Mastodawn

★ Amy Star ★23h ago

i'm pivoting to AI (Artificial Incompetence)

★ Amy Star ★

in case you need a taste of how fucked the tech industry is right now, I'm being required to use AI at work. if I talk about how it fucks up or overcomplicates basic asks, it's because I "don't know how to use it" which indicates a "lack of growth mindset", and thus poor performance. I've been told this directly to my face, starting immediately.

so not only must I use Claude, I have to cover for Claude's mistakes, and then go the extra mile to pass off my own work as Claude's.

★ Amy Star ★22h ago

anyway, I need to pay rent, so I guess I'm a slopper now.

at this point, I want to move to a farm and shovel pig shit for the rest of my life.

eilidh, sus took her home 21h ago

@AmyZenunim I'm so sorry. That's such bullshit.

This kind of shit is why I'm trying to get the pre-reqs I need to get into a nursing program. I'm just done with professional computer touching at this point.

I hope you're eventually able to find a job that doesn't force this kind of horse shit on you. Or if you're actually serious about the farm thing, I do know some pretty rad resources for aspiring farmers I could send your way?

Jeff Grigg 5h ago

@sidepony @AmyZenunim

Note: LLMs are filling the healthcare field with dangerously misleading nonsense that kills people. 💢

eilidh, sus took her home 4h ago

@JeffGrigg @AmyZenunim My last job was in healthcare IT. I resigned in protest because I refused to participate in the provisioning of a so-called "AI scribe" product in provider exam rooms. So believe me, I know.

@sidepony @JeffGrigg @AmyZenunim willing to share more details? My parent's doctor uses some variant if this (and the medical software I've personally seen and worked on was bad on fundamental levels let alone security or any other specific metric)

@AmyZenunim Did I recently check what it would take to sustain myself with trout farming, for exactly these same reasons?
Yes.

brainwashed by lentils 9h ago

@bovaz @AmyZenunim
going from slop fondler to animal abuser is not an upgrade. plz grow veg instead, and watch this:
https://WatchDominion.org
❤️🖤❤️🖤

Watch Dominion

Watch the award-winning and life changing documentary, Dominion!

@AmyZenunim I wonder if this will get tech workers to develop greater class consciousness or no.

BTW, is there a list somewhere of companies using AI (internally or not) so I can avoid them? I really don't want to be taking on the risks associated with poorly-engineered/unengineered technology.

★ Amy Star ★5h ago

@lykso I'm an anarcho-socialist. but I'm also a disabled minority. I already stuck my neck out at this company and got nothing in return except extra scrutiny. I don't come from any appreciable wealth, and I have to pay rent, so Im just going to have to grin and bear it.

The Witch of Crow Briar 4h ago

@AmyZenunim @lykso I’m sorry :( 🫂

@AmyZenunim
But the good news is, the tool isn't free, so you can probably make it run extra hard and cost just about to much to whoever is asking you to use it...
@lykso

Mike Spencer 7h ago

@AmyZenunim
I bought a fountain pen. Communicate the old fashioned way 😂

DJ Sexy Fresh 6h ago

@mikerspencer @AmyZenunim use it submit a hand-written resignation letter as a flex

Mike Spencer 5h ago

@djsf @AmyZenunim I did one in the (nearly) casio calculator font https://fontmeme.com/fonts/qt-eurotype-font/ 😅

QT Eurotype Font Download

Download free qt eurotype font, view its character map and generate text-based images or logos with qt eurotype font online.

Craig Duncan 7h ago

For your sake, I hope you keep answering honestly (and resisting), or find something else. It's not your growth they care about.

Oppression is being told how to think.

@AmyZenunim I don't think they can see what you're using Claude for, just how many tokens you've spent.
So if you just do what you used to do, and have Claude come up with some original recipes for pies in the meanwhile, they probably will never know. 😁

The Lack Thereof

@AmyZenunim
Same.

They're paying for my time, if they want to waste it I guess that's their business

Bill VE7WYC 22h ago

@AmyZenunim Uggh. I had a manager who summarized our reports with ChatGPT, making extra work for us because we then had to review his summary for accuracy. I found hallucinated slop. I told him it was a waste of our time. He actually listened.

🌸 Vårgubben 20h ago

@AmyZenunim I do not understand this. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m perfectly capable of getting things severely wrong by my own accord.

Why do I suddenly (after 20 years on the job) need a subscription to environmentally horrific auto complete trained on theft?

