Comment by drdaeman
1 day ago
Tastelessness aside, it also shows that author doesn’t (or refuses to) understand why someone may decide to delegate a documentation task to a subpar agent.
Laziness.
Yes, conceptually it’s something about surrendering one’s voice and agency to a subpar machine. Or something like that. (Though that persistence-suggestive neutering metaphor is probably a unwarranted exaggeration.) In practice though it’s more like “I don’t want to write anything, but some poorly written document I’ll just proofread to be not too blatantly wrong beats having absolutely nothing. PRs welcome.”
It might be not the best decision, sure. Quite arguably, a wrong one. Still, I find it concerning that it’s sufficient for the author to dehumanize someone, even in a jest of edginess. Like wtf dude chill down, as if the world isn’t mad enough already.
But the problem is people are not just delegating formulaic procedural prose to AI. They're using AI to write entire scientific papers, so now reviewers have to use Pangram[0] to screen submissions. Literary magazines have the same problem[1]. Maybe those people should know that their behaviour is bad.
[0]: https://blog.neurips.cc/2026/06/02/ai-generated-papers-in-th...
[1]: https://neil-clarke.com/a-concerning-trend/
Ah, yes, although that’s a different situation from the linked post, more disrespectful (and potentially nefarious) than a sloppy readme. In those cases, most likely, more than just laziness is involved.
Arguably, someone who has chosen to replace their own human expression with machine words has already dehumanized themselves - although this is perhaps a too-literal reading the word “dehumanized”?
> who has chosen
I very explicitly tried to separate this third-party perception and actual first-party intent. Well, my guess of it, of course - but I find it hard to believe someone decides to LARP Adeptus Mechanicus and goes along the lines of “why don’t I cede my voice to the Machine Spirit”, while “why don’t I task this tool to write notes instead of doing it myself” is a lot more plausible.
Choices and outcomes are two very different things.