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telyesterday at 8:22 PM3 repliesview on HN

I'm not able to judge this for content, but it feels frustrating to read something so obviously Claude-authored as being written "by" Jude Gomila. It's interesting to see the (presumed correct) reduction in this bound and this presentation is pretty compelling. I learned a bit about the Polymath 15 project from this post and I enjoyed that a lot.

That said, I have no idea what contribution may have been done by Mr. Gomila or not. I don't know if I can ask him for more details. Even if he wrote the whole thing (and either has deeply internalized Claude's voice or had it edited and rewritten by an agent) it's difficult to believe that he's the sort of expert I'd expect of someone who had actually done all this work.

This is basically the same feeling I have about vibe code contributors.


Replies

abeppuyesterday at 9:25 PM

So, maybe this is not quite a fair analogy but a lot of famous modern artists don't do a lot of the actual execution of their work. If Jeff Koons relies on a team of artisans and technicians to make a balloon dog, and if Dale Chihuly depends on a workshop of glass blowers to make a chandelier, and if Paul Cummins used a team of ceramicists to make poppies, what did the headlining artist contribute? Not everything, certainly, but also not nothing. Ideas, vision, feedback, guidance?

I think we're used to the idea in math of generally every idea coming from a specific contributing human. In code, maybe less so, but still we generally we find it useful to attribute at least _lines_ to who touched them last. But maybe, if Claude were just less annoying in the prose it made, and could better imitate an actual human, we'd be able to get used to the idea of humans claiming credit for something that the human guided the software to create?

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koliberyesterday at 8:40 PM

He posted it. That’s some of the work you question. Presumably he queried the AI and led it in some way. That’s also work.

As far as the exact breakdown we will never know. But questioning the authorship in a way that leads us to believe that the author did nothing is wrong.

drxyesterday at 9:43 PM

Personally I found it pleasant to read. Why does it matter if/how much AI was used to write it if the end result is great?

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