@jordgubben @AmyZenunim There are a lot more of y'all than there are of them. If y'all hate it so much, make a union and force your bosses to make better choices.

@jordgubben @AmyZenunim Re: AI
Grand Theft AutoComplete!

PhilWill 17h ago

Dogiedog64 9h ago

They really are just trying to kill off the software dev as a profession, huh. Even if the bots can't replace you, they're trying to cripple your skills as well. Wishing you the best in making it out of this nightmare with all your capabilities intact.

Third spruce tree on the left 9h ago

and THEN, when Claude injects some shit into your product that breaks it with catastrophic results, you'll get dumped on for not reviewing Claude's work sufficiently well, to which you respond "If I have to review its work, how does that save time?" to why they'll tell you to shut up.

I feel ya. Im right there with ya.

Chris Pitts 9h ago

@AmyZenunim “Here's a hammer. Use it to bang in these screws, and it's your fault if it doesn't work” 🙄🤦‍♂️

Quantum ⊂ AI 9h ago

@thirstybear @AmyZenunim Here's a wrench. Use the heavy end of it to bang in these screws. Get on board or get left behind etc etc

Emelia/Emi 9h ago

@AmyZenunim I'm getting whiffs of that coming down the pipe at [redacted] and am currently hoping to high hell that the bubble goes bang before that happens... I've had to explain to my boss that one of the reasons I'm so far above my "experience bracket" in terms of programming skill is because I don't think in "natural language," so prompting the robot slows me down, and that's on top of all the other bullshit. (And I do actually have documented disabilities with regards to putting thoughts into natural language, so I suspect the ADA could have some teeth if they try to force the issue...)

Emelia/Emi 7h ago

@AmyZenunim ...and shortly after I made that reply, one of my coworkers PRed a giant mass of vibecode. Thankfully it's almost entirely DTOs in a brand new package, so it couldn't mangle things that badly, but it's clear from the comments and (lack of) naming "sense" that he just let the "AI" run wild without really understanding anything it was doing. Certainly doesn't help that his programming fundamentals were somewhat lacking to begin with, though. (I noticed him starting to lean on it a while back and warned him it was a bad idea. Looks like he hasn't listened...)

(I can also Just Tell that it wasn't him who wrote most of it. It's not written in his usual style at all. There was no real thought process, only pulling the handle on the fruit machine and committing the result if it looked like it got things closer to working. And yes, I can tell that just from the code. It's soulless, the thought patterns I can usually see just aren't there)

Kg. Madee Ⅱ.9h ago

@AmyZenunim oh no :(

DoomBananas 🇳🇴9h ago

@AmyZenunim have you checked for loopholes?...

AI is not explicit Neural Networks or Large Language Models for that matter, it's just a branch of all the intelligent machines we have.

Just bring a thermostat to work and call it a day. Thats feedback loops and those are AI.

@AmyZenunim right there with you. CTO and COO have been pushing AI at my work place. The result? Merge requests with a dozen useless commits, and everyone barely has a clue what's what. But it's okay, we've got Claude reviewing the code that Claude produces, not sure about the result? Just keep running it over and over rather than actually looking at anything, wheeeeee...

Yeah, it sucks. There's no regard for quality.

Antiquity/Midnight Spire Games 9h ago

@AmyZenunim Disgusting. This was always the trap: no matter how we engage with these unfalsifiable AI mandates, it won't prevent us from being fired.

@AmyZenunim I have this at work too :/

I'm hoping it's some kind of mass delusion that passes when the bubble pops and no one can afford it any more!

Liv, Salty Dog 8h ago

@AmyZenunim I’m sending psychic torture waves to your boss

Paul - Antifa. LGBTQ+ safe.8h ago

@AmyZenunim I feel so sorry for you! This is insane.

@AmyZenunim this is exactly my nightmare scenario. I feel for you.

Erin Ptah 8h ago

Is "tell the company AI to do something token-using in the background, get on with doing normal accurate work yourself" an option?

(I'd say "something that provides actual value to somebody else", but examples are hard to come up with. Maybe have it write fanfiction? At least there the errors are funny.)

Jeff Grigg 5h ago

There's more than enough Generative AI slop "fan fiction" driving the public social media sites these days.

O‘Mimesis 6h ago

@AmyZenunim Crazy dumb people Claude is dumb as fu€&@ too

@AmyZenunim I just heard almost the same story, just this morning, from a friend in Poland. He mentioned how his programming skills were atrophying because he's just an assistant for the AI.

