[thunfischtoast]

AI makes it apparent that the only value some people bring to the table is that they have access to information that you do not. If now they fold that one advantage by just delegating everything to AI (which is in the same position as you informationwise), they will remove themselves from the worker pool soon.

[jerf]

If you're in a particularly fiesty mood you can lean into that. "If all you are is a proxy to an AI, exactly what value are you adding to the organization?"

While most of us actually commenting are obviously firmly on the "don't do this" side, for any lurkers who may have done this in the recent past or are considering doing it in the future, I would advise you to consider this point for your own actions. If all you are is an AI proxy, you are volunteering to step to the front of the firing line. For all that companies are just starting to recoil from the costs of AI, AI is still much cheaper than you are.

[hectdev]

I'll give the counter example:

I'm currently leading the adoption of AI at my company and given my extensive use of it both at work and in my personal life, my value at the company has risen as someone that knows how to get the most out of the tool. The whispers are towards needing to get more people to move as fast as I can with the subtle implication that not using AI is seen as less productive or at least slower.

Not saying I know for a fact where all this lands in the future but both view points are at play right now but I would push back that people are just being proxy for AI, they are learning how to get the most out of every interaction to get to the next step of decision making which, for now, is still a very human intervention.

[jerf]

If you are taking AI output and interactively working with it to come to some particular solution, that process of working with it is the value you are adding. The "AI proxy" is specifically about the case where you send a question to someone and literally all they do is paste it to the AI, then send back what the AI said without further work. Literally all they did was proxy your question to the AI.

[hectdev]

Yea, but that's just a straw man argument mixed with a little No-True Scotsman. How do you know those people aren't just learning how to use AI and will change over time to be early adopters adapt and using the tool to get work done faster.

[nitwit005]

If you go back to the article being discussed, the core issue is people not even reading the output. You can't learn from blind copy pasting.

[hectdev]

I'm aware of the article. My point is it may be catching a slice of the person's full journey with AI. When I started using it, I blind copied and pasted all the time. Heck, I had a job interview that allowed me to use AI to build an app and I just flat prompted "build out this" and never refined. If you judged me only from that period, you'd miss out that now I am able to iterate, refine, to build a robust program and can spin off tasks with the knowledge that I need to understand what I'm letting it implement before just accepting it.

[engeljohnb]

Do you find talking to an AI with your colleagues as a middleman faster than talking to your colleagues?

[hectdev]

Sometimes, yes. Some coworkers ramble and give too much information, some leave out information. Sometimes there's a bit of a language barrier. If I can get to the nugget of what needs to be communicated and understood, it can be faster. But also, sometimes just having a conversation/meeting and having a transcript to break things down via AI is convenient and fast.

[engeljohnb]

Fair enough, though my experience is that AI is much more prone to rambling than my colleagues are.

[tardedmeme]

Organizations will become even less about adding real value and more about making the boss feel good about you.

[andai]

So the oldest strategy becomes the newest strategy...

[batshit_beaver]

Always has been tbh

[woah]

"If all you are is a proxy to an AI, exactly what value are you adding to the organization?"

Prompt Engineering

[dogwalker5000]

Prompt engineering is such a weird thing. Isn’t interacting with AI using natural language one of its main selling point? You don’t have to learn an artificial query / programming language.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Try prompting Claude to fix an arbitrary code base better than someone who knows it, when you're a random non-technical person.

Try prompting Claude for legal advice and getting as good of results as Lawyer would if you're a layperson.

Try prompting Claude for medical advice if you're not a doctor...

I would hope these people are AT A MINIMUM screening the responses they get before passing them off. There's value in that if they are, as if they really are experts they can filter out bs and reprompt better than you likely could if you're not an expert - and in rare cases, who knows, maybe they could actually do it themselves.

AI is just going to speed run bringing out the best and worst in coworkers.

There have always been people that did the absolute bare minimum to not get fired.

AI will just make it more obvious.

And those people will be at the front to be let go when AI inevitably kills white collar jobs as it creates other jobs. They just might not be able to get one of those new ones because they rotted what little brain cells they had to begin with.

