8 ms·

If some text is AI written as a response to a much shorter prompt, then the prompt and/or sources used to make the text should be published instead (or at the v

If some text is AI written as a response to a much shorter prompt, then the prompt and/or sources used to make the text should be published instead (or at the very least together with the text).

add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
I think of a prompt more like a tweet. The medium does matter. If someone was only willing or able to put an abbreviated amount of thought and effort into something, it's not worth a disproportionate amount my time or attention.
- JoshTriplett 2mo ago
  Exactly. And I think the information theory matters here: it's worth putting in information proportional to the human-supplied input, not proportional to the AI-expanded output.
- paulpauper 2mo ago
  It's like "inverse twitter "
perching_aix 2mo ago
"please walk our observability stacks, our IaC code and config, our cloud account, and our application codebases to gather an RCA for for any errored out request responses we've been producing this week. include a tabulated breakdown." ~actual prompt i sent in to claude last week. doing what you propose would be basically impossible / nonsensical, and further undo the entire exercise, sending all the money spent on the tokens down the toilet. put differently, if you use agents in any actually useful manner, the principle you describe erases whatever value they did end up providing. though since the whole underlying premise is that ai never provides any value, maybe that's the intended result and is as expected. in which case, i'd argue such a desire is more than a bit demagogue.
al_borland 2mo ago
I had to do this with my boss. He sent an email saying he asked AI about an assignment he gave us, then sent us the reply from the LLM. It was verbose and lacked any and all awareness of the constraints we have within the company. The assignment was poorly defined from the outset, and I asked for the prompt he used, because I thought that would be far more useful to understand what he was looking for rather than what AI decided to spit back. It turned out his prompt was equally uninspired... 1 or 2 sentences. That was the thought he put into it, which then had us spending hours trying to figure out the AI reply. He could have saved the whole team a full day by just sending the prompt... or nothing at all.
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  Having this problem a lot at work currently. Every single jira ticket is a novel worth of useless text you have to skip over to find the human written parts. Occasionally important details get lost in the noise because they are sandwiched between slop.
bessbd 2mo ago
I wish I could do a "right-click -> view page source"-like "right click -> view prompt" or like the dark mode toggle (prompt <-> ai slop (expanded)), depending on my mood (although almost everything is in constant dark mode, so I believe I'd look mostly at the prompts)
beloch 2mo ago
The infinite monkey theorem[1] can be applied to show that AI is not incapable of producing quality output. However, expecting your audience to sort through the output from a very large quantity of monkeys is not respectful. I think the best approach would be: "Here is the prompt and model I used, here is the portion of the output that stuck out to me as relevant and useful, and here, in my own words, is why I think that is so." i.e. Highlight the good part of the output for me and, preferably, explain why you think it's good. Otherwise it's the same thing as posting slop, only with extra steps. You thought it was worth posting and I thought that made it worth looking at, but now I'm sorting through a bunch of monkey garbage looking for what made you think that. Being a different person, I may not find that hidden gem and I may become quite frustrated with you. ________________ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
zirkonit 2mo ago
Funnily enough, for me AI writing is usually the summarizer rather than expander. I would usually give Claude 2-3x the amount of data in notes, context, braindump etc; when doing person-to-person communication, using AI to _expand_ the context rather than shrink it is doing everyone a disservice.
- JimTheMan 2mo ago
  The problems with AI text is mostly a 'skill issue' or 'taste issue'. It's a tool like any other. It assists the intelligent, but makes the lazy - lazi-er.

If some text is AI written as a response to a much shorter prompt, then the prompt and/or sources used to make the text should be published instead (or at the very least together with the text).

add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago

I think of a prompt more like a tweet. The medium does matter. If someone was only willing or able to put an abbreviated amount of thought and effort into something, it's not worth a disproportionate amount my time or attention.

JoshTriplett 2mo ago
Exactly. And I think the information theory matters here: it's worth putting in information proportional to the human-supplied input, not proportional to the AI-expanded output.
paulpauper 2mo ago
It's like "inverse twitter "

perching_aix 2mo ago

"please walk our observability stacks, our IaC code and config, our cloud account, and our application codebases to gather an RCA for for any errored out request responses we've been producing this week. include a tabulated breakdown." ~actual prompt i sent in to claude last week. doing what you propose would be basically impossible / nonsensical, and further undo the entire exercise, sending all the money spent on the tokens down the toilet. put differently, if you use agents in any actually useful manner, the principle you describe erases whatever value they did end up providing. though since the whole underlying premise is that ai never provides any value, maybe that's the intended result and is as expected. in which case, i'd argue such a desire is more than a bit demagogue.

al_borland 2mo ago

I had to do this with my boss. He sent an email saying he asked AI about an assignment he gave us, then sent us the reply from the LLM. It was verbose and lacked any and all awareness of the constraints we have within the company. The assignment was poorly defined from the outset, and I asked for the prompt he used, because I thought that would be far more useful to understand what he was looking for rather than what AI decided to spit back. It turned out his prompt was equally uninspired... 1 or 2 sentences. That was the thought he put into it, which then had us spending hours trying to figure out the AI reply. He could have saved the whole team a full day by just sending the prompt... or nothing at all.

Gigachad 2mo ago
Having this problem a lot at work currently. Every single jira ticket is a novel worth of useless text you have to skip over to find the human written parts. Occasionally important details get lost in the noise because they are sandwiched between slop.

bessbd 2mo ago

I wish I could do a "right-click -> view page source"-like "right click -> view prompt" or like the dark mode toggle (prompt <-> ai slop (expanded)), depending on my mood (although almost everything is in constant dark mode, so I believe I'd look mostly at the prompts)

beloch 2mo ago

The infinite monkey theorem[1] can be applied to show that AI is not incapable of producing quality output. However, expecting your audience to sort through the output from a very large quantity of monkeys is not respectful. I think the best approach would be: "Here is the prompt and model I used, here is the portion of the output that stuck out to me as relevant and useful, and here, in my own words, is why I think that is so." i.e. Highlight the good part of the output for me and, preferably, explain why you think it's good. Otherwise it's the same thing as posting slop, only with extra steps. You thought it was worth posting and I thought that made it worth looking at, but now I'm sorting through a bunch of monkey garbage looking for what made you think that. Being a different person, I may not find that hidden gem and I may become quite frustrated with you. ________________ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

zirkonit 2mo ago

Funnily enough, for me AI writing is usually the summarizer rather than expander. I would usually give Claude 2-3x the amount of data in notes, context, braindump etc; when doing person-to-person communication, using AI to _expand_ the context rather than shrink it is doing everyone a disservice.

JimTheMan 2mo ago
The problems with AI text is mostly a 'skill issue' or 'taste issue'. It's a tool like any other. It assists the intelligent, but makes the lazy - lazi-er.