8 ms·

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" i

by mscbuck 28d ago

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.

nchmy 28d ago
[flagged]
- jorisboris 28d ago
  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 28d ago
    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 28d ago
    You're missing the whole entire point.
- lurking_swe 28d ago
  > 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 28d ago
    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.
    - chronid 28d ago
      > But it still remains that AI can very much be effectively used either to write first drafts OR refine your own first drafts. There is a world of difference between this and copy-pasting LLM output into slack and email. You can write the first draft with the LLM, or have the LLM help you do an analysis, look at how code works, and so on. But you need to check for the LLM to be correct and you need to be able to articulate what the LLM found in your own words. If you don't you have just offloaded all the work to someone else: someone else will have to check, verify, investigate what could very well be an hallucination (bad context, random bit flips, whatever the cause doesn't matter). Your effective contribution to the discussion will be negative.
      - nchmy 28d ago
        To be very clear, I NEVER advocated for copy pasting thoughtless LLM output anywhere. Literally quite the opposite.
  - nullc 28d ago
    > I think it can be OK if AI is used to polish up one’s message Asking it to identify problems such as spelling, grammar, or general clarity is fine. If you tell it to "polish" many commercial LLMs will absolutely slopify your text with characteristic AI catch phrases and non-sequiturs. Beware.
- coldtea 28d ago
  >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 28d ago
    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.
    - jorisw 28d ago
      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 28d ago
        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
        ModernMech 28d ago
- lelanthran 28d ago
  > 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 your linked chat demonstrates quite well why you are wrong. The sender's burden is a few lines of text "Write me $FOO, conclude with $BAR". The recipients burden is an order of magnitude greater, trying to find your conclusion in hundreds of lines of text. After all, your initial line: > But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... Is concise and clearly understandable in 21 words . I understand your point even if I don't agree with it. The linked chat has 1424 words. Your point is in there somewhere, but now you want the recipient to play "Where's Waldo" to find your point. (BTW: I can't believe just how effectively you argued against your own point! I have never seen someone do it as effectively as this in all the time I have been reading HN)
  - nchmy 28d ago
    [flagged]
  - hobom 28d ago
    OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good.
    - lelanthran 28d ago
      > OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good. And yet, he was unable to do the same (see his link). He demonstrated that he was able to more clearly articulate his point than the LLM he conversed with.
      - nchmy 28d ago
        Again, youve missed the point entirely
    - nchmy 28d ago
- MrGilbert 28d ago
  > But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... From my experience, AI tends to sugarcoat and be very verbose in its' responses. Theses two combined mean I need to peel away a lot of text before I can get to the "real" point as a reader. So while I could use AI to craft a response, and then rework it to be more concise, I wonder if it wouldn't be faster (and more rewarding) to simply type it myself.
  - nchmy 28d ago
    Agreed that AI's default voice is unproductive. But you can set/give instructions. And, yes, it would be foolish and inefficient to try to get Ai to write absolutely everything. But it can certainly be helpful in many ways. What is needed is discernment.
knorker 28d ago
This reminds me how I've had to tell people to try to type better and nt us wird abbrvs, even if it means they can type it faster. Because if you want 100 people to read it, then every second you waste for the reader is worth you fixing up your message for over a minute. It's very likely that proper punctuation and capital letters help the reader, then it doesn't matter than not using them is faster to type. I'm sure we've all gotten that big stream of consciousness email that's a 15 line blob of lower case text, with no punctuation or line breaks. I don't mean every ephemeral message needs to be perfect, of course. Just, you know, readable.
- latexr 28d ago
  > This reminds me how I've had to tell people to try to type better and nt us wird abbrvs, even if it means they can type it faster. You can also teach those people about text expansion software. macOS and iOS have it natively, though if I’m not mistaken it doesn’t work properly in non-native apps such as Slack. Alternatives like Alfred should work anywhere. That way they can keep using their abbreviations to type faster, but others won’t have to deal with them. > It's very likely that proper punctuation and capital letters help the reader Can confirm. Not using proper punctuation and capital letters makes reading less fluid. I’ve stopped caring about posts and comments that do that—if you don’t care enough about what you wrote to do the most basic of courtesies (and sometimes even fighting the auto-capitalisation that’s done for you) then why should anyone else expend the effort?
- bonoboTP 28d ago
  That's a good use for AI. Type loosely and ask it to fix up the spelling, capitalization and punctuation.
  - dnemmers 28d ago
    Fixing spelling, capitalization, and punctuation...that's just a spell checker, no fancy LLM needed.
    - prepend 28d ago
ipython 28d ago
Agreed and it’s more than that. Comprehension, understanding, and validation. It also erodes trust in the person pasting the information. You asked a human for their advice- based on their judgment. If they don’t take the time to validate the answer provided by ai, they literally have no judgment. A transparent proxy has zero value.
- nullc 28d ago
  They're acting as a meatbot being piloted by the AI. Could call them skroders. It should be the other way around-- you give the AI instructions and it does stuff. Any time the AI is giving you instructions and you do stuff, that should be a big red flag.
  - al_borland 28d ago
    This was posted a couple weeks ago, the term “meat proxy” was used. https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/ https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/
  - _dwt 28d ago
    I've been thinking about the Blight and [spoilers!] the skroderiders a lot lately. If you have read Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories, I have also been thinking a lot about "goodlife" when I see some of the things that get posted. If you haven't, you might like them.
AbsurdCensor 28d ago
I want to use this as internal AI guidelines, I am so tired of people in my workplace simply copying and pasting whatever garbage AI gives them and expecting everyone to just go along with it and try to decipher what crap they were provided.
- 21asdffdsa12 28d ago
  Its a excellent competency filter though..
blensor 28d ago
Tangentially I also hate if someone answers with a voice message. I can understand that there are situations where you just can't type out the answer and those exceptions are of course fine, but if you post a voice message or god forbid a video message in a group chat you are forcing everyone to take the time and sit through it.
- mapontosevenths 28d ago
  Literacy is dying. I suspect that's part of the reason some people hate AI. To the semi-literate a few paragraphs of text represent a significant investment of their time.
  - oldmanhorton 28d ago
    I think this is a pretty unfair takeaway when AI generated text is often so wordy, flowery, and full of jargon and abstract nouns. People are never going to read East of Eden or academic dissertations as quickly as direct, simple language either
    - mapontosevenths 28d ago
      It's hard to talk about it in a very general way without being wrong a significant percentage of the time. I suspect we're both right, just on different occasions.
    - ragequittah 28d ago
      I always wonder why people generalize AI writing like this. If it's giving you responses like this that you don't like it's as simple as prompting it to give more succinct answers that aren't full of jargon and abstract nouns. I have chatgpt set to 'Efficient (concise and plain)' in the settings which works well to prevent this. And if efficient isn't enough some brief custom instructions will do wonders.
      - abustamam 28d ago
        Because this is a thread about other people's usage of AI, so how I/you personally use it is irrelevant because we still have to deal with everyone else pasting AI, in which case it is generally long and wordy.

