It’s not about being wrong, it’s about being ironic. We have LLMs shoved down our throats as this new way to communicate—we are encouraged to ask them to make our writing “friendlier” or “more professional”—and then one of the companies creating such a tool asks the very people most interested in it to not use it for the exact purpose we’ve been told it’s good at. They are asking you pretty please to not do the bad thing they allow and encourage everyone to do. They have no issue if you do it to others, but they don’t like it when it’s done to them. It is funny and hypocritical and pulls back the curtain a bit on these companies.
It reminded me of the time Roy Wood Jr visited a pro-gun rally where they argued guns make people safe, while simultaneously asking people to not carry guns because they were worried about safety. The cognitive dissonance is worth pointing out.
It'd have been ironic if Anthropic had asked the applicant not to use AI for the sake of originality and authenticity; but if the applicant felt compelled to do so, then it better rock and wow them to hire the applicant sight unseen.
It's sardonic because Anthropic is implying use of AI on them is an indication of fraud, deceit, or incompetence; but it's a form of efficiency, productivity or cleverness when used by them on the job!
Doesn’t seem like that to me, after reading the dictionary definitions.
Sardonic: grimly mocking or cynical.
Ironic: happening in a way contrary to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.
Pretty sure I meant the second one.
Sam Altman (2023): "something very strange about people writing bullet points, having ChatGPT expand it to a polite email, sending it, and the sender using ChatGPT to condense it into the key bullet points"
3 years ago people were poking fun about how restrictive the terms were - you could get your API key blocked if you used it to pretend to be a human. Eventually people just used other AIs for things like that, so they got rid of these restrictions that they couldn't enforce anyway.
https://x.com/sama/status/1631394688384270336
Thanks for this heads-up, by the way, I've missed this particular tweet, but eventually got into exact same observation.
Grok, on the other hand, has absolutely no problem with concept of sender both expanding and compressing the message, and with absence of recipient. Even after super-painstaking discussion, where Grok identified the strange absence of the "recipient", when I asked him to correct the sentence, he simply changed the word "sender" to the word "themselves":
> something very strange about people writing bullet points, having ChatGPT expand it to a polite email, sending it, and *themselves* using ChatGPT to condense it into the key bullet points
https://x.com/i/grok/share/mwFR2jQ9MS6uVemgiHokJKiBd (cringe/pain warning)
Well, no. It's irony, but it's only cognitive dissonance in a comedy show which misses the nuance.
Most pro-gun organizations are heavily into gun safety. The message is that guns aren't unsafe if they're being used correctly. Most of the time, this means that most guns should be locked up in a safe, with ammo in a separate safe, except when being transported to a gun range, for hunting, or similar. When being used there, one should follow a specific set of procedures for keeping those activities safe as well.
It's a perfect analogy for the LLM here too. Anthropic encourages it for many uses, but not for the one textbox. Irony? Yes. Wrong? Probably not.
There’s probably actually some other hidden factor though, like the venue not allowing it.
Edit: FWIW those late night TV shows are nothing but rage bait low brow “comedy” that divides the country. But the above remains true.
That's not what the NRA is pushing for, any more than there are Democrats pushing for mandatory sex changes for all kids (yes, this is cited on similar right-wing comedy shows, and individuals on the right believe it). Pushing for a right doesn't mean 100% of the population will exercise that right.
And yes, most venues (as well as schools, government buildings, etc.) will not allow guns. If there's a security guard, police, or similar within spitting distance, there isn't a reasonable self-defence argument.
One of the interesting pieces of data is looking at 2nd amendment support versus distance to the nearest police station / police officer / likely law enforcement response times. It explains a lot about where support / opposition comes from.
Can you give me one example of a valid "reasonable self-defence argument"? Legit question.
I live in a home surrounded by miles of fields. There is no one within miles to hear me scream. Without a gun, anyone could come by my home, kill me, rob my home, and be gone before the police would even show up, if I even had a chance to call them. If I didn't call the police, they could literally move in and stay for months before anyone would notice.
The reason this does not happen is because everyone has a gun. Everyone knows I have a gun. If I see you coming on my property, I WILL shoot you. You don't know if the first shot will be a warning shot, birdshot, buckshot, or a 5.56×45mm NATO. You might get lucky and I might not spot you. Or you might be crippled for life. Without guns, crime is free. With guns, crime doesn't pay.