[embedding-shape]

> I would hope these people are AT A MINIMUM screening the responses they get before passing them off

The co-founder of Anthropic isn't even doing this when preparing statements to say after the Pope has spoken about AI, I think you're expecting a bit too much here.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think that's a must too, but I also think people should test software extensively before deploying/releasing it, seemingly nowadays I'm in the minority about these sort of things.

[mittensc]

I find your comment a bit funny

> Try prompting Claude to fix an arbitrary code base better than someone who knows it, when you're a random non-technical person.

I've seen people employed working on some code bases that couldn't code at all.

> Try prompting Claude for legal advice and getting as good of results as Lawyer would if you're a layperson.

Some lawyers are downright incompetent and don't know what they're talking about / just want your money.

> Try prompting Claude for medical advice if you're not a doctor...

Some doctors are downright incompetent or malicious. You'd generally find that out by vising another doctor and finding previous diagnostic was bullshit and you lost time.

> AI is just going to speed run bringing out the best and worst in coworkers.

It does help people overall, the worst coworkers are probably going to still be there, just a bit better hidden.

The rest just have a new-age search engine to augment their capabilities.

[Tade0]

> You'd generally find that out by vising another doctor and finding previous diagnostic was bullshit and you lost time.

To be fair the human body is immensely complex. Every specialist will look at everything through the lens of their field, as at the very least they can rule out some things this way.

I had a doctor judge that my tonsils need to be removed, but for unrelated reasons I went to two other and both of them figured it's not as bad yet.

The difference between them was generational, as the first practiced an approach from 30 years ago, back when tonsils were indeed commonly removed.

[mittensc]

I've seen doctors that:

1. Immediately said 'Cancer' to stomach issues on an old person. They just didn't care, another doctor resolved that.

2. Eye doctors that would not investigate anything and just prescribe eye glasses and would recommend local companies that they owned or had a stake in.

3. Fake gynecologists that did C-Sections brutally without any experience

4. Fake plastic surgeons with no experience just going by word of mouth taking rich peoples money

5. Fertility doctors doing human egg-trafficking.

6. General doctors forcing appendectomy if under-18s came to the hospital with any stomach complains (they could not refuse, doctor got money for the surgery)

Sure, human body is complex. That wasn't my point.

[sillyfluke]

In what context did you witness all these cases?

It's one thing to know these cases exist because they all have been reported in the news or having made a note of it through separate and unrelated word of mouth interactions, but one person having direct experience of all these cases is unusual for a civilian (ie non-medical or healthcare professional).

[mittensc]

3 would be either direct or friends/relatives with experience and I got involved to help, other 3 would be through news and incidentally knowing some people.

> but one person having direct experience of all these cases is unusual for a civilian

Sure, still, indirect stories I have a lot more, just stopped at those 6

[Tade0]

Where I'm from half of these points mean actual jail time for the physician attempting them, most of the rest (like kickbacks) result in standing in front of an ethics committee.

[dominotw]

ai good cos some ppl bad.

[throw4847285]

I've been calling it the "AI argument from misanthropy" but that's way more succinct. Thanks.

What really drives me crazy is how laden it is with negative emotions, and then people pretend it's just a rational assessment of the world. I was told growing up that if you're anxious or negative, it's just because you are smart and you understand how terrible everything is, while stupid people are happy. Seems like a lot of people got a similar message, and now they're shilling AI.

[scotty79]

AI good cos vastly better than most people at most verbal tasks.

[glouwbug]

Those low quality lawyers and doctors are still vastly more capable than a layperson at verifying AI output

[mittensc]

Those low quality lawyers/doctors still won't care enough to help the layperson.

So for the layperson, the AI output is still useful. They'll know to search for a different lawyer/doctor.

Tool just brings more knowledge to regular people.

It's like discovering search engine 20+ years ago.

[cryptonym]

I mostly use it because I'm lazy on the presentation, not so much on the content. I provide full knowledge and content plan in my prompt. I do manual review & fix.

Someone informed can tell the content is generated. I don't really care, that's still my knowledge and I can discuss content in depth.

[Laurel1234]

If you can't even be fucked to write your great knowledge nobody will be fucked to read it.

[cryptonym]

It provides far better illustration than I can draw. I can focus on solutions while iterating quicker on presentation.

TBH I don't care much people not reading it "because it's AI". It's just work, if you don't need it then don't use it. That fine for me, no hard feeling.