[Aurornis]

The subtitle is:

> I already did.

They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article.

This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this.

For the first case, the solution is to explain what you did to reach this point. People are more interested in helping those who have already tried helping themselves.

The second case is more of a social situation with an infinite number of explanations. Some times you have to read the room and realize that someone may not be interested in having those conversations with you. Some times it’s only in the moment (we all have bad days where we want to be left alone) but other times it’s a signal that they’re not interested in discussing this topic with you or maybe even anyone else.

[jeffnash]

I agree 100%. I've been the resident 'tech guy' among my friends and family for as long as I can remember, and I thought that LLMs would be the definite end to all 'blurry picture of computer screen captioned with "what should I do"' texts, yet that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, LLMs made it worse, as it actually made me seem more knowledgeable; I would be the one asking AI on their behalf and responding with beautifully formatted, easy to understand answers, encouraging them to ask me more.

I chuckled because, as a joke to express my frustration about this, I made a website called djfa.ai (Dude, Just Fucking Ask AI), which is essentially LMGTFY for ChatGPT. As one can imagine, the gimmick wore off rather quickly with my loved ones (turns out moms of nerds sometimes ask their children tech questions because they miss their voice). I ended up haphazardly turning it into my personal blog, which I sometimes choose to abbreviate and sometimes not on my resume.

I would never have made it in the first place had most of the people asking me questions been like Yael: seeking my informed opinion on thought-provoking questions they'd already researched. Going back to your larger point about the social aspect of it all, even among my wife and my social group, "just ask Claude" is almost the new "I don't really know" or "that's a tough one" when it comes to any sort of question. Almost colloquial in the sense that it isn't to be taken literally, but more as an indication of uncertainty.

[mghackerlady]

>turns out moms of nerds sometimes ask their children tech questions because they miss their voice

This made me feel things. To anyone reading this, go hug your mom (or other sufficiently close parent) if you can

[Cilvic]

>turns out moms of nerds sometimes ask their children tech questions because they miss their voice

Thanks, I'll to remember this.

[al_borland]

> encouraging them to ask me more.

This part is kind of on you. Editing before sending, or choosing which parts of the response to copy, is an important step.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the solution is to explain what you did to reach this point

It's also helpful to the problem-solving and learning processes. For the expert, knowing what you've tried and how it didn't work refines the set of potential problems. For you, it's a free opportunity to get feedback on your methods from someone with domain expertise.

[Animats]

When I post a technical question in Forums, I usually add something like "Tried Copilot, got useless answer ...". The trouble with asking an LLM is that there are a huge number of people (this predates LLMs) who post answers on forums along the lines of "turn it off and turn it on again" LLMs pick that up as the consensus solution.

[II2II]

Something tells me people's milage varies based upon how they prompt the LLM. I spent about half an hour using traditional web searches to tackle a software configuration problem today, then about another half an hour poking around the system to see if I could find a solution, then about half an hour with an LLM. Not once was I told by the LLM to use the consensus solution of reinstalling the operating system even though it was clearly bumbling around much as I was earlier. (Eventually I decided to go with the consensus decision.)

[zem]

I ran into a pretty funny instance just yesterday - I was upgrading my windows partition to windows 11 and I asked claude if there was any chance it could corrupt my linux partition in the process. claude confidently said that yes there was a known failure mode where if the recovery partition was not large enough for windows 11 it would silently resize it, damaging the neighbouring partition. it even told me what system command it used to do so.

I googled the command and when the gemini prompt came up I said that claude had told me it might be run during the upgrade and damage my linux partition. gemini said "there is no such argument to that program, the other AI is hallucinating, and here is the knowledge base article that probably caused it to go wrong", which was actually pretty impressive, and amusing in the way it used both the term "hallucinating" and the phrase "the other AI".

[BobbyTables2]

I actually hate reading posts that go “I can’t understand/fix this problem. Tried LLM…”

To me, such screams “I’m too lazy to do anything more than ask a LLM. I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas”

Show me you put a modicum effort and aren’t just looking to be spoon-fed the content from the first Google result that would have been found.

[jagged-chisel]

I get exasperated with the inexperience that I have run across for decades. Yes, I frobnicated the frobnitz, I transmogrified the bit twiddler, I wizzled the wobnosticator, (and this decade, I talked the three LLMs), and the problem still exists. What I really need to know is how the transmogrification affects frobnication, but no one has ever touched that configuration.

“Why would you even want to do that?”