That's a scenario surprisingly common in rural America, parts of Appalachia, and other very low population density areas.
Now, I actually live in a dense city. There's a police station a few hundred yards away from virtually anywhere I might go. There are security cameras everywhere, thanks to Ring, Wyze, and friends. The city has a ShotSpotter system.
Crime rates are low, and more guns don't make me (personally) safer. Most of my neighbours want to ban them. However, I can understand there's a bias there.
As a footnote: If it were possible to hold clear conversation, I think there are solutions which work for everyone. However, people talk across each other.
Your perceived safety might be higher because you have a gun. This absolutely does not correlate with reality, extensive literature has looked at the perceived/real safety measure. Very rich resource linking peer reviewed research: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-...
Anchoring it to your reality though, have you ever shot anyone invading your property with your gun to act as counterfactual? How many people in your area shot invaders? What about accidents and misuse? I do not mean to minimize your experience and how safe you must feel, but it would be naive to close a serious matter like this with just your perception.
1) Rural, minimal police, minimal government, large plots, no collective security.
2) Dense, urban, heavy policy, significant government, right housing, extensive collective security.
Indeed, it focuses on the latter. Virtually all of the addresses, photos, and stories talk about cities, or at least towns.
I don't want to over-post so I'll answer the other comments too:
1) Violence does not require more than "very few humans" to "like committing violence." The point of security isn't to protect against the typical individual but the violent outlier.
2) Most violent individuals aren't sophisticated. What's more, one instance of violence has little impact. Serial violence does. If an individual robs one house, that's not enough to live off of. If an individuals robs houses regularly, in an area with guns, they will be shot. That's a pretty good deterrent.
For gun safety to move forward, both sides need to understand each other, and everyone needs to address the major issues of gun advocates, such as:
1) Day-to-day safety (on the scale / in the settings I described)
2) National safety (if Jan 6th had worked, and we had a coup; if China invaded; etc.)
3) Rule-of-law (we do have a 2nd amendment, and changing that would require an amendment)
Otherwise, it's simply a push of more guns versus less guns, with idiotic laws being shoved through opportunistically on both sides.
Probably not. The reason we're not permanently locked in a life or death battle against each other is that very few humans like committing violence. It's a pretty terrifying view of the world to think that all that's preventing someone from perpetrating a home invasion on you is the threat of violence.
How many people commit violence, and how many people are victims of violence, are two very different things. You could live in a society where only 1% of people commit violence, and yet the remaining 99% are living in fear, because each of them was repeatedly a victim of violence.
But if you have 1% of people ready to initiate violence, and let's say 3% of people willing to use violence in self-defense, suddenly life becomes much safer for you, even if you are among the remaining 96%. Not because the bad guys would hesitate to hurt you, but because they are likely get in trouble before they get to you.
People often confuse these two numbers. For example, they look at some statistics and think "20% of women report having been victims of domestic violence... oh, that means that 20% of men must be violent abusers", and they don't realize that the statistics also include some violent men who abused five or more partners each, so the actual number is probably much smaller than the 20%.
Can you give an example? Of course you can find 2 people in the US who believe it, and they held 2 comedy shows where it was said, and it's technically true, but I don't think I've ever seen anything like this said.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prot...
And follow the trail back to how they got there.
https://www.breitbart.com/education/2022/07/07/aclu-national...
You can look around. You'll see many other articles like this one. As with most things, this is distilled into more inflammatory posting once it hits social media or comedy.
I don't see the point of this snark. If you don't have any examples of what you're saying, why reply at all?
LEOs are expected to take fire to protect civilians. Protect & Serve is their credo.
I wouldn’t trust LEOs to protect me, so I sure as hell fire am not trusting a low paid rent-a-cop to perform a similar duty.
Nope. I believe that my mindset is prevalent and not an outlier.
Not enough that I think they'd protect me in a situation that requires a gun. Just more than a cop.
Only a private bodyguard can be expected to fight for you.
Observe and Report.
[0] https://www.shootingillustrated.com/content/constitutional-c...
[1] https://www.nraila.org/articles/20210413/texas-permitless-ca...
