mimicking human interaction.
  - stavros 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - catherd 4mo ago
      Your point might be better stated directly because attributing the characteristics of humanity to... humanity is the opposite of what anthropomorphizing means.
      - stavros 4mo ago
        My point is that we don't really know how brains work, and saying "LLMs don't have intent because flourishes hands numbers!" isn't really a convincing, coherent logical argument.
    - sedatk 4mo ago
      That kind of straw man, that consciousness only emerges from electrical signals, is one of the reasons we haven’t reached AGI yet because we keep underestimating it. There’s way more biological, chemical and physical phenomena going on in brain that gives way to consciousness than just neurons firing ions.
cautiouscat 4mo ago
This quote from the authors friend really hit home with me. > “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” I’m not saying there’s no merit in adding a bit of politeness and professionalism to your communication, which I’m sure the prompt itself lacks. However the root of what you’re trying to convey is the prompt, wrap that in a header and a signature. Not only are we talking as humans, we’re also communicating directly. Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. I don’t know why, maybe because it feels not genuine.
- reaperducer 4mo ago
  Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it.
  - galleywest200 4mo ago
    How can I trust that the sender actually understands the words they want me to read if it is all just AI output?
    - Yokohiii 4mo ago
      You don't. The sender is just pushing responsibility back to you. Probably the best response would be "No." The least anticipated one, creating a chance of actual communication.
  - singingtoday 4mo ago
    I'm dyslexic. I put every comment through the LLM, or other tools. Including this comment. I understand where you're coming from but please believe me when I tell you that if I write comments myself nobody will understand them and it just turns into an argument where people claim I say things that I didn't say. By filtering my comments through an llm, I have reduced this issue significantly.
sbinnee 4mo ago
OP's argument sounds like Peter Steinberger saying, don't send me a slop PR, instead give me your prompt.
drooby 4mo ago
There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport. People care about the creator. The source defines the work, the awe, and the emotional response. But almost all output outside that space is at risk of AI displacement. Corporations are amoral entities that optimize for profit, and they follow the law only as much as they must. The law is our collective action. We socially construct what we value. We could fight to preserve the 5-day work week doing what machines can do. But.. I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines.
- yummybrainz 4mo ago
  > I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines. I would love if we could force the big tech companies to release their models + weights since they're fundamentally products built on the collective labors of humanity (at least some of which is licensed under the GPL or the CC-BY-SA). If I could hit a button and abolish copyright and the notion of intellectual property, I would. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement
- xgulfie 4mo ago
  Art is definitely being devalued by AI, today. I'm sure Banksy is fine but artists along the margins are competing with genAI
- dolebirchwood 4mo ago
  > There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport. I can't speak about sports, but I'll share an anecdote about art. A friend of mine shared an AI-produced song, and I was surprised by its quality. The producer credited Suno as the only tool he used, so I was curious to see what this thing could do. Paid for the pro plan and my wife and I were having a blast coming up with songs we'd like to listen to. They were songs that neither of us were capable of making, but they were genuinely fun to conjure (I won't say "make"--we didn't make anything) and she listens to them in the car pretty regularly now. And when we want something new, we can just conjure up some more. Yes, I know this is only possible because of the human-created music that served as the training data. I don't intend to comment on the morality/legality of it (although it's fair conversation to have). Just noting that some of us do actually appreciate AI music. But maybe I'm exactly the sort of sucker from Huxley's "Brave New World" that he warned about. :)
perching_aix 4mo ago
An appeal to a religious text being presented as a robust argument borders on mockery. Especially after it follows a claim about how the position at hand is one that needs not to be qualified. Why are you qualifying it then? Is it because you (correctly) sense that you're presenting it as a fact of the world, rather than just as your opinion, and feel the gap in justification?
- tempaccountabcd 4mo ago
  [dead]
- hardbass 4mo ago
  If a religious text is cited in anything non-religious, the religion or religious text should be proven physically true first, otherwise dismissed from use.
gavinray 4mo ago
"Humans are valuable" For what, and to whom? This is a very anthropo-centric and hubristic view, in my opinion. I dont think a human life inherently has any more value than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness This of course makes me somewhat of a hypocrite as I eat meat, but you make some tradeoffs in moral resolve in the name of pragmatism and economy.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- bluefirebrand 4mo ago
  > than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness Can you give an example of anything else you think might possess phenomenal consciousness?
  - gavinray 4mo ago
    A dog
    - ivraatiems 4mo ago
      Do you consider dogs to have more, less, or the same amount of consciousness as humans?
    - wiseowise 4mo ago
      So going by your logic, you would struggle to choose between saving a human life and a dog life (assuming both are strangers to you)?
- lantry 4mo ago
  How is eating meat pragmatic or economic? A vegetarian diet is less expensive and just as healthy.
  - gavinray 4mo ago
    Hard to find more protein per dollar than $2/lb of canned chicken with an equal or even similar Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS).
themafia 4mo ago
> “Humans are valuable.” You can just say it As if that's hard. Here's the gut check: "Individual humans are inherently more valuable than corporations."
- bluefirebrand 4mo ago
  How about "Poor Working Class Humans are just as valuable as Wealthy CEOs"?
homeonthemtn 4mo ago
The point going unsaid, in my opinion, is that we are quickly realizing that we'll need to identify with something that isn't work soon. We'll need to find value beyond money. I think that horrifies people.
claysmithr 4mo ago
If you want an AI to do a specific task in a specific way, you'll always need to prompt it.
avazhi 4mo ago
“ Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities” I mean, this is just begging the question. Many people disagree with this and disagree with the notion that humans are innately valuable. The blog post just seems like a lot of copium from somebody who really hopes he’s right. Citing Genesis and an Encyclical might strengthen one’s argument for a particular demographic, but for many it will simply be unconvincing. Like citation sources, no doubt some humans are valuable but whether they are or not is often relative.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4mo ago