I dunno, man, it’s the job I was given. Do you know or not? No. No one does.

I take a week to figure it out, I come back to the forum to post my response, and it’s automatically closed as off-topic.

*sigh*

[theamk]

> Why would you even want to do that?”

> I dunno, man, it’s the job I was given. Do you know or not?

That's pretty sad to hear, and that's the hardest thing about working with junior engineers (or nowadays, with LLMs). Someone made a wrong assumption that a thing is possible, gave the wrong instructions, or simply phrased things badly, and now that person (or LLM) is trying to solve the impossible task instead of exploring the alternative approaches.

If it's LLM, the solution is simple. For a human, I usually bypass them and go to their senior directly: "Hey, did you task jagged-chiesel to transmogricate the frobnicator? This is a pretty complex task and our transmogricators are not trally desinged to work on frobs. What was the task you were trying to solve? Perhaps it's time to look into fizz-buzzing instead?"

(Or alternatively, if I am feeling tired that day, I will simply say that I don't know rather than engage. Because working on complex tasks with someone with "I dunno, man, it’s the job I was given" attitude is an exercise in frustration and will likely increase amount of tech debt too)

[jagged-chisel]

So I went back to The Business and asked "why would you even want to do that?" and the answer is that it centers on business processes that I can't reveal due to NDA. Other technical people dismissing the problem with "why would you even ..." is not productive. Many, many times, I have indeed communicated the why to those I am seeking help from and they go silent. Telling them didn't help me solve the problem. Many times, the explanation is pretty involved and people-heavy and ... not important to solving the problem. And more often than you'd think, I'm just not allowed to tell you.

Now, if you think at the next level, perhaps you might suggest looking at the problem from an angle you've seen before; or that just occurred to you and hasn't yet become apparent to me. Or you happen to know an alternate product that provides something close to what I'm asking. Great, that's helpful!

Attempting to diagnose my client's or employer's asinine process - I have indeed already done that and it is indeed asinine, and not up for changing - is shortsighted, just like many of the neophytes I've worked with throughout my career.

[voxgen]

There is a third case where the other party doesn't realize that the asker lacks the relevant experience to discern good LLM answers from bad answers for that topic.

Same solution as case one though - don't be afraid to say "Claude said X but that doesn't sound right".

[14u2c]

Depending on the question that possibility can be quite rare these days. If you ask “How does x work in this codebase?”, it will read a bunch of files and give you a very likely to be accurate answer. If your using a platform without that context and ask it something more abstract, well, your mileage will vary.

[mlinhares]

Here's the problem, countering a lie or hallucination takes much more energy than asking Claude something and saying its true. Its the same as trying to fight misinformation on the internet, the amount of energy you have to spend to prove someone is lying or fabricating data is very high.

And having to do this on the corporate environment saps the energy and time of people that could be doing something productive by wasting their time answering a clueless person that asked an LLM about something they don't understand, got the answer they wanted (but that isn't real), and now are asking multiple people to prove it can't be done.

Here's an example, a PM decided they wanted to build a metrics framework, to track team success, with high level metrics. They asked claude to build such high level metrics (out of nowhere, these metrics don't exist), it happily produced hallucinated code that said it was collecting the metrics and the PR opened a pull request. Now we have to go there, review, find out is all bullshit and explain to the person that what they're trying to build doesn't exist.

So now we have to fight misinformation even on the clock.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Honestly, I think she feels that it’s a new way to say “GOFY.”

She’s a journalist, and, from what I can see, a pretty good one. Someone that is fairly used to being able to talk to very senior people.

I suspect most journalists get told to intercourse themselves, from time to time, but it seems “ask Claude” is a new way of saying it, and, whether it’s meant, or not, a subtle insult. The kind that people like her especially resent. The intimation that she didn’t do her homework. It puts her on her back foot, and I think it’s meant to.

Us nerds can relate. How often are we told that we didn’t do something basic, with the onus on us, to prove we did? For a newb, that’s understandable, but it’s a real slap, for experienced pros.

[zem]

I fear that it's more insidious than that - that the questions the OP is asking are already things that the other person has decided (consciously or otherwise) that they no longer bother thinking about themselves and just outsource the effort to the nearest LLM

[aprilthird2021]

> So this isn’t an anti-LLM article.

It kind of feels like it though. We can be anti-LLM even though it's smart or helpful or whatever. It's reduced so many interesting conversations to this type of boring redirect to just "Ask AI"