by mscbuck 28d ago

nchmy 28d ago

[flagged]

jorisboris 28d ago
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 28d ago
  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 28d ago
  You're missing the whole entire point.
lurking_swe 28d ago
> 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 28d ago
  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.
  - chronid 28d ago
    > But it still remains that AI can very much be effectively used either to write first drafts OR refine your own first drafts. There is a world of difference between this and copy-pasting LLM output into slack and email. You can write the first draft with the LLM, or have the LLM help you do an analysis, look at how code works, and so on. But you need to check for the LLM to be correct and you need to be able to articulate what the LLM found in your own words. If you don't you have just offloaded all the work to someone else: someone else will have to check, verify, investigate what could very well be an hallucination (bad context, random bit flips, whatever the cause doesn't matter). Your effective contribution to the discussion will be negative.
    - nchmy 28d ago
      To be very clear, I NEVER advocated for copy pasting thoughtless LLM output anywhere. Literally quite the opposite.
- nullc 28d ago
  > I think it can be OK if AI is used to polish up one’s message Asking it to identify problems such as spelling, grammar, or general clarity is fine. If you tell it to "polish" many commercial LLMs will absolutely slopify your text with characteristic AI catch phrases and non-sequiturs. Beware.
coldtea 28d ago
>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 28d ago
  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.
  - jorisw 28d ago
    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 28d ago
      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
      - ModernMech 28d ago
lelanthran 28d ago
> 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 your linked chat demonstrates quite well why you are wrong. The sender's burden is a few lines of text "Write me $FOO, conclude with $BAR". The recipients burden is an order of magnitude greater, trying to find your conclusion in hundreds of lines of text. After all, your initial line: > But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... Is concise and clearly understandable in 21 words . I understand your point even if I don't agree with it. The linked chat has 1424 words. Your point is in there somewhere, but now you want the recipient to play "Where's Waldo" to find your point. (BTW: I can't believe just how effectively you argued against your own point! I have never seen someone do it as effectively as this in all the time I have been reading HN)
- nchmy 28d ago
  [flagged]
- hobom 28d ago
  OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good.
  - lelanthran 28d ago
    > OP's point was not that pasting AI output is great. It's rather that it depends on the quality of the output, and that it's on the sender to ensure it is good. And yet, he was unable to do the same (see his link). He demonstrated that he was able to more clearly articulate his point than the LLM he conversed with.
    - nchmy 28d ago
      Again, youve missed the point entirely
  - nchmy 28d ago
MrGilbert 28d ago
> But isn't that "burden" on others always going to be there, whether you or AI wrote it? That's what communicating is... From my experience, AI tends to sugarcoat and be very verbose in its' responses. Theses two combined mean I need to peel away a lot of text before I can get to the "real" point as a reader. So while I could use AI to craft a response, and then rework it to be more concise, I wonder if it wouldn't be faster (and more rewarding) to simply type it myself.
- nchmy 28d ago
  Agreed that AI's default voice is unproductive. But you can set/give instructions. And, yes, it would be foolish and inefficient to try to get Ai to write absolutely everything. But it can certainly be helpful in many ways. What is needed is discernment.