"The NRA is absolutely in favor of A LEGAL RIGHT TO constitutional carry and permitless carry."
I have a legal right to spend all of my money on Pokemon, (in my jurisdiction) to pro-Nazi free speech, to paint the outside of my house bright pink, or to walk around wearing a mankini in the middle of the winter. Very few of the people who advocate for me to have those rights advocate for me to actually do any of those things.
I am arguing about the importance of accurately understanding everyone in a discussion and avoiding strawman attacks like the ones you're making over and over.
If you'd like to understand the importance of that, I'd refer you to CPG Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
And to Sun Tzu: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17976-if-you-know-the-enemy...
My general stance on most polarizing issues is to:
1) Keep the debate civil
2) Make sure everyone understands each other (starting with myself)
3) Push towards Pareto-efficiency
What's interesting is that in most discussions, left-wing extremists always believe I'm right-wing because I can articulate right-wing views and don't buy into left-wing Facebook conspiracies, and vice-versa. In other words, both sides lump me into "they" or "enemy" as soon as I either:
- contradict disinformation
- clearly explain an opposing viewpoint (without stating whether I agree with it)
- even use simple trigger words
Very much as you did.
It's okay to understand opposing viewpoints. If both sides did that, there are solutions to most polarizing problems -- guns, abortion, LGBTQ, etc. -- and not even very hard ones.
I'm posting a long-form comment so you can reread what I wrote, reread how you read it, and perhaps debug yourself. You'll be much more effective in advocating from your views if you stop doing this.
If you believe someone is intentionally "arguing that it's okay for [organization] to support dumb laws because most people won't make use of them," the problem is very much on your end.
But Constitutional Carry does allow for anyone who can legally acquire a gun to be armed if they choose. I honestly don't mind this since basically anyone can get a concealed carry permit already and these bills just remove the paperwork and fees. I would love to see annual car registration done away with in the same manner, pointless busywork.
So if you're doing a bit on a comedy show or news program that's "what does $bill maximally allow for" then you do get everyone is armed in public without a permit (which again is fine I don't know why people care, this could already happen right now) but you don't get "every child gets a sex change."
> Everyone has a gun on their person with no licensing requirements. Yet at the NRA conference they ban guns.
yet, you claim that it's the late night TV that divides us, while making sure to double down on your misleading statement.
The NRA doesn't "ban guns at their conferences", they have been banned at small parts of a multi-day conferences e.g. where Trump was speaking because that was a rule established by the secret service and they complied for a small part of the conference.
When the majority of a conference allows guns, it's simply a lie to claim that guns were banned. An unintentional lie, I'm sure, but it seems likely to be the result of you believing some headline or tweet and accepting something wholesale as truth because it fit your narrative. I'm guilty of the same, it happens, but hopefully we can both get better about portraying easily fact checked things as the truth.
Either way, here you go:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/05/27/fac...
> "Restrictions are in place exclusively at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum at the direction of the United States Secret Service," spokesman Lars Dalseide wrote in an email to USA TODAY. He called the claim that the NRA is banning guns at its conference "incorrect."
There is no irony.
Sure, some places in the world can successfully limit gun access. Those places aren't close and even bordered by the most active cartels in the world.
Just as a fun thought exercise, consider that to grow the plant necessary to produce just a single drug, cocaine, for the country, every year. It takes at least 300,000 acres, or roughly the size of los angeles. That's after decades of optimizations to reduce the amount of land needed. It's also only for one drug among a vast number that are regularly consumed in the US.
In relation, you can 3d print guns at home. Successful builds have been made from some of the cheapest 3d printers you can find.
You would never achieve that in the US and that's incredibly obvious to me by looking at the gun crime stats in places that do already have gun control laws in the US.
I have no illusion that safety or education is an actual concern in public schools in general.
In any case, its not as if your kid is safer at a private school. Kids are violent, no matter where they are; maybe you remember going through school yourself?
When have criminals EVER followed law, code, rules, or even a suggestion from their fellow citizens?
Believing laws deter criminals is almost criminally insane and beggars all logic.
After all of the accumulated evidence against your belief, you still believe laws deter criminality.
The death penalty doesn’t deter criminals. How could words possibly have an effect?
Have you heard of Australia? https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/03/13/gun-l...
