Haven't you already received answers to a question like "Claude says" followed by technical jargon worthy of a Silicon Valley startup founder? It happened to me, and my first reaction was "Thanks, but I can ask Claude myself."
There's now a name for this. I came across an article by Niklas Göhring that introduces the concept of "Meat Proxy."
By that he means people who purely relay and rely on Claude, without bothering to question it, or even bring any thought to the process. They don't actually write, and most likely don't even know the content of what they're passing along. Their only value becomes the physical act, though today perfectly replaceable, of copying and pasting.
Reading AI is