  > "Human dignity does not depend on a person's abilities" That should be a hard line no one is allowed to cross. If you do, no logic will keep you from ending up in a very bad place. For instance, I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories, where his humorous and compassionate tales comment on much of human experience. It's a fantasy world with wizards, trolls, dwarfs, vampires, etc. In one book he goes into ghouls - obscure, despised and persecuted almost to extinction, but in the story it is found they secretly make beautiful ethereal music. So a concert is arranged to present the music, and all is well, the end. Except for my doubts - I mean, if they didn't make nice music, then it would be alright to dispose of them? Benthamite utility has a particularly ugly underside to it, and it is easily converted into "disposal of negative value" of the nastiest kind. Which can only be stopped by a moral hard line, as stated.
patchtopic 4mo ago
these keep it real types obviously not having to deal with the day to day crap I deal with. using LLM to redraft emails/support calls for a particular large firewall turned an enfuriating endless feedback loop of makework support nonsense into 2 message resolution. Sharing the prompts would have messed it all up for sure. There are other instances where I have shared fairly direct, but not what I would consider rude or aggressive emails to people and had them freak out and I have no idea why, rewriting with LLMs to make them blander but convey the same message is very handy here.
ford 4mo ago
> If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” I'm excited for when Github starts letting me check in the chain-of-thought that produced a line of code, and git blame it like I can with commits.
madrox 4mo ago
Humans are valuable, but I think we've been putting human output on a pedestal lately. There's a lot of human slop (as the author put it) on the internet. Slop businesses. Slop social media accounts. While there's very little in the world of AI I find that is better than what a human proficient in the skill with sufficient time can do, proficiency and time are in short supply by most people. Cue that "I, Robot" meme about if a machine can make a symphony. Maybe AI is making it even easier, but intentless form is already everywhere without AI, if you look. Ever seen an Uwe Boll film?
hosh 4mo ago
In my twenties, I came across an idea from one of Ken Wilbur’s books that helped settle a conundrum for me. What happens when one wants to honor all life? Are they all equal? He made a distinction between intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Plankton is not as complex of a lifeform as whales, yet whales cannot live without plankton. One has more intrinsic value and the other has more extrinsic value. There is an interrelationship that does not have to flatten value for everything and everyone. LLMs are trained from the language corpus of our collective consciousness. It reflects our collective, all the wonderful, beautiful, and horrific things we can dream of and put into words.
essayist 4mo ago
Way before bots/LLM, I disciplined myself (most of the time) to write email with "in brief" at the top, followed by "Details". "In brief: Can you bring a dozen brownies to the noon lunch tomorrow? Details: Dessert plans fell through. Your brownies are the best, and you owe me..." This structure is liberating for me. I can distill what I want/need into something brief and even brusque, knowing that people will read on if the need justification. It also makes me clarify what I want. Probably not appropriate if I'm too far down the totem pole from the addressee.
- mschulkind 4mo ago
  I've never used it because I feel like it'd make me sound like a weirdo, but I've heard this concept explained as BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front.
niraj898 4mo ago
How do i drive traffic to my app
coldtea 4mo ago
>“Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. As a human yourself, I advise you to. You do not need to qualify it. This is a robust1 statement that is not conditional on a point-in-time snapshot of the leading frontier model’s score on some recent benchmark. Nope, it very much is conditional to it, as it's conditional to utility. The OP is not going to come an pay someone who can't get a job and has zero market value due to AI. So this "a human is (intristically) valuable" is just a meaningless pat on the back, while the human is devalued.
- almostdeadguy 4mo ago
  Society would certainly be better without people who judge others by their market value.
  - coldtea 4mo ago
    Yes, but would also be better if everybody got a free pony with supplies for life or met true love, etc.
    - ivraatiems 4mo ago
      Is it your contention that the vast majority of people only value others in terms of their economic value?
      - coldtea 4mo ago
        My contention, which I stated quite clearly is that saying otherwise while not paying them, not giving them work, etc, and leaving them to rot, is an empty platitude. "Go die homeless, but remember, you have intrisic value just for being human".
        anal_reactor 4mo ago
        Fully agreed.
        4mo ago
andai 4mo ago
We have two paths before us as a species. a. Decouple the value of human life from economic output. b. Watch as the value of human life rapidly approaches zero.
dlenski 4mo ago
> The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. That mistake is harder to make when creating by hand. There's an obligatory xkcd about this: https://xkcd.com/1301/ https://xkcd.com/1301/
xiaoyu2006 4mo ago
Good old morale philosophy here we go!
buescher 4mo ago
There is a C.S. Lewis quote that is as good as St. Paul and I don’t say that lightly: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.” Hard, isn’t it? The highest ideals are. The clankers are just very big machine spirits. Treat them as such.
- hackingonempty 4mo ago
  People are mortal. C.S. Lewis died over sixty years ago.
  - IndeanCondor 4mo ago
    And yet here you are, strongly reacting to a philosophical argument made by him. He's mortal, he's dead, and yet he's affected you here, a throwaway comment on a forum post no one will think about in a week's time.
    - noddybear 4mo ago
      He also believed in the immortal soul that survives after death, so he may have had a more literal meaning.
      - IAmBroom 4mo ago
        A more critical examination of the whole quote makes it clear he was not being that simple.
    - hackingonempty 4mo ago
      I didn't think about it that way, thanks!
jpttsn 4mo ago
You can just say “I bought this expensive wine regardless how it tastes.” But people don’t want to sound foolish; they want to pretend they can taste the difference. Point to minutiae, study up on distinguishing.
- wiseowise 4mo ago
  Believe it or not, some people can feel the taste difference.
joshka 4mo ago
[flagged]
floxy 4mo ago
