> So if this is a tool, the fault lies fully in the user, and if this is treated as “another persons work” then the user knowingly passed the work onto someone not authorized to do it. Both end up in the user being guilty.

I am particularly against this point of view, because we as a community have long touted how computers can do the job better and faster, and that computers don’t make mistakes. When there are bugs, they’re seen as flaws in the system and rectified, by programmers.

When there are gaps between user expectations and how the software works, it’s our job to manage those gaps and reduce the gap.

In the case of AI, we are somehow, probably because we know it’s non-deterministic, turning that social contract we had developed with users on its head.

Now, that’s just the way it is and it’s up to them to know if the computer is lying to them. We have absolved ourselves of both the technical and the non-technical responsibilities to ensure the computer doesn’t lie to the user, or subverts their expectations, or acts in a way contrary to human logic.

AI may be different to us in that it’s non-deterministic, but that’s all the more reason that we’re responsible to ensure AI adoption aligns to the social contract we created with users. If we can’t do that with AI then it’s up to us to stop chasing endless dollars and be forthright with users that facts are optional when it comes to AI.

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chrisjj 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> we as a community have long touted ... that computers don’t make mistakes.

No community I know.

Otherwise, I agree.

	▲	klibertp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> No community I know. Everybody in sales in every software company in the world would be part of that community, I think. Some of the devs, too. Software was always marketed (and discussed with normal people) as something that could automate error-prone tasks, thereby eliminating the inevitable mistakes humans make when performing those tasks. Would Excel be the cornerstone of so many businesses if it sometimes gave the wrong value as a sum of a column? That marketing (and the fact that, indeed, Excel can sum anything users throw at it without making mistakes) worked; now we have 3 generations of users who believe that once a computer "gets it" (ie. the correct software is installed and properly configured), it will perform a task given to it correctly forever. The fact that it's almost true (true in the absence of bugs and no changes to the setup, no updates, no hardware degradation, no space rays flipping important bits, etc.) doesn't help - that preceding parenthetical is hard to understand and often omitted when a developer talks to a non-developer. We've always had software that wasn't as reliable as Excel - speech recognition and OCR come to mind. But in those cases, the errors are plainly visible - they cannot be "confidently wrong". Now we have LLMs that can be confidently wrong, and a vast number of users trained to think that software is either always right or, when it's wrong, it's immediately noticeable. I don't think developers should bear the whole responsibility here - I think marketing had a much larger role in shaping users' minds. However, devs not clearly communicating the risks of bugs to users (for fear of scaring potential customers or out of laziness) over decades makes us partly responsible as well.