America is the worst industrialized country for gun deaths because the guns are present to enable those things to happen. Countless studies show that the key to reducing gun deaths is not more training, more “good guys”, or whatever else — it’s simply having fewer gun households period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Switzer...
This tracks with:
- High gun ownership
- Strong gun responsibility culture (guns are safely stored, so fewer accidents)
- Strong gun regulation (guns require permits that are not issued to those with criminal records)
Those statistics may not be wholly attributable to differences in gun laws but it seems a stretch to suggest they're unrelated.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-midst-public-health-crisis...
The Secret Service disallows normal people to have guns in the same room where their protectees are speaking. If you want to watch one of the speeches and stay armed, there are other conference rooms / ballrooms with big monitors set up. Many attendees take advantage of this offer.
Like the nuance between sending out your love and doing the Nazi salute? Or different?
I don't think that's true at all.
Being able to gauge a candidate's natural communication skills is highly useful. If you're an ineffective communicator, there's a good chance your comprehension skills are also deficient.
IMHO, an effective interview process should attempt to mimic the position for which a person is applying. Making a candidate jump through hoops is a bit disrespectful.
We are quickly moving into a world where most communications are at best assisted by AI and more often have little human input at all. There’s nothing inherently “wrong” about that (we all have opinions there), but “natural” (quotes to emphasize that they’re taught and not natural anyway) communication skills are going to be less and less common as time marches on, much like handwriting, typewriting, calligraphy, etc.
I think they will get better results by having applicants talk to an AI during the application process.
The writing was on the wall that the main use will be spam and phishing.
You can say the creators did not intend on this purpose, but it was created with knowledge that this would be the main use case.
Like and subscribe.
* Most of the AI you get shoved down your throat is by the providers of services you use, not the AI companies.
* Among the AI companies, Anthropic in particular has had a very balanced voice that doesn't push for using AI where it doesn't belong. Their marketing page can barely be called that [0]. Their Claude-specific page doesn't mention using it for writing at all [1].
You seem to be committing the common fallacy of treating a large and disparate group of people and organizations as a monolith and ascribing cognitive dissonance where what you're actually seeing is diversity of opinion.
I have read that people are getting more selfish[1], but it still shocks me how much people are willing to push individualism and selfishness under the guise of either, "Well it's not illegal" or "Well, it's not detectable".
I think I'm just very much out of tune with the zeitgeist, because I can't imagine not going along with what's a polite request not to use AI.
I guess that puts me at a serious disadvantage in the job market, but I am okay with that, I've always been okay with that. 20 years ago my cohort were doing what I thought were selfish things to get ahead, and I'm fine with not doing those things and ending up on a different lesser trajectory.
But that doesn't mean I won't also air my dissatisfaction with just how much people seem to justify selfishness, or don't even regard it as selfish to ignore this request.
[1] https://fortune.com/2024/03/12/age-of-selfishness-sick-singl...
No, what you are is ignoring the context.
This request comes from a company building, promoting, and selling the very thing they are asking you not to use.
Yes, asking you not to use AI is indeed a polite request. It is one you should respect. “The zeitgeist” has as much people in favour of AI as against it, and picking either camp doesn’t make anyone special. Either stance is bound to be detrimental in some companies and positive in others.
But none of that matters, what makes this relevant is the context of who’s asking.
Are you implying that Anthropic specifically pushes for their models to be used inappropriately as long as they're not the victims of that inappropriate use? Because I haven't seen that at all with Anthropic, they've been consistently the most subdued and reserved AI company out there, barely marketing their products at all and when they do, doing so very carefully.
Your reactions in this thread are understandable as reactions against the oversaturation of AI, but it's not really fair to paint all of the companies with the same brush when Anthropic exists to be a foil to Altman's irresponsible push for saturation.
By banning LLM usage I think Anthropic is just indirectly admitting that their assessments cant distinguish lameduck LLM reliance and genuine increases in productivity.
This is certainly their prerogative but it's still a pretty bad look - like banning calculators in a math exam.
What's good for the gander.... I promise you they will use AI to vet your application.
So?
Have you seen the job market? Companies will treat you like garbage through the interview process, make you jump through pointless hoops, and then even if you get the job you can be laid off at any moment because of arbitrary reasons the CEO made up to get their bonus.