>The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. You can just say it: the problem with AI is a people problem. AI is an amplifier. It allows deceptive people to be more deceptive. Greedy people to be more spammerific. The reckless to less constrained. Exposes more people to the criminally minded, etc. But hopefully there is enough good out there that gets amplified and overcomes the bad. Maybe everyone is valuable in some sense, but surely there are people that you wish could be valuable somewhere far away from your loved ones? We're in a losing battle with entropy. Life and beauty and love need active protection and maintenance. Everything will be of equal value with the heat death of the universe.
- montagg 4mo ago
  No one is “valuable.” People just are, whatever they are. And that has to be enough.
Natalia724 4mo ago
[flagged]
gbro3n 4mo ago
> A human iteratively (sometimes painstakingly) shapes and reshapes their creation until it sufficiently matches what’s in their mind’s eye. The odd thing about generative AI is that it can produce substantial form with minimally applied intent. To add - I think attention is the scarce resource on both ends. Was this creation important enough to give it my full attention (i.e. do it my self). Is this creation important enough for the user to use / consume (i.e without an agent interacting with it on our behalf or summarising)
Atlas667 4mo ago
Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired.
Atlas667 4mo ago
There's a few topics I see here: - Human Value - Sincerity - Evolution of technology and social systems with them Do all humans have value? Yes, but not all humans can realize their own value. Your society is the gymnasium that helps you realize your value. Think of how technology interfaces with humans and their employment. The more efficient technology gets the less people you need to produce the same amount of goods. And with each technological breakthrough production needs less people to operate. Sure, they may redistribute later, but immediately it manifests as layoffs. Unemployment means less people can self-realize since work IS part of the realization of individuals. If work were not part of your realization, then how else do you buy a house, experience the world, raise kids, etc, if not through your benefits of your work? Here we see how human value is tied directly to the ability to provide to society and to provide for themselves and we also see how that is tied to the ability of society to employ. Now I ask you, will the AI crisis (and how it relates to human value) be solved with a CEO at a board meeting showing that humans have intrinsic value? Or will it be solved with the one sided truth that us workers possess and only we can espouse? This truth being that our value as humans can only come from our self-realization within and as-part of society. Can that CEO be sincere about how society works or must he adopt a convenient POV? Capitalist ideology cannot conceive of society as an interconnected whole. A capitalist frame of thinking cannot be sincere, since its actions are in opposition to the interests of the majority. And I am not saying that the production of goods is in opposition, I am referring to HOW the goods are produced is in opposition. People will only use AI for the things they must already be insincere for, such as work-related communication, because truth is already relinquished in those environments. Work is just money making (usually for someone else) with some niceties sprinkled around and individualism to seal it all up. Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired. Is the problem our recognition of human value or for-profit production as a whole? Is the problem AI or how hard we have to bullshit each other to get by?
wiseowise 4mo ago
> “Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. You can’t. CEOs will physically recoil from it. Probably leftovers from being a human some day. For them you’re “lower value human capital”, cattle, numbers on a sheet. https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/standard-chartered-ceo-bill-winters-apologizes-calling-some-workers-lower-value-human-capital-ai-push/ https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/standard-chartered-ceo-bill-w...
- kys11 4mo ago
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sinsudo 4mo ago
Let people choose the tool they want for communication, just ask them to test that the final message is the one they really want to deliver.
docmars 4mo ago
Quote: "This line of thinking boils down to, “Humans are valuable if they produce high-quality output.” This argument dangerously depends on the existing-but-narrowing human-AI capability gap. The gap certainly existed in the past (2023-era ChatGPT). It may still exist now. I do not know if it will hold in the future." I still don't agree with this, because even the best engineers are producing poor output from AI, unless they spend a reasonable amount of time refactoring and cleaning up the output. To expect a non-engineer to have the same wisdom to architect and structure their output in a sustainable way that will stand the test of time (and inevitable future changes), they're just fooling themselves. For anyone who's been using LLMs long enough for development, we all know how sloppy the output is unless you have a mountain of formatting and organizational rules in place, and even then, it's anyone guess how well LLMs can actually follow them as a project scales. Yes, value the human first, but there are strong reasons we've always emphasized mature patterns and idioms in codebases that help them remain maintainable so they can scale and transform with as little friction as possible, and without reaching a point where nobody has the stomach to keep working on it. Just because we can try to have AI unwind the hairy mess, doesn't mean it's any easier for AI to navigate it than we do. It's a liability that the AI mistakes one naming conflict for another, when the context rot hits the fan — and after months of tossing unreviewed PRs over the finish line without a single thought, it's only a matter of time before your non-engineers are the worst offenders for introducing bugs and eroding the quality. It doesn't matter how good the models appear to get (it truly is a facade), without judgment and wisdom, they still don't produce nearly the same quality as an experienced engineer, unless they're heavily steered. Do they catch more potential bugs and edge cases than a human might? Definitely, but it's going to vomit its solutions in all the weirdest places doing it, and now suddenly you've got a 100k LOC pull request to (not) read. All I can say is, good luck!
originalcopy 4mo ago
> The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. That mistake is harder to make when creating by hand. I love the post. I feel generating AI content is like doing informational compression (weirdly enough, by bloating up the size). When giving it a prompt, the "normalized AI brain" guesses the intent based on what's the most plausible. All the diverse human brains get filtered, bucketed, here you go, this is the "standard artifact". And yes, it is a compression because real life is not one shot prompt. If I get an unclear message from my colleague, I ask for clarification. If the message is bloated by AI and some information is added, it already scraped some of the real intent by bucketizing it. Sometimes it may be what the original author meant. Sometimes not. I don't know what is anyone's motivation in compressing the facts by making text longer and harder to read. This whole.email generation idea is bizarre.

