Website urges workers to stop pasting unedited AI responses to colleagues
A viral guide argues that sharing raw chatbot outputs undermines your value and disrespects the asker.
What to know
- A viral website argues that pasting unedited AI responses to colleagues wastes their time and signals you added no value—they could have asked the AI themselves.
- Workplace examples support the complaint: unreviewed AI PR comments degrade code, incorrect AI answers waste time, and reading AI-generated emails feels like wasted effort.
- Critics counter that the real problem is lazy questions, not lazy answers; some colleagues communicate better after using AI to organize their thoughts, and long-form responses serve reproducibility and complexity.
- The debate exposes tension over what communication norms should be: strict rules (never paste AI), transparent labeling (mark AI content clearly), or context-dependent standards (startup-friendly vs. executive environments).
The dispute Is the problem that pasted AI is too long and generic (need human judgment applied), or that people ask lazy questions to begin with (AI actually improves communication by adding context)? And for technical/scientific work, are detailed replies always bad or sometimes necessary? · positions read across 62 posts and comments
Unedited AI pasting is lazy and disrespectful; add your own judgment or don't respond.
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“I have a colleague who just paste PR reviews unedited and unread into git. It has been driving people insane…”
nhowar · Hacker News
The real problem is people ask lazy questions without context; AI-assisted responses often clarify better than the asker communicated.
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“The complaint here is about lazy answers. But what about all the lazy questions? … People can't read your mind or might not get the full context of your question.”
jillesvangurp · Hacker News
Long-form communication is necessary for technical, scientific, and complex work; the issue is lack of human judgment, not length.
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“I disagree as a general rule as much of my work is scientific and technical and long replies are more useful than talking as having things written down makes things reproducible and shareable.”
prepend · Hacker News
Transparent marking and selective use of AI output (as supporting detail, not the full answer) is a workable middle ground.
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“If I spent an hour or two going back and forth with an LLM, I will write my understanding of the issue… Then at the end I'll put 'This is what [llm name] said:' and paste in the detailed ai summary…”
dec0dedab0de · Hacker News
“I did not use any AI… Every word was my own. I notified my other stakeholders - "here's my analysis, none of it was written with ai". It sounds silly to say, and I worried others could take it as an attack. But I needed to communicate "This is a long document but its actually worth reading".”
klm127, HN commenter · Hacker News
pjerem Creator of dontpastetheai.com
The record 2 articles and posts · last 30 days
What people are saying 24 voices from 1 site · best of 62 · verbatim
- If an AI-generated response was indistinguishable from a human's answer and perfectly correct, would pasting it still be wrong?
- How much does context matter—is the problem the same in startup cultures (where it may be acceptable) vs. corporate or academic settings (where it's seen as lazy)?
- What's the difference between pasting an AI answer and forwarding a relevant StackOverflow post or technical article?
- Aug 20
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Is the problem that the response sounds like AI? Or the response is incorrect? Or too verbose? Or a mix of all three or something else?What if the response was perfect and sounded exactly like your colleague. Would you care if it was AI generated then?I think there could be a world where a colleague could just ask its (finely tuned) AI tool of…
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> that talking to people is almost always the better choice when you get tempted to write a long reply.I’ve heard this “conclusion” from many people over my career. I disagree as a general rule as much of my work is scientific and technical and long replies are more useful than talking as having things written down makes things reproducible and…
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I beg to differ. I'll often do a short LLM session to figure out an issue and will use my existing knowledge and experience to drive the LLM towards some solution. When the answer seems legit enough, I'll copy it back to the one asking.It's not that different to what we were doing back in the day when search engines were still useful. I often…
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I get questions about academic papers I've written from non-academics sometimes. It's fun, I like that people are reading. However, some of them are clearly written by AI. I typically answer anyway, but on my most recent, I appended at the end:> P.S. I intuit, and Pangram agrees, that this last email was AI-generated (and apparently so was the…
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> The person on the other side has the same tools you do. If they wanted the generic answer, they would have gotten it in four seconds. They asked you because they wanted your take on it... Your context, your taste, your judgement.I beg to differ. Most of my life, as “the computer guy” — basically since I was a kid — I’ve always been surprised by…
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> Back in the day I learned the hard way that sending a long reply to an email just ensures the other side won't read it. You can't assume that you dealt with their request effectively that wayThen I guess you didn't deal with much of the empty-headed-managment type much.I learned a different lesson: Write a long email that took time to reason and…
