I read recently in an article something that struck me as the heart of it and fits.
“Generative AI sabotages the proof-of-work function by introducing a category of texts that take more effort to read than they did to write. This dynamic creates an imbalance that’s common to bad etiquette: It asks other people to work harder so one person can work—or think, or care—less. My friend who tutors high-school students sends weekly progress updates to their parents; one parent replied with a 3,000-word email that included section headings, bolded his son’s name each time it appeared, and otherwise bore the hallmarks of ChatGPT. It almost certainly took seconds to generate but minutes to read.” - Dan Brooks
The question I ask is “How do you justify saving your time at expense of others’ time?”
Haven’t heard a good answer, just mumbling “it can be set to be less verbose…”
The most annoying part - the recipients email client probably offered to summarise with an LLM. My bot makes slop for your bot to interpret.
Its the most inefficient form of communication ever devised. Please decompress my prompt 1000x so the recipient can compress it back to my prompt.
I will say though, even a chatgpt email tells you a lot about the sender.
That’s something I’ve attempted to say more than once but never formulated this well.
Every time I search for something tech-related, I have to spend a considerable amount of energy just trying to figure out whether I’m looking at a well written technical document or a crap resembling it. It’s especially hard when I’m very new to the topic.
Paradoxically, AI slop made me actually read the official documentation much more, as it’s now easier than to do this AI-checking. And also personal blogs, where it’s usually clearly visible they are someone’s beloved little digital garden.
That’s something I’ve attempted to say more than once but never formulated this well.
Did you try ChatGPT?
Funny how people who’s job it is to write can sometimes write gooder than us common folk.
funny for the writer elite maybe >:(
Damn. Nailed it.
I had this “shower” thought when chatting with a friend and getting an obviously LLM-generated answer to a grammar question I had (needless to say the LLM answer misunderstood the nuance of my question just as much as the friend did before). Thank you for linking the article, I will share that with my friend to explain my strong reaction (“please never ever do that again”)
AI and someone who uses AI missed nuance? This is my surprised face. (- _ -)
Question: why does the linked lemmy.today “theatlantic@ibbit.at” show up here on lemmy.world (https://lemmy.world/c/theatlantic@ibbit.at), but there are zero posts visible in the community? I mean - since you commented from lemmy.today, we are clearly federated? I am confused - I wanted to comment on the article you linked with a question, but I can’t find it via lemmy.world :(
Edit: Mhh… it seems I could send a federation request specifically for that community. I have done that, I hope someone will respond to it.
Federation sometimes has a few quirks. Seems like you figures it out though
Yeah, it’s working now :) This was the first time I experienced having to subscribe to be able to see posts from a community. Still weird, but if I assume correctly that this works like the Usenet, if I unsubscribe again, now that the community is federated properly, the posts should remain visible to everyone @lemmy.world?
That’s my understanding but I’ve not played with it too much
Thank you for this great answer! It’s something I intuitively felt but couldn’t put my finger on with the same surgical precision you just did.
Receiving LLM output as an answer to a question, is the equivalent of getting a voice reply to the question:
“Quick question, are you free on Saturday afternoon?”
I absolutely cannot stand the kind of people who answer a brief and simple yes or no question with a wall of text or a two minute voice note. If it’s that complicated, because your pet chihuahua just had a stroke and you then fell in love head over heels with the veterinarian and that you’re currently at the airport to fly away for your spontaneous honeymoon, just say no and tell me about the details in person.
If I got that question by text though I’d normally ignore it until Monday. Bumming around doing nothing is one of my most valued hobbies.
“are you bored ?” might get a response, but better to reveal something about the proposed alternative. “want to do macrame on Sunday?”I especially hate this one in work. “you free?”
Unfortunately, a polite reply is expected in that context so i can’t say “no” (I’m at work, as you fucking well know).The question normally means " i fucked up x and don’t know what to do about it"
If they don’t tell me what “X” is, how do I know where their fuckup ranks in the wider population of fuckery.
I respond to the “are you free?” With “No, I charge $200/hr”
Downloading audio message… Duration: 45 seconds
Somehow, people don’t get that if we ask something to them, it’s because we want their personal interpretation of it, otherwise, we would use the internet as well
Specifically this - in terms of learning a language, understanding some nuances also absolutely requires an explanation by a native speaker that has a really good grasp of their language AND a talent of explaining. Both of which are criteria diametrically opposed to the average slop training data.
But I have my phone’s texting set permanently to respond with AI so I never have to talk to anyone.
Specifically if you don’t even specify its ai, like I don’t mind using it, but be upfront that you don’t know and consulted an AI.
