[voidUpdate]

> First thing I did was look at the raw bytes: xxd -l 4 "ClientApp.make"

I recommend using the linux "file" command, since it will generally be able to tell you these sorts of things straight away. I've been working on a long-term project to directly import figma design files into Unity, so I've ended up coming across a lot of these things myself

[doctorpangloss]

Tell it to Mr. Claude. Who do you think made all these decisions?

[frumplestlatz]

This is depressing.

We need different language for describing things AI did for us vs things we figured out ourselves. When a human presents work under their own name, there is an unspoken but widely relied-upon assumption that the presenter has exercised judgment over the space of possible choices and can explain why these ones were taken.

In other words, we naturally assume they engaged with the problem space deeply enough to justify the decisions made.

I think AI-produced code and investigation needs a disclaimer, and I say that as someone who uses vibe coding a lot to produce tooling used in our development process.

If you didn’t do it or write it yourself, you don’t understand it as well as if you had. If you didn’t look at the output in great detail and understand every choice made, you really shouldn’t be putting your name on it — or staking your reputation on it — without a pretty clear disclaimer.

And if you present an investigation done by AI as something done by yourself, you’re not really providing human insights. (Almost) anyone can drive an AI, and there’s not a lot of value there for your audience if you don’t disclose that’s what you did.

If you attach your name to work, you are asserting that you can meaningfully answer “why this and not something else?” across the decisions that matter. Tools that produce answers faster than humans think require new language, because our old words still imply thought occurred.

[voidUpdate]

(To clarify, all the work I did was me-authored, not LLM authored)

[doctorpangloss]

the whole blog post and all the author's replies are authored by an LLM.

[albertsikkema]

Funny, actually not the case. Co-authored partly yes, mainly to compensate for my lack of knowledge of the intricacies of English (not my native language). Anyway: take from it what you want, if it helps you: nice! Else: have fun doing something else.

[frumplestlatz]

Seems so. It should be much more explicitly disclaimed.

[albertsikkema]

Interesting that you feel this is necessary. Why would a disclaimer be needed? If I read the technical docs for a library and use that in my code, should I explicitly mention that I got this from the docs? I know a lot, but am happy to admit I do not know everything, so I am happy to use tools that help me. And I got what I wanted in the end: being able to continue with my real work: helping a client.

[frumplestlatz]

> When a human presents work under their own name, there is an unspoken but widely relied-upon assumption that the presenter has exercised judgment over the space of possible choices and can explain why these ones were taken.

> …

> If you attach your name to work, you are asserting that you can meaningfully answer “why this and not something else?” across the decisions that matter. Tools that produce answers faster than humans think require new language, because our old words still imply thought occurred.

[voidUpdate]

This felt like an article of "This is how I worked this out". If you found something out through the docs, I'd be interested to know that. If you found it out through asking an LLM, that would be helpful to know as well. Maybe other people would write that kind of article differently, but when I write them, I try to put in as much detail as I can about how I worked something out, in case it's useful to other people

[albertsikkema]

Even if that was the case: is it a real problem? I am not a purist in any sense: whatever tool gets the job done, I am fine with it.

[albertsikkema]

Thanks, will keep that one in mind for next time!