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
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 >:(
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. (- _ -)
Damn. Nailed it.
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.
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…”
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
Let me go ask AI and copy the response for you.
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I think there’s an important nuance to lmgtfy or RTFM. These two were clearly identifiable as the kind of - sometimes snarky - min-effort response, and sometimes absolutely justified (e.g. if I googled the question of OP and the very first result correctly answers their question, which I have made the effort of checking myself).
For the slop responses however, the receiver has to invest sometimes considerable time into reading & processing it to even understand that it might be pure slop. And in doubt, as a reader we are left with the moral dilemma of potentially offending the writer by asking “Did you just send me LLM output?”
It is both harder to identify and it drives a wedge into online (and personal) relationships because it adds a layer of doubt or distrust. This slop shit is poison for internet friendships. Those tech bros all need to fuck off and use their money for a permanent coke trip straight until they become irrelevant. :/
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It’s really not that hard to identify the soulless drivel output by an LLM in an email. Nobody writes like that, not even a passive agressive middle management psychopath.
Becomes harder in shorter messages though.
RTFM
This one really sucked post 2001 or so when everything stopped coming with a fucking manual to read. What M and I supposed to R, guy?
The only time it’s been kind of relevant in my dealings is the Arch wiki, because it really is a solid resource. However, sometimes my issue is a specific one and I need more than general information on a process. RTFM ruins communities when someone is looking for support. It’s just an entitled response to someone asking for help.
It’s not meant as an actual manual. What you’re really supposed to do is comb through ad-ridden google results until you find that one 10 years old reddit thread where someone thanks a deleted comment for solving the issue you have.
until you find that one 10 years old reddit thread where someone thanks a deleted comment for solving the issue you have.
I wasn’t gonna upvote you, but that one made me chuckle. Also because I have posted many of those “deleted comments” and wiped my reddit profile as clean as I could before leaving years ago.
I think I’d prefer an unsolicited dick pick.
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.
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…
No love for LLMs from me but, flatly, no. Asking a question is soliciting a response. Their response is not the one you wanted, but it is solicited. It would be like you asking for a dick pic from someone, the penis of whom you were interested in seeing, and them responding with a generated image from one of the unfiltered image generators.
The intellectual equivalent to an unsolicited dick pic is probably spam advertising. A piece of media is being sent to someone who did not request it, by someone who does not care if the recipient does not want to receive it.Totally agree. It’s no where near the level of a dick pic - a dick pic is sexual harassment.
We’ve gone into this in detail in the other threads. If you send someone LLM output, your a shitty friend/colleague/whatever.
And yet still in no way equivalent to a dick pic. Equivalence here is “raspberriesareyummy doesnt like that” which doesn’t exactly meet muster, even for a shower thought.
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.
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.
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.
At least a dick can be useful to create life… an LLM can never become life
But I have my phone’s texting set permanently to respond with AI so I never have to talk to anyone.
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Reply: tell ChatGPT I said thanks.
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.
Edit: To be clear, in communications where I have to sound corpo, when talking with my fellow workers I’m normal lmfao
