| ▲ | disillusioned an hour ago |
| Heh. Just got done writing (by hand!) a Principles of AI Use document for my (ironically) AI enablement firm, the first of which is: Write as yourself. You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. Communicate them directly to us. Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else, and worse, risks skipping that step for yourself. Even if you’re fundamentally using Claude to gather your thoughts or help you prepare a response, you need to be writing it yourself, in your own voice. Not having Claude ape your voice, or “make it sound less like AI”. You, directly. Doing this will further reinforce your own understanding of the state of things, the same way teaching someone is the best way to learn. As a guideline: for Slack and email comms, this should be near-universally written as you. For deliverables that are longer form and follow a template like proposals, roadmap/discovery work, etc., use of agents is expected but, see Principle #2. (Own the Output.) |
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| ▲ | mscbuck an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| Just want to say, "Copying and pasting Claude responses into Slack or an email directly shifts the burden of comprehension and understanding to everyone else" is something that I don't think I really internalized until you wrote it in that way. Which I think is evidence of what you are talking about. |
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| ▲ | nchmy an hour ago | parent [-] | | But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... As such, isn't the question really about 1) whether it was communicated clearly/effectively
2) whether it should have been communicated to others at all (rather than something that you just dealt with yourself) As for the writer being paid to use their expertise, learn more things etc: absolutely. But they could spend whatever time is required to think about the issue and then still have Ai write it at their direction. And, regardless of who wrote it, it could still be poor, irrelevant or misleading. I'm not defending AI over-usage, but you folks evidently haven't thought about any of this nearly sufficiently enough... and the policy doesn't seem to be addressing what it ought to be: whether everyone is actually thinking, learning, discerning, deciding etc... Ps I passed your comments to chatgpt and asked what it thought about it all, and it missed all of this. But then agreed once I brought it all up. Then it did a poor job of writing it's own response. I couldn't be bothered to guide it towards something more appropriate. https://chatgpt.com/share/6a86cc31-f058-83e8-8abd-3921b518ec... | | |
| ▲ | coldtea 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... Not the same burden. The value of the person is digesting and giving the materially important stuff in the answer (including their expertise and opinion). Not the AI diarrhea. | | |
| ▲ | nchmy 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I made some ninja edits, so perhaps you didn't see them. But it is entirely possible that both a person and an Ai could produce writing that is both good or bad, useful or misleading. You can also direct the Ai to write about specific points and, again, it may write somehing good or bad. I provided a link to a chat I had with chatgpt about this very conversation and it shows everything I was saying. The fundamental issue is whether people are taking responsibility to communicate what needs to be communicated, in an effective manner. Whether the final words were authored by Ai or not is largely irrelevant. | | |
| ▲ | croon 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > The fundamental issue is whether people are taking responsibility to communicate what needs to be communicated, in an effective manner. While I agree with your overall distinction, I believe the scenario you portray is so unrealistic that you will never encounter it. Yes; if I could wrangle Claude into communicating exactly as I would have, the practical difference is of course not observable. But that's never happened, and I've had an enterprise license at work for years. The value in having a human write it is that whenever something bad/misleading/redundant is introduced, that person will learn from the feedback, but an AI will at best have some memory/skill/prompt nudge for next time that might have a shallow/localized band-aid effect, but will never stop doing similar mistakes another time. | |
| ▲ | coldtea 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >I made some ninja edits, so perhaps you didn't see them. But it is entirely possible that both a person and an Ai could produce writing that is both good or bad, useful or misleading. Theoritically yes. In practice: - AI responses I get are walls of written dhiarrea. The one's that don't are from people who write well based on their expertise, and who know to edit AI responses and not just paste them. - I'd rather get the bad/misleading/not-useful response from the person, rather that the good one they made via AI. This way I know they don't know what they're doing, are bad communicators, depend purely on the AI, and thus their position can be eliminated or replaced by someone cheaper merely relaying to/from the AI. | |
| ▲ | je42 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For me, being quite "dyslectic" - LLM generated sentences have the advantage of being spelled correctly and being grammartically correct.
I rather prefer iterating over LLM text than writing it by myself.