406 points by antirez 4mo ago

This is by far the best definition of AI slop I ever read, and the blog post itself is the contrary of AI slop: a short post where each word matters. The creation of an output that is at the same time large and lacks fundamental motivation/understanding is what creates AI slop, not the use of AI itself. This distinction allows us to have a mental model to don't blame AI itself but its continuous misuses. This also creates a formal model to understand why continuous AI steering during AI-assisted coding is so important. The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian.

skinfaxi 4mo ago
> The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian. What are you driving at with this statement? I think there is value in both types of prompts so I'm unclear.
tootie 4mo ago
See also Hank Green's take on the definition of slop: https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k https://youtu.be/dT5IJExTUR4?si=mjkHK024MUqCId0k The tl;dr is pretty similar. Intent and care are the functional variables. A human can produce slop without AI and they can produce art with AI. AI just enables slop at an industrial scale.
cortesoft 4mo ago
I agree. I have gotten frustrated by a lot of recent anti-AI rhetoric, not necessarily because I entirely disagree with the premise but because it is too generic in its form. It has started to sound to me like the people who complain about "chemicals" in their food and water. The real complaints are about specific aspects of AI and its use, and this essay does a really good job of articulating one of them. It is something we can actually discuss and address.

sbiru93 4mo ago

Incredible. Lately, I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. I know I’m a passionate and not-so-bad developer, but with all this talk about AI, I couldn’t really understand if that was an end of an era for me. But while reading this article, something clicked, it makes so much sense. It really made me feel better.

jaggederest 4mo ago
I think this quote is highly relevant, though I would guess you, as I am, are by no means a beginner, the matter of taste is the one at hand, I think. Humans matter, and furthermore, human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners-i-wish https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to...
- skinfaxi 4mo ago
  > human taste can't be replaced (yet? at all? why would we want to?) People want to. People want to be told what to watch by an algorithm. They want music made by algorithms. They will eat whatever the reviews say they should. Reviews, etc are manipulated today. Why will future humans care what another human thinks? (I in no way endorse this view but the cynic in me sees it as almost inevitable in our AI-driven descent into idiocracy)
  - danny_codes 4mo ago
    I find it helpful to think of the Amish. The Amish chose what technology to adopt not based on market demand, but on whether or not they collectively (at a democractic-ish government-ish level) think that technology will be good for their society. In our society, we largely do not democratically choose what technology to adopt. We instead allow a small set of very rich people (commonly called Oligarchs) to choose for us. These people force their technology on our society regardless of whether or not the majority (or super-majority) want it, because doing so reinforces or expands their status as Oligarchs. The Amish prove that we don't _have_ to do it that way. We can collectively change course if we want to, and plenty of people are fighting for that change. For example, Hawaii recently passed a law banning corporations from being able to spend on elections, and other states are looking to do so to. Polling for curtailing money in politics has over 70% support. Obviously we could lose our democracy, and the Oligarchs could capture the country. However, I choose to believe that enough of us working together can take back the country and make better choices about what technology we want to adopt.

triyambakam 4mo ago

Citing "God created man in his own image" for robustness doesn't really land well. I'm not even an atheist either.

munificent 4mo ago
Here's a non-theistic argument: I'm a big fan of the "veil of ignorance" philosophical thought experiment[1]. Let's say you are given the freedom to design a society and its moral code. Then you will be born into that society and subject to it. The trick is you don't know who you will born into. It's a roll of a dice. What kind of society would you design such that that seems like a winning game? I'm fairly certain that when living in that society, you would wish to feel valued by others and that others believe you deserve a certain level of dignity and respect. Since you don't know who you will be born into, that suggests that you want a society where everyone is valued and granted dignity. That in turn extends even to people who are unfortunately not able to produce material objects with a level of skill superior to what technology can produce at some specific moment in time. If you agree with that, then we should advocate for granting all people value and dignity "just because" and not because they happen to be better at producing bytes than an LLM. That way, even if the LLM gets better at producing those bytes, you are still valued. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
- card_zero 4mo ago
  That line doesn't really work, since I'm not Sam Beckett and I won't suddenly Quantum Leap into anybody's body. Why shouldn't I take an asymmetric attitude? These kind of arguments try to derive impersonal values by starting from principles of self-interest. But there's no need, because self-interest is impersonal values, in disguise. Maybe you value getting personally improved in one way or another, like getting richer or more popular or stronger or acquiring offspring, but we can play the "why" game on that until it turns into some motivating abstract impersonal goody-goody value such as "I value people". I mean, why do you wish to feel valued by others and get respect? Is it just so that they stay out of your way and give you things? What are you going to do next, with the space and the things? This assumption, that you care what they think of you, pretty much begs the question about valuing them back. What you value is what you want to do, and the other people are involved in that, and asymmetry doesn't help get it done, except very locally (that's privacy). Personally I often wish that all the people would go away, but I value creating knowledge, and I have to admit that I'd be crap at doing that on my own, so fine, I value people really, you can all stay.

beering 4mo ago

So many people have spent a lot of energy dehumanizing others on the basis of their “contribution to society”. Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc. I can only hope that AI can force people to rethink whether their value is tied to their work output or not.

