[bubblyworld]

I think this can kinda be explained by the fact that agentic AI more or less has to be given documentation in order to be useful, whereas other humans working with you can just talk to you if they need something. There's a lack of incentive in the human direction (and in a business setting that means priority goes to other stuff, unfortunately).

In theory AI can talk to you too but with current interfaces that's quite painful (and LLMs are notoriously bad at admitting they need help).

[zahlman]

> agentic AI more or less has to be given documentation in order to be useful, whereas other humans working with you can just talk to you if they need something. ... In theory AI can talk to you too but with current interfaces that's quite painful (and LLMs are notoriously bad at admitting they need help).

Another framing: documentation is talking to the AI, in a world where AI agents won't "admit they need help" but will read documentation. After all, they process documentation fundamentally the same way they process the user's request.

[freedomben]

I also think it makes a difference that an AI agent can read the docs very quickly, and don't typically care about formatting and other presentation-level things that humans have to care about, whereas a human isn't going to read it all, and may read very little of it. I've been at places where we invested substantial time documenting things, only to have it be glanced at maybe a couple of times before becoming outdated.

The idea of writing docs for AI (but not humans) does feel a little reflexively gross, but as Spock would say, it does seem logical