knorker 28d ago

This reminds me how I've had to tell people to try to type better and nt us wird abbrvs, even if it means they can type it faster. Because if you want 100 people to read it, then every second you waste for the reader is worth you fixing up your message for over a minute. It's very likely that proper punctuation and capital letters help the reader, then it doesn't matter than not using them is faster to type. I'm sure we've all gotten that big stream of consciousness email that's a 15 line blob of lower case text, with no punctuation or line breaks. I don't mean every ephemeral message needs to be perfect, of course. Just, you know, readable.

latexr 28d ago
> This reminds me how I've had to tell people to try to type better and nt us wird abbrvs, even if it means they can type it faster. You can also teach those people about text expansion software. macOS and iOS have it natively, though if I’m not mistaken it doesn’t work properly in non-native apps such as Slack. Alternatives like Alfred should work anywhere. That way they can keep using their abbreviations to type faster, but others won’t have to deal with them. > It's very likely that proper punctuation and capital letters help the reader Can confirm. Not using proper punctuation and capital letters makes reading less fluid. I’ve stopped caring about posts and comments that do that—if you don’t care enough about what you wrote to do the most basic of courtesies (and sometimes even fighting the auto-capitalisation that’s done for you) then why should anyone else expend the effort?
bonoboTP 28d ago
That's a good use for AI. Type loosely and ask it to fix up the spelling, capitalization and punctuation.
- dnemmers 28d ago
  Fixing spelling, capitalization, and punctuation...that's just a spell checker, no fancy LLM needed.
  - prepend 28d ago

ipython 28d ago

Agreed and it’s more than that. Comprehension, understanding, and validation. It also erodes trust in the person pasting the information. You asked a human for their advice- based on their judgment. If they don’t take the time to validate the answer provided by ai, they literally have no judgment. A transparent proxy has zero value.

nullc 28d ago
They're acting as a meatbot being piloted by the AI. Could call them skroders. It should be the other way around-- you give the AI instructions and it does stuff. Any time the AI is giving you instructions and you do stuff, that should be a big red flag.
- al_borland 28d ago
  This was posted a couple weeks ago, the term “meat proxy” was used. https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/ https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/
- _dwt 28d ago
  I've been thinking about the Blight and [spoilers!] the skroderiders a lot lately. If you have read Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories, I have also been thinking a lot about "goodlife" when I see some of the things that get posted. If you haven't, you might like them.

AbsurdCensor 28d ago

I want to use this as internal AI guidelines, I am so tired of people in my workplace simply copying and pasting whatever garbage AI gives them and expecting everyone to just go along with it and try to decipher what crap they were provided.

21asdffdsa12 28d ago
Its a excellent competency filter though..

blensor 28d ago

Tangentially I also hate if someone answers with a voice message. I can understand that there are situations where you just can't type out the answer and those exceptions are of course fine, but if you post a voice message or god forbid a video message in a group chat you are forcing everyone to take the time and sit through it.

mapontosevenths 28d ago
Literacy is dying. I suspect that's part of the reason some people hate AI. To the semi-literate a few paragraphs of text represent a significant investment of their time.
- oldmanhorton 28d ago
  I think this is a pretty unfair takeaway when AI generated text is often so wordy, flowery, and full of jargon and abstract nouns. People are never going to read East of Eden or academic dissertations as quickly as direct, simple language either
  - mapontosevenths 28d ago
    It's hard to talk about it in a very general way without being wrong a significant percentage of the time. I suspect we're both right, just on different occasions.
  - ragequittah 28d ago
    I always wonder why people generalize AI writing like this. If it's giving you responses like this that you don't like it's as simple as prompting it to give more succinct answers that aren't full of jargon and abstract nouns. I have chatgpt set to 'Efficient (concise and plain)' in the settings which works well to prevent this. And if efficient isn't enough some brief custom instructions will do wonders.
    - abustamam 28d ago
      Because this is a thread about other people's usage of AI, so how I/you personally use it is irrelevant because we still have to deal with everyone else pasting AI, in which case it is generally long and wordy.