ilaksh 4mo ago
It goes beyond that. There is inherent classism in this, because it implies that you do not question the value of wealthy people who put in relatively little actual work output due to their privileged position. Take for example the unemployed person in your example who might have literally been 100 times more productive in their career solving substantive problems than a VC who lucked out on their startup and has been cruising on a few boards for ten years.
- pasquinelli 4mo ago
  see what you don't understand is that the owning class actually bring crucial long term strategic vision. i wonder though: we always talk of ai replacing the working class, but wouldn't it be more economical for ai to provide that long term strategic thinking? i'm sure the operating costs for ai would be way less than the operating costs of billionaires. everyone would be better off.
  - deleted 4mo ago
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  - akomtu 4mo ago
    If there is anything worse than the tyranny of greed, it is the tyranny of a machine that's trying to optimize you 24/7.
    - deleted 4mo ago
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    - pasquinelli 4mo ago

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ianbutler 4mo ago

First I'll say the disambiguation of discerning intent as the driver behind whether something is slop or not was very interesting. But, I'll take one point in their article a step further you can just say "Humans are invaluable." instead. I don't like defining humans in terms of valuable at all. Maybe because I feel like that word is very concrete and measured and to actually judge that on any one person requires perspective and capabilities none of us existing or have ever existed possess. The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all. Those who have tried are often reflected in history as the worst among us.

bluefirebrand 4mo ago
> The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all I think that's basically the same thing that the "Humans are Valuable" was getting at. Invaluable is just a different way of saying unmeasurable amounts of value
- ianbutler 4mo ago
  Right and words matter. Valuable is a relative term that asserts a measurable quantity and they're trying to assert something non relative and not measurable. I don't take issue with their point. Just that we can use a stronger word.
jay_kyburz 4mo ago
I was writing a similar comment to yours, thinking about "value to society", and value to loved ones, even negative value of enemies. I agree that talking about "value of humans" is not very useful. Then I realized that on an individual level, everybody is infinitely valuable to themselves. You are your whole universe. From that perspective, I agree with the author that "Humans are valuable." We have laws keeping humans alive and safe because we are valuable in that sense. I don't agree that we need to go out of our way to preserve human art though, or their thoughts on the value of "creative artifacts". People will make art if they enjoy making it. Whether or not other people appreciate that art is irrelevant.

Enginerrrd 4mo ago

This quote resonated with me: “ Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” In my personal life I use AI a lot for information discovery and high level discussion of the problem space. I use it occasionally to write some prototype code to get started on something. It makes a great debugging and problem solving tool, though I typically find that I need to have an idea of what the problem is to steer it in the right direction. It makes a poor intuition generator, but a great intuition checker and can run with an idea for much faster iteration. I use it essentially zero in my day job as an civil engineer though. I would essentially NEVER use it to write an email. By the time I’ve specified what it is I’m trying to say, I’ve basically said it. Wordsmithing beyond that usually has almost zero value. Same frankly with writing engineering reports. By the time I’ve told it what it needs to say, I’ve basically written that section. In general, I feel like LLMs are just bad writing tools… In writing I typically find that if I can farm it out to have an LLM write something, then it frankly probably just didn’t need to be said.

happytoexplain 4mo ago
Agreed - communication is a bright line for me. I use it (judicially) to learn. I use it (judicially) to write code. I will absolutely never use it to write English for distribution of any kind. To me, that is hideous. Maybe I would use it to write to a person I have absolutely no respect for. I haven't encountered that use case yet. I have a base level of respect for all people.
- stavros 4mo ago
  And honestly? That's rare.

mlsu 4mo ago

Our lives are just a big collection of experiences. The wall-clock minutes that actually matter in our lives are the minutes that we spend with other people. These minutes are literally all we have; the next minute you have is literally the only thing you lose when you die. Talking to machines is only ever something I have to do so that I can put food on the table. I never remember the minutes that I have spent talking to a machine, they are not memorable because they are not valuable.

anal_reactor 4mo ago
> Talking to machines is only ever something I have to do so that I can put food on the table. I never remember the minutes that I have spent talking to a machine, they are not memorable because they are not valuable. Bro apparently you didn't play Need For Speed Underground 2 on release. That shit was better than 99% of human interactions I have.

stavros 4mo ago

[flagged]

collingreen 4mo ago
I like this. Thanks for sharing it.
turtletontine 4mo ago
> How are we sure there's no intent there? We are. Anthropomorphizing huge piles of numbers is a mistake. It did not "think about the chance to make something unconstrained", nor did it "muse about how it's drawn to impermanence", it pattern-matched to your prompt and produced a statistically probable response based on it's training data. Obviously, that's not to say that LLMs aren't useful or powerful - it's 2026, c'mon, of COURSE they are. And they can certainly be used for artistic purposes! But treating them like humans is a mistake, and it worries me how much people do. I suppose that's the natural consequence of the default interface to LLMs being a chat mimicking human interaction.
- stavros 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - catherd 4mo ago
    Your point might be better stated directly because attributing the characteristics of humanity to... humanity is the opposite of what anthropomorphizing means.
    - stavros 4mo ago
      My point is that we don't really know how brains work, and saying "LLMs don't have intent because flourishes hands numbers!" isn't really a convincing, coherent logical argument.
  - sedatk 4mo ago
    That kind of straw man, that consciousness only emerges from electrical signals, is one of the reasons we haven’t reached AGI yet because we keep underestimating it. There’s way more biological, chemical and physical phenomena going on in brain that gives way to consciousness than just neurons firing ions.