Like I see it happening at my work, people just straight copy pasting from copilot or w/e and it’s clear to me that’s what it is (especially if its discussing things I know that person has never heard of before lol)
I am slowly switching to increasingly less diplomatic reactions when I feel someone is using slop to respond to me or produce any kind of work text. Eventually I’ll probably advance to offensive reactions à la “Are you so f*cking incompetent that you can’t do better than copy-pasting into a glorified word prediction software?”
I definitely use it at work to “corporate” my emails or descriptions for things because my way of speaking would be frowned upon lmao. Literally “corpo this sentence please” or something along those lines.
Well, it’s common courtesy that if someone is asking you, assume they already asked google or whatever and think you might have the answer they can’t find.
That, and for some questions (i.e. nuances), a personal opinion is much more relevant to the asker than some random slop explanation. In this case I wanted to know which word construct in Turkish comes closes to the English “[ so and so ] is [ whatever ], isn’t it?” vs. “[ so and so ] is not [ whatever ], is it?” - Because Turkish has “isn’t it?” (değil mi? = not so?) but it doesn’t have “is it?”, mostly because “to be” is used much different in the language.
A google result wouldn’t help me at all - the pure grammar answer is “there’s no form of ‘is it’ to be coupled with a negative assumption/assertion”. But does a language construct exist to transport the nuance of “the speaker assumes that something is NOT [soandso], and wants to ask confirmation” vs. the speaker assuming that something IS [soandso], and asking for confirmation.
I still don’t know the answer, but it appears this nuance can’t be expressed in Turkish without describing around it in a longer sentence.
I mean I don’t care if they use it like a search engine to remind themselves about the topic if they had some knowledge on it before they looked it up and if they put some cognitive power to go over the answer and absorb it and respond in their own words. But yeah a cut and paste or if they know nothing about it and parrot off what the llm tells them. Thats annoying.
while it doesn’t affect me directly if people use it “like a search engine”, it still empowers the tech bro billionaires who are the worst of the worst of scum of mankind, and it fucks up democracy, environment and hardware prices. So I’d rather everyone just boycotted this BS.
doesn’t using a search engine do the same? empower the tech bro. do you expect people not to use search engines because man. that is just not going to happen.
Not in the same way. People are more cautious (on average) with what info they give away there, plus pre-LLM search engines were unable to contextualize a user’s search history. Now though - yes people should boycott the big engines. Becomes easier, too, with AI slop rendering them near useless.
I mean on one hand, it’s a shower thought. On the other, this is a really dumb shower thought.
I often use AI to break up my ADHD mono-sentence paragraph. I’ll stream of consciousness my reply then tell it to not change my wording but break up the excessively long sentences, and to reorder and split things into paragraphs that follow well. I’m still doing the writing, but having an advanced spell check is actually super useful.
I needed that reminder. It doesn’t matter how stupid a showerthought is.
Pretty sure my boss did this to me today.
At least a dick can be useful to create life… an LLM can never become life
I think I’d prefer an unsolicited dick pick.
I get it, it’s obnoxious and annoying, bereft of deep thought or courtesy. Qualities the senders must possess. But I could go the rest of my life without seeing unsolicited genitals tbh.
… as could I go the rest of my life without seeing unsolicited LLM garbage in my message :)
I don’t quite get the equivalence there. I’d say an LLM response is more on par with responding with a link to lmgtfy.com or something.
The intellectual equivalent of sending someone a dick pic would be a cold contact with LLM-generated text promoting or pushing something that you didn’t otherwise show interest in. Or like, that friend from highschool who messages you out of the blue and you realize after a few messages that they’re trying to sell you their MLM garbage.
Or just sending the link to chatgpt.
“Don’t ask me, just ask chatgpt! What am I, your boss or something?!”
I don’t quite get the equivalence there.
It’s garbage insulting your intellect and personal relationship with the sender. Whereas an unsolicited dick pic is garbage insulting your eyes and personal relationship with the sender.
They’re both garbage, sure, but I wouldn’t call it an equivalent. Especially in severity–one is insulting, the other is sexual harassment.
The key word is “unsolicited.” An LLM response to a question you ask is garbage, but it’s solicited garbage. Like asking someone in Home Depot where the hammers are, and having them take 10 minutes for them to look it up on their phone. It’s a stupid response, but it was solicited. It’s at least a lazy attempt to respond relevantly, however insulting.
woosh.
If I wanted to ask chatgpt I would have asked it myself
Sending SOMEONE ELSE’S dick pick at that.
Sending a shitty AI representation of a dick pic.
there’s that, too…