Which makes me wonder: If you're coding all the time, how will you adequately review the AI code for errors?

DJ Sexy Fresh 6h ago

@AmyZenunim this happened to me at my last job too. I feel for you. Hang in there.

catsynth / amanda c 6h ago

@AmyZenunim so glad I left the industry when I did. (Last year)

Mike Siegel 6h ago

@AmyZenunim I feel like half the posts I see are "I'm an AI vegan if you use AI you are a terrible human being" and the other half are "OMFG AI IS GUNNA SOLVE CANCER TOMORROW!" and it's like bro I got rent to pay so I learned about Ralph loops what do you want from me.

@AmyZenunim exactly the same for me.

Everyday Freethought 4h ago

If gen AI is so awesome, why are companies mandating it? Shouldn't its value just become obvious?

I am reminded of something Tim Bray wrote about blockchain years ago:

" I’m an old guy: I’ve seen wave after wave of landscape-shifting technology sweep through the IT space: Personal computers, Unix, C, the Internet and Web, Java, REST, mobile, public cloud. And without exception, I observed that they were initially loaded in the back door by geeks, without asking permission, because they got shit done and helped people with their jobs.

That’s not happening with blockchain. Not in the slightest. Which is why I don’t believe in it."

Quote from https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2017/05/13/Not-Believing-in-Blockchain

I Don’t Believe in Blockchain

ongoing by Tim Bray

Venkatesh-Prasad Ranganath 4h ago

@AmyZenunim Bummer! But then, how are companies to train their models?

primalmotion 3h ago

@AmyZenunim keeping some stats. Are you working in the Bay Area?

Ugh, getting assigned a second boss and one of them can't even be bothered to act like they are human.

Ari "Two Sheds" Jackson 3h ago

This sounds excruciating.

I'm hearing it from all quarters these days, though.

I cannot wait for the bubble to burst so people can get back to using their own intelligence, their own training, and their own brains to get things done.

As an actual human scribe who takes pride in their work, I had a request last month by one of my organizers to use AI to try to "help me get the notes done faster" -- and was provided with a 31 page run-on sentence full of hallucinations and mispunctuations and zero clue as to who was speaking from the AI transcript to try to wade through. 😡

I gave it the proverbial "college try" and was able to prove that it did *not* help me get the notes into a cogent form faster. In fact it made the process about twice as long, because I had to check every word in that 31 pages against what I was hearing and what I had already noted down.

I requested that I never have to use the AI transcript again. They're free to record it and free to do that to their heart's content for whatever reasons they may have, but I want no truck with it.

Thankfully, it's a volunteer job, so I can do it however the heck I want. I'm going to continue to use my own ears, my own hands, my own technique, and my own brain from here on out.

I would wish that kind of autonomy on everyone who's being forced to use AI. It should be optional, not mandatory.

I think it was my joke about needing to go save some turtles to offset the water and energy costs of the AI transcript that probably made my organizer not push it any further. I'm finding out that most ordinary people don't understand the environmental costs of it! That really, really scares me.

KnowAttitude 3h ago

@AmyZenunim
At least you didn't fall for it
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/23/corporate-speak-study

Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ may be worse at their jobs, study finds

New study finds that employees impressed by corporate speak may be least equipped to make effective decisions

The Guardian

Super Owl 2h ago

@AmyZenunim That's disturbing

Flash Mob Of One 2h ago

@AmyZenunim I hope you're documenting all this out, on paper, and keeping copies out of the office for when Claude breaks something.

★ Amy Star ★2h ago

@FlashMobOfOne when claude breaks something? no, silly! that just means I didn't use it right! time for my mandatory slop training!

Flash Mob Of One 1h ago

@AmyZenunim Of course, but if Claude screws up big-time and there's some kind of data breach or system failure, you'll want to be able to prove you weren't responsible. (But I'm guessing you're aware.)

Billy O'Neal 1h ago

@AmyZenunim It's amazing how it morphs from "this is amazing and the whole point is that it does things without specialized knowledge" into "you don't know how to use it" as soon as it shits the bed.

@AmyZenunim I feel ya.
The company I work for is yet to get to this level, but I'm afraid they will arrive there eventually.
The first time I was asked how I was using it, because it "must be perfect for my line of work", I felt pressured to make the claims of the sales people pushing this stuff come true.
Can't wait for the bubble to burst, which hopefully wipes out the casual access to this stuff.

Tech industry hypergrowth is over and it turns out that big fancy industry leaders don't have a lot of other ideas hm.