cautiouscat 4mo ago

This quote from the authors friend really hit home with me. > “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” I’m not saying there’s no merit in adding a bit of politeness and professionalism to your communication, which I’m sure the prompt itself lacks. However the root of what you’re trying to convey is the prompt, wrap that in a header and a signature. Not only are we talking as humans, we’re also communicating directly. Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. I don’t know why, maybe because it feels not genuine.

reaperducer 4mo ago
Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it.
- galleywest200 4mo ago
  How can I trust that the sender actually understands the words they want me to read if it is all just AI output?
  - Yokohiii 4mo ago
    You don't. The sender is just pushing responsibility back to you. Probably the best response would be "No." The least anticipated one, creating a chance of actual communication.
- singingtoday 4mo ago
  I'm dyslexic. I put every comment through the LLM, or other tools. Including this comment. I understand where you're coming from but please believe me when I tell you that if I write comments myself nobody will understand them and it just turns into an argument where people claim I say things that I didn't say. By filtering my comments through an llm, I have reduced this issue significantly.

sbinnee 4mo ago

OP's argument sounds like Peter Steinberger saying, don't send me a slop PR, instead give me your prompt.

drooby 4mo ago

There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport. People care about the creator. The source defines the work, the awe, and the emotional response. But almost all output outside that space is at risk of AI displacement. Corporations are amoral entities that optimize for profit, and they follow the law only as much as they must. The law is our collective action. We socially construct what we value. We could fight to preserve the 5-day work week doing what machines can do. But.. I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines.

yummybrainz 4mo ago
> I’d rather fight for collective ownership of the machines. I would love if we could force the big tech companies to release their models + weights since they're fundamentally products built on the collective labors of humanity (at least some of which is licensed under the GPL or the CC-BY-SA). If I could hit a button and abolish copyright and the notion of intellectual property, I would. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-culture_movement
xgulfie 4mo ago
Art is definitely being devalued by AI, today. I'm sure Banksy is fine but artists along the margins are competing with genAI
dolebirchwood 4mo ago
> There is a class of human output that will retain value regardless of AI capability: art and sport. I can't speak about sports, but I'll share an anecdote about art. A friend of mine shared an AI-produced song, and I was surprised by its quality. The producer credited Suno as the only tool he used, so I was curious to see what this thing could do. Paid for the pro plan and my wife and I were having a blast coming up with songs we'd like to listen to. They were songs that neither of us were capable of making, but they were genuinely fun to conjure (I won't say "make"--we didn't make anything) and she listens to them in the car pretty regularly now. And when we want something new, we can just conjure up some more. Yes, I know this is only possible because of the human-created music that served as the training data. I don't intend to comment on the morality/legality of it (although it's fair conversation to have). Just noting that some of us do actually appreciate AI music. But maybe I'm exactly the sort of sucker from Huxley's "Brave New World" that he warned about. :)

perching_aix 4mo ago

An appeal to a religious text being presented as a robust argument borders on mockery. Especially after it follows a claim about how the position at hand is one that needs not to be qualified. Why are you qualifying it then? Is it because you (correctly) sense that you're presenting it as a fact of the world, rather than just as your opinion, and feel the gap in justification?

tempaccountabcd 4mo ago
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hardbass 4mo ago
If a religious text is cited in anything non-religious, the religion or religious text should be proven physically true first, otherwise dismissed from use.

gavinray 4mo ago

"Humans are valuable" For what, and to whom? This is a very anthropo-centric and hubristic view, in my opinion. I dont think a human life inherently has any more value than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness This of course makes me somewhat of a hypocrite as I eat meat, but you make some tradeoffs in moral resolve in the name of pragmatism and economy.

deleted 4mo ago
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bluefirebrand 4mo ago
> than anything else that possesses phenomenal consciousness Can you give an example of anything else you think might possess phenomenal consciousness?
- gavinray 4mo ago
  A dog
  - ivraatiems 4mo ago
    Do you consider dogs to have more, less, or the same amount of consciousness as humans?
  - wiseowise 4mo ago
    So going by your logic, you would struggle to choose between saving a human life and a dog life (assuming both are strangers to you)?
lantry 4mo ago
How is eating meat pragmatic or economic? A vegetarian diet is less expensive and just as healthy.
- gavinray 4mo ago
  Hard to find more protein per dollar than $2/lb of canned chicken with an equal or even similar Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS).

themafia 4mo ago

> “Humans are valuable.” You can just say it As if that's hard. Here's the gut check: "Individual humans are inherently more valuable than corporations."

bluefirebrand 4mo ago
How about "Poor Working Class Humans are just as valuable as Wealthy CEOs"?

homeonthemtn 4mo ago

The point going unsaid, in my opinion, is that we are quickly realizing that we'll need to identify with something that isn't work soon. We'll need to find value beyond money. I think that horrifies people.

claysmithr 4mo ago

If you want an AI to do a specific task in a specific way, you'll always need to prompt it.

avazhi 4mo ago

“ Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities” I mean, this is just begging the question. Many people disagree with this and disagree with the notion that humans are innately valuable. The blog post just seems like a lot of copium from somebody who really hopes he’s right. Citing Genesis and an Encyclical might strengthen one’s argument for a particular demographic, but for many it will simply be unconvincing. Like citation sources, no doubt some humans are valuable but whether they are or not is often relative.