Why should anyone be honest when it goes entirely unappreciated and unrewarded? I can completely understand why people would cheat. When companies stop treating workers like garbage then they deserve honesty.
This is a good example of the attitude that I'm describing.
Your question is close to an unthinkable culture shock to me.
In my values and ethics, honesty isn't transactional. It's not something you practice because you expect the same back. It's not something that you regulate and only provide to others that meet some moral bar that you set.
Honesty is just something you do because it's ethically right to do so.
( Nor by the way, is it motivated out of some fear of omnipotent reprisal. )
Nor in mine, I'd like to be honest 100% of the time. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, and practicing morality usually just opens you up to be exploited and stepped on. It doesn't mean you need to be a shitty person, but you also shouldn't be a doormat.
Bad people don't play by the rules. If the good people let them they will take over. The only solution is for everyone to break the rules.
I think you're more accurate here, fuck them. The reality is I'm fortunate to be an office drone instead of treated as utterly disposable in a gig economy. And if someday AI gets good enough to replace me, I will be replaced.
If you're only honest or ethical when you think you'll get some good back from it, then you aren't being honest at all, you're just doing what is convenient, even if you believe any reward is deferred, possibly all the way to a future existence entirely.
I honestly fail to see even the irony. "Company that makes hammers doesn't want you to use hammers all the time". It's a tool.
But if I squint, I _can_ see a mean-spirited "haha, look at those hypocrites" coming from people who enjoy tearing others down for no particular reason.
Even when squinting I can't see a genuine argument for why Anthrpoic shouldn't be raked over the coals for their sheer hypocrisy
> Company that makes hammers for nailing wood together doesn't want candidates to use hammers during their hammer-making test.
The optics are just bad. Stand behind your product, or accept that you will be fighting ridicule and suspicion endlessly.
Sorry, the thought process of thinking that using an LLM for a job application, esp. for a field which requests candid input about one's motivation is acceptable, is beyond me.
Of course, we're in a free world. People are free to do what they wish, and face the consequences, of course.
In a sense, they poisoned the well and don't want to drink from it now. Looking at it from this perspective justifies (in the eyes of some people at least) said cheating. Something something catalytic converter from the company truck.
Observation/Implication/Opinion:
Think reciprocal forces and trash TV ethics in both, closed and open systems. The consequences are continuously diminished AND unvarying returns. Professionally as well as personally, in all parties involved. Stimulating, inspiring, motivating factors as well as the ability to perceive and "sense" all degrade. But compensation and cheating continue to work, even though, the quality of the game, the players and their output decreases.
Nothing and nobody is resilient "enough" to the mechanism force - 'counter'-force so you better pick the right strategy. Waiting/Processing for a couple of days, lessons and honest attempts yields exponentially better results than cheating.
Companies should beware of this if they expect results that are qualitatively AND "honestly" safe & sound. This has been ignored in the past decades, which is why we are "here". Too much work, too many jobs, and way too many enabling outs have been lost almost irreversibly, on the individual level as well as in nano-, micro-, and macro-economics.
Applicants using AI is fine but applicants not being able to make that output usefully THEIRS is a problem.
This is just experience and seniority in general, nothing particular about LLMs. For most businesses, I would behave the same.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I imagine they wouldn't have a problem with using AI to proofread your responses. That feels like fair game.
But... it can't tell you your own thoughts. It has no thoughts. And if it did they certainly aren't your thoughts.
First off: Since your opinion is the popular one, "sshine reply below". ;-)
Those are not questions I ask.
Using AI is never cheating, you're optimizing for the wrong thing. Cheating occurs in games.
You can use AI, but if your writing ability is so far from what's expected, AI will just make that obvious (sludge). If it's not far off, and you use it as one might use spellcheck or Grammarly, it's like wearing fake heels at an audition: To get noticed. Just don't come on stilts.
sshine reply above is coming from a very conflictual mindset. "Can I still use AI and not be caught? Is it cheating? Does it matter if it's cheating?"
I think that's a bit like lying on your first date. If you're looking to score, sure, it's somewhat unethical but it works. But if you're looking for a long term collaboration, _and_ you expect to be interviewed by several rounds of very smart people, then you're much better off just going along.