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mattcomi

Resigning in the age of LLMs.

2023: you type a polite resignation letter into your email client and click send.

2024: you type “polite resignation letter” into an LLM. Paste the output into your email client and click send.

2025: you type “resignation letter” into your email client. Click “polite”, click send. Recipient’s email client summaries the letter back to “polite resignation letter.”

2026: you type “polite resignation letter” into your email client. Click send. Your sentiment is sent directly without first being inflated by, or recompressed by an LLM. We simply communicate in prompts.

“Goodbye, jovial, dystopian.”

16 January at 0:21 | Open on hachyderm.io
30 comments
LeeCookson

@mattcomi this is brilliant. The whole art of creating precise and complete prompts with the appropriate modifiers sometimes seems more time consuming than just writing the thing. Communicating in prompts gets you back to basic semantics and efficient representation.

16 January at 3:23 | Open on hachyderm.io
LeeCookson

@mattcomi or “imagine I said what I wanted to say, and read that”
Or the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by They Might be Giants: “Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say
If there was a me for you”

16 January at 3:23 | Open on hachyderm.io
mattcomi

@leeCookson this is exactly right. Similarly, consider the Apple Intelligence ads where a grumpy person uses the "polite" button on his complaint about a tree. The ad ends there, and doesn't show the recipient's phone re-summarizing it as: “request to prune tree”.

16 January at 3:24 | Open on hachyderm.io
LeeCookson

@mattcomi this whole topic feels like newspeak 2.0

16 January at 3:27 | Open on hachyderm.io
Brian Okken :python:

@leeCookson @mattcomi Unfortunately too few will recognize the 1984 reference.

17 January at 1:06 | Open on fosstodon.org
LeeCookson

@brianokken @mattcomi so true. Though references to it have popped up occasionally in the last 40 years, so for some it’s just an idiom and not a direct reference to Orwell’s book

17 January at 1:08 | Open on hachyderm.io
Ryan Booker

@mattcomi The cathartic method: Type what you really think. Hit polite. Hit send.

16 January at 4:45 | Open on mastodon.social
Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping

@mattcomi 2027: you don't resign. You're fired by your AI boss. "You're fired, feelgood, xoxo"

16 January at 22:59 | Open on mas.to
Pseudo Nym

@mattcomi

Darmok and Jalad, engineering prompts, when the job ended.

16 January at 23:07 | Open on mastodon.online
Paul Bartlett

@mattcomi The last line just made my think of What3Words, but unfortunately it's not a valid one :(

The nearest is ///goodbye.social.custodian in Alaska: what3words.com/goodbye.social.

16 January at 23:29 | Open on fosstodon.org
Justin Scholz

@mattcomi and in the end, communication converges to what the Dutch and the Germans already have - direct communication. But we don‘t need bazillions of electric power :D

16 January at 23:33 | Open on mastodon.social
ko kāihe ahau 🫏 :verified:

@mattcomi @marcoarment NEELIX: “And you, your hospitality, your generosity, your patience, many thanks. My colleague's behaviour, our apologies.”

16 January at 23:35 | Open on mastodon.nz
The Animal and the Machine
UnitedWeStand🇪🇺

@mattcomi
Lets skip the steps in the middle...

17 January at 0:31 | Open on mastodon.social
Ben Ramsey
Joe

@mattcomi We're already seeing things like:

Person A: chatgpt, expand these bullet points into a five page presentation and send to person B.

Person B: chatgpt, scan this presentation and tell me the main points.

17 January at 1:07 | Open on sfba.social
HoHoHo MacGuffin :damnified:
Magnus Ahltorp
jasper89

@mattcomi I long for the day of final outcome …

17 January at 2:14 | Open on mastodon.social
Jennifer Kramer
64 Islands Airship Co-op

@mattcomi oh hey, you speak promptish too?

polite and respectful appreciation

17 January at 4:50 | Open on cloudisland.nz
AnzickT

@mattcomi I break with thee, I break with thee, and poop on your shoe #SNL

17 January at 5:11 | Open on mstdn.social
Linda Woodrow

@mattcomi Oh, as a lover of words, I think this is so terrible. So many nuances, connotations, intertextuality lost. As a lover of good editing (and microfiction) I can see the glory in three word communication. But an LLM can't do it. Yet. Ever.

17 January at 6:14 | Open on mastodon.social
lucie digitální

@mattcomi I think a one line Teams message is appropriate

17 January at 6:34 | Open on aus.social
isol

@mattcomi

In your thoughts you plan out
"I'm writing to tender my resignation…" but only type "I'm " before remembering the new LLM functions.
You type "polite resignation letter", the LLM corrects it to
"Impolite resignation letter", and then summarises it to "🖕"

17 January at 6:51 | Open on mastodon.au
Orion (he/him)

@mattcomi This is a brilliant short story. Thank you for sharing it.

17 January at 7:17 | Open on writing.exchange
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