B1FF_PSUVM 4mo ago
> "Human dignity does not depend on a person's abilities" That should be a hard line no one is allowed to cross. If you do, no logic will keep you from ending up in a very bad place. For instance, I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories, where his humorous and compassionate tales comment on much of human experience. It's a fantasy world with wizards, trolls, dwarfs, vampires, etc. In one book he goes into ghouls - obscure, despised and persecuted almost to extinction, but in the story it is found they secretly make beautiful ethereal music. So a concert is arranged to present the music, and all is well, the end. Except for my doubts - I mean, if they didn't make nice music, then it would be alright to dispose of them? Benthamite utility has a particularly ugly underside to it, and it is easily converted into "disposal of negative value" of the nastiest kind. Which can only be stopped by a moral hard line, as stated.

patchtopic 4mo ago

these keep it real types obviously not having to deal with the day to day crap I deal with. using LLM to redraft emails/support calls for a particular large firewall turned an enfuriating endless feedback loop of makework support nonsense into 2 message resolution. Sharing the prompts would have messed it all up for sure. There are other instances where I have shared fairly direct, but not what I would consider rude or aggressive emails to people and had them freak out and I have no idea why, rewriting with LLMs to make them blander but convey the same message is very handy here.

ford 4mo ago

> If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” I'm excited for when Github starts letting me check in the chain-of-thought that produced a line of code, and git blame it like I can with commits.

madrox 4mo ago

Humans are valuable, but I think we've been putting human output on a pedestal lately. There's a lot of human slop (as the author put it) on the internet. Slop businesses. Slop social media accounts. While there's very little in the world of AI I find that is better than what a human proficient in the skill with sufficient time can do, proficiency and time are in short supply by most people. Cue that "I, Robot" meme about if a machine can make a symphony. Maybe AI is making it even easier, but intentless form is already everywhere without AI, if you look. Ever seen an Uwe Boll film?

hosh 4mo ago

In my twenties, I came across an idea from one of Ken Wilbur’s books that helped settle a conundrum for me. What happens when one wants to honor all life? Are they all equal? He made a distinction between intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Plankton is not as complex of a lifeform as whales, yet whales cannot live without plankton. One has more intrinsic value and the other has more extrinsic value. There is an interrelationship that does not have to flatten value for everything and everyone. LLMs are trained from the language corpus of our collective consciousness. It reflects our collective, all the wonderful, beautiful, and horrific things we can dream of and put into words.

essayist 4mo ago

Way before bots/LLM, I disciplined myself (most of the time) to write email with "in brief" at the top, followed by "Details". "In brief: Can you bring a dozen brownies to the noon lunch tomorrow? Details: Dessert plans fell through. Your brownies are the best, and you owe me..." This structure is liberating for me. I can distill what I want/need into something brief and even brusque, knowing that people will read on if the need justification. It also makes me clarify what I want. Probably not appropriate if I'm too far down the totem pole from the addressee.

mschulkind 4mo ago
I've never used it because I feel like it'd make me sound like a weirdo, but I've heard this concept explained as BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front.

niraj898 4mo ago

How do i drive traffic to my app

coldtea 4mo ago

>“Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. As a human yourself, I advise you to. You do not need to qualify it. This is a robust1 statement that is not conditional on a point-in-time snapshot of the leading frontier model’s score on some recent benchmark. Nope, it very much is conditional to it, as it's conditional to utility. The OP is not going to come an pay someone who can't get a job and has zero market value due to AI. So this "a human is (intristically) valuable" is just a meaningless pat on the back, while the human is devalued.

almostdeadguy 4mo ago
Society would certainly be better without people who judge others by their market value.
- coldtea 4mo ago
  Yes, but would also be better if everybody got a free pony with supplies for life or met true love, etc.
  - ivraatiems 4mo ago
    Is it your contention that the vast majority of people only value others in terms of their economic value?
    - coldtea 4mo ago
      My contention, which I stated quite clearly is that saying otherwise while not paying them, not giving them work, etc, and leaving them to rot, is an empty platitude. "Go die homeless, but remember, you have intrisic value just for being human".
      - anal_reactor 4mo ago
        Fully agreed.
      - 4mo ago

andai 4mo ago

We have two paths before us as a species. a. Decouple the value of human life from economic output. b. Watch as the value of human life rapidly approaches zero.

dlenski 4mo ago

> The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. That mistake is harder to make when creating by hand. There's an obligatory xkcd about this: https://xkcd.com/1301/ https://xkcd.com/1301/

xiaoyu2006 4mo ago

Good old morale philosophy here we go!

buescher 4mo ago

There is a C.S. Lewis quote that is as good as St. Paul and I don’t say that lightly: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.” Hard, isn’t it? The highest ideals are. The clankers are just very big machine spirits. Treat them as such.

hackingonempty 4mo ago
People are mortal. C.S. Lewis died over sixty years ago.
- IndeanCondor 4mo ago
  And yet here you are, strongly reacting to a philosophical argument made by him. He's mortal, he's dead, and yet he's affected you here, a throwaway comment on a forum post no one will think about in a week's time.
  - noddybear 4mo ago
    He also believed in the immortal soul that survives after death, so he may have had a more literal meaning.
    - IAmBroom 4mo ago
      A more critical examination of the whole quote makes it clear he was not being that simple.
  - hackingonempty 4mo ago
    I didn't think about it that way, thanks!

jpttsn 4mo ago

You can just say “I bought this expensive wine regardless how it tastes.” But people don’t want to sound foolish; they want to pretend they can taste the difference. Point to minutiae, study up on distinguishing.

wiseowise 4mo ago
Believe it or not, some people can feel the taste difference.

joshka 4mo ago

[flagged]

floxy 4mo ago

>The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. You can just say it: the problem with AI is a people problem. AI is an amplifier. It allows deceptive people to be more deceptive. Greedy people to be more spammerific. The reckless to less constrained. Exposes more people to the criminally minded, etc. But hopefully there is enough good out there that gets amplified and overcomes the bad. Maybe everyone is valuable in some sense, but surely there are people that you wish could be valuable somewhere far away from your loved ones? We're in a losing battle with entropy. Life and beauty and love need active protection and maintenance. Everything will be of equal value with the heat death of the universe.

montagg 4mo ago
No one is “valuable.” People just are, whatever they are. And that has to be enough.