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Ever since my boss has transitioned to doing code reviews by AI and off loading his brain fully to AI, I could just use my AI to do the same to fix the things and I no longer have to deal with petty design arguments. I no longer have to deal with stylistic problems and that's great. When somebody offloads their communication to AI, it's easy to…
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If I spent an hour or two going back and forth with an LLM, I will write my understanding of the issue, and what I think it means for us. Then at the end I'll put "This is what [llm name] said:" and paste in the detailed ai summary at the end. I think that is the most honest, and effective way to do it.Before an LLM, I would have worked for much…
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Well not sure if I agree fully. On one hand it does make a lot of sense to process and answer w/ your own words. But, sometimes if what the agent says make sense and you just want to handoff findings that is also fine - I legit don't feel the need to be super strict. In startup environment where people are more chill about this, this seems totally…
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The complaint here is about lazy answers. But what about all the lazy questions?What's the equivalent of "Google it yourself" these days? When you ask something of somebody, the expectation of the other side to drop everything and do work for you isn't always appropriate/balanced/appreciated.The underlying problem here is that communication is…
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I recently wrote an analysis for a proposal my company was working on.I did not use any AI. I had a couple conversations with agents while mulling some approaches, but they never edited my work nor did I have any chat open while I wrote. Every word was my own.I notified my other stakeholders - "here's my analysis, none of it was written with ai"…
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Here's what Claude said:There's a delicious irony in pasting dontpastetheai.com into an AI chat, and I choose to believe that's deliberate.It's well written though. The parody answer in the middle is the sharpest part — "this mild Google search you could've done in 3 seconds" — because it nails the exact texture of unedited model output: the fake…
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Had an offshore dev respond to me with copy pasted Claude response for the first time the other day.My reaction was of immediate visceral disgust.I can say in no uncertain terms that I do not care if your English is completely broken. I prefer that over AI slop. You will not improve your writing and language proficiency if you do not practice…
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> (1) Just read what it gave you, (2) then write your own take on itcompletely agree except a crucial step is missing here:(1.5) validate the accuracy/truth/relevance of ityour own sincere and human take on rubbish will still be rubbish. validating is indeed the more uncomfortable/demanding task here but if you omit it you become just a "human ai…
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The problem with AI is deeper than this, though. The anchoring effect[1] is stronger than most people realize. It's hubris to think that you can read AI output and then come up with your own ideas. The human brain simply doesn't work that way. We anchor to the first idea we come across, and it immediately becomes difficult to change our minds.The…
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AI;DR This is the broader symptom of a global toxic corporate culture.We are afraid that one badly phrased message can hurt our reputation or even our jobs, so optimizing every message with softer wording, more political correctness, less directness is safer.But the real problem is the culture underneath it. If people are constantly worried about…
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I have a colleague who just paste PR reviews unedited and unread into git. It has been driving people insane and, when people do inplement what it say, straight up degrading the codebase.This is exactly what I have been feeling in response to this person. They are not contributing. They are creating work for others by pasting every possible…
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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-youThis framework provides a more abstract way of…
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Sorry this website is too polite.DO NOT FUCKING PASTE AI RESPONSES TO ME, EVER, PERIOD.When someone tells me they "talked to Claude" they sound retarded. Just tell me you looked into it, and I fucking swear to god if you just took what Claude said verbatim and do not understand the problem then you are a cunt and I will stop working with you.When…
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I remember back in the day when you could apply this to Google search results. When I was freelancing, I had a number of people I worked with who would fire off fast questions, but they would still pay me for my time. Then I would return what was essentially a Google search result shortly after. Yes, I would send my own answer, not some paste from…
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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…
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I’m not convinced tbh, a lot of my colleagues messages are “x broken” or “I do y” … no context whatsoever, and then I have to coax their context for making these decisions.Since people started using Claude now I get full context of everything… might be too much sure, but to be honest over-communicating seems better than under-communicating - sure…
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yes, its all ai writing. A bunch of the metaphors here dont make sense."read it all, yes even the bullets. especially the bullets"if you read one thing from a large wall of text, its gonna be the bullet points, right? thats a big part of what they're for?"It is the conversational equivalent of forwarding the email."this is a terrible metaphor. it…
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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…