Example: Typing this simple text above by myself was not straight forward. | |
| ▲ | bayindirh 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The thing is, I expect the person who sent me something to know about and understood what they have sent me. I don’t expect the other person to copy my response to the same chat and paste the AI response back even without reading it. Don’t be a meat proxy. | |
| ▲ | jorisw 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | My problem isn't who wrote it, but the pretense of something having written by a person while it wasn't. There's something profoundly disrespectful about it towards the receiver. | | |
| ▲ | nchmy 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Oh very much agreed. It fundamentally destroys someone's reputation when they refuse to acknowledge that Ai wrote something. Far better, and frankly perfectly acceptable, to say or have it implied or concluded, that Ai helped with the writing in some way. Still, if you're paying attention, it often shouldnt really be all that detectable because you should be aware of AI's smells and you can edit them away. Though, sometimes I'll leave it as obvious that Ai produced something I shared - eg making a well formatted github issue or whatever. But I'll also make sure to convey that a thinking human was behind it, vetted it etc |
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| ▲ | lurking_swe 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... I think it can be OK if AI is used to polish up one’s message or to help structure it. Basically help with grammar, formatting, and wording. But copy pasting an AIs response to a question? Not at all. People earn a reputation over time. TRUST is earned. An AI cannot earn trust. If you copy paste an AI response verbatim, i need to read everything in your message with a big grain of salt. Imagine doing this all the time as a reader? Exhausting and a waste of others time. If i want to read raw AI output i’ll ask the AI directly, thanks. If you write something in your own words, or at least synthesize an AI response before sharing it with me, then i know i’m reading something that has at least passed the smell test. It’s the difference between reviewing a pull request from an intern and a principal software engineer. | | |
| ▲ | nchmy 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I don't disagree at all. But it still remains that AI can very much be effectively used either to write first drafts OR refine your own first drafts. Though, I think such a writing partner can only really be useful if you know how to write yourself, which also requires knowing how to think (because writing is really just thinking). So, again, in the end all that really matters is whether you are effectively communicating what needs to be communicated, Ai-assisted or not. It's quite apparent to other thinking people when someone is not doing that, and that hurts their reputation, undermines trust and ultimately leads to losing your job, connections etc... So, again, the policy really should just be something to the effect of "you're being paid to help us be effective and correct. If you can't do that, we don't need you. Take that into consideration with regards to the tools that you use.". That's obviously not an adequate policy - Ai could surely be helpful in polishing it! But it most definitely couldn't get to the root of the matter on its own. |
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| ▲ | jorisboris 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | You bring up a good point. Maybe it doesn't matter whether an ai or a person wrote it, as long as it is concise. And because most ai's are not concise we blame ai's for faults we don't like in humans either: being longwinding | | |
| ▲ | nchmy 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Well, I'd say concision is not the key - sometimes you should be verbose or something else. In fact, my tendency is to be far too long-winded, with lots of perhaps-unnecessary parantheticals etc. Ai is often shockingly useful at reining me in and focusing on the issue at hand, as well as removing my worst tendencies towards meanness etc... Im a good writer, when I want to be. But having Ai review, edit, write drafts etc undoubtedly makes me a better writer/communicator. But only because I'm actively thinking about it all, rather than just saying "respond to this" and then providing copy pasta. | |
| ▲ | Hugsbox 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're missing the whole entire point. |
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| ▲ | beklein 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Thanks for sharing your thoughts. One of the best frameworks I have encountered, and one I point people to whenever I can, is the AI Fluency framework by Anthropic, Prof. Joseph Feller (University College Cork), and Prof. Rick Dakan (Ringling College): https://www.anthropic.com/learn/claude-for-you This framework provides a more abstract way of thinking when working with AI systems. Especially valuable to me is the pattern of the 4 D's: Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence, which I have now internalized whenever I use AI systems. It helps me understand my own and others' (mis)use of AI systems a bit better. |
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| ▲ | numlock86 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nice. This is exactly how I mostly use AI. Doesn't matter if it's code or an e-mail. I have the AI do the tedious work of ... well, uh, "working", and then ideally learn from it and then transform it into my own work, as I would have done it without AI, but just being much faster now. It also establishes a natural threshold of time/work ratio for me that keeps me from using AI for every little thing. Also it feels like I am learning something new with every prompt/response. |
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| ▲ | altmanaltman 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why write all that when just: we do not use AI in client or intercompany communications? Like is your insight that copying and pasting something is not understanding it? Do people seriously not known this? There is no need to Socrates when writing policy docs. Maybe this is why people ignore reading your actual voice messages that you feel a need to also justify this basic request. Sometimes the human voice thinks too highly of itself also. |
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| ▲ | mmikeff 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Any chance you would publish that guide and share here? |
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| ▲ | Pentamerous 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Seconding this request... Our team is going through AI adoption without a clear direction and we're getting to the point we need to sit and come up with some guidelines. It would be awesome to have some human-made examples as inspiration |
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| ▲ | Grimburger 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Am I the only one suspicious of your comment? > Write as yourself. Unless it's your first day on HN (it's not 2008 account), most people use paragraphs and sentences longer than 2-5 words. Something like "You, directly." in the middle of all that has a certain vibe to it. > Copying and pasting Claude responses... directly shifts the burden of comprehension Most definitely. The problem is we live in a world where people try to pass off copy pastes as their own all the time, many even smart enough to remove the em-dashes now. So I don't think that's going away soon. Your first sentence seems human, the rest doesn't match the tone at all. |
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| ▲ | keybored 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > You’re being paid for your expertise and insights. For purposes of training the AI (enablement firm)? |
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| ▲ | thewhitetulip an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It's sad that there is a chance people put your guide into AI and ask it to "summarize" |
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