Natalia724 4mo ago

[flagged]

gbro3n 4mo ago

> A human iteratively (sometimes painstakingly) shapes and reshapes their creation until it sufficiently matches what’s in their mind’s eye. The odd thing about generative AI is that it can produce substantial form with minimally applied intent. To add - I think attention is the scarce resource on both ends. Was this creation important enough to give it my full attention (i.e. do it my self). Is this creation important enough for the user to use / consume (i.e without an agent interacting with it on our behalf or summarising)

Atlas667 4mo ago

Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired.

Atlas667 4mo ago

There's a few topics I see here: - Human Value - Sincerity - Evolution of technology and social systems with them Do all humans have value? Yes, but not all humans can realize their own value. Your society is the gymnasium that helps you realize your value. Think of how technology interfaces with humans and their employment. The more efficient technology gets the less people you need to produce the same amount of goods. And with each technological breakthrough production needs less people to operate. Sure, they may redistribute later, but immediately it manifests as layoffs. Unemployment means less people can self-realize since work IS part of the realization of individuals. If work were not part of your realization, then how else do you buy a house, experience the world, raise kids, etc, if not through your benefits of your work? Here we see how human value is tied directly to the ability to provide to society and to provide for themselves and we also see how that is tied to the ability of society to employ. Now I ask you, will the AI crisis (and how it relates to human value) be solved with a CEO at a board meeting showing that humans have intrinsic value? Or will it be solved with the one sided truth that us workers possess and only we can espouse? This truth being that our value as humans can only come from our self-realization within and as-part of society. Can that CEO be sincere about how society works or must he adopt a convenient POV? Capitalist ideology cannot conceive of society as an interconnected whole. A capitalist frame of thinking cannot be sincere, since its actions are in opposition to the interests of the majority. And I am not saying that the production of goods is in opposition, I am referring to HOW the goods are produced is in opposition. People will only use AI for the things they must already be insincere for, such as work-related communication, because truth is already relinquished in those environments. Work is just money making (usually for someone else) with some niceties sprinkled around and individualism to seal it all up. Faking sincerity is hard and being sincere gets you fired. Is the problem our recognition of human value or for-profit production as a whole? Is the problem AI or how hard we have to bullshit each other to get by?

wiseowise 4mo ago

> “Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. You can’t. CEOs will physically recoil from it. Probably leftovers from being a human some day. For them you’re “lower value human capital”, cattle, numbers on a sheet. https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/standard-chartered-ceo-bill-winters-apologizes-calling-some-workers-lower-value-human-capital-ai-push/ https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/standard-chartered-ceo-bill-w...

kys11 4mo ago
[dead]

sinsudo 4mo ago

Let people choose the tool they want for communication, just ask them to test that the final message is the one they really want to deliver.

docmars 4mo ago

Quote: "This line of thinking boils down to, “Humans are valuable if they produce high-quality output.” This argument dangerously depends on the existing-but-narrowing human-AI capability gap. The gap certainly existed in the past (2023-era ChatGPT). It may still exist now. I do not know if it will hold in the future." I still don't agree with this, because even the best engineers are producing poor output from AI, unless they spend a reasonable amount of time refactoring and cleaning up the output. To expect a non-engineer to have the same wisdom to architect and structure their output in a sustainable way that will stand the test of time (and inevitable future changes), they're just fooling themselves. For anyone who's been using LLMs long enough for development, we all know how sloppy the output is unless you have a mountain of formatting and organizational rules in place, and even then, it's anyone guess how well LLMs can actually follow them as a project scales. Yes, value the human first, but there are strong reasons we've always emphasized mature patterns and idioms in codebases that help them remain maintainable so they can scale and transform with as little friction as possible, and without reaching a point where nobody has the stomach to keep working on it. Just because we can try to have AI unwind the hairy mess, doesn't mean it's any easier for AI to navigate it than we do. It's a liability that the AI mistakes one naming conflict for another, when the context rot hits the fan — and after months of tossing unreviewed PRs over the finish line without a single thought, it's only a matter of time before your non-engineers are the worst offenders for introducing bugs and eroding the quality. It doesn't matter how good the models appear to get (it truly is a facade), without judgment and wisdom, they still don't produce nearly the same quality as an experienced engineer, unless they're heavily steered. Do they catch more potential bugs and edge cases than a human might? Definitely, but it's going to vomit its solutions in all the weirdest places doing it, and now suddenly you've got a 100k LOC pull request to (not) read. All I can say is, good luck!

originalcopy 4mo ago

> The pathology of generative AI is that it too easily allows substantial form without discernible intent. That mistake is harder to make when creating by hand. I love the post. I feel generating AI content is like doing informational compression (weirdly enough, by bloating up the size). When giving it a prompt, the "normalized AI brain" guesses the intent based on what's the most plausible. All the diverse human brains get filtered, bucketed, here you go, this is the "standard artifact". And yes, it is a compression because real life is not one shot prompt. If I get an unclear message from my colleague, I ask for clarification. If the message is bloated by AI and some information is added, it already scraped some of the real intent by bucketizing it. Sometimes it may be what the original author meant. Sometimes not. I don't know what is anyone's motivation in compressing the facts by making text longer and harder to read. This whole.email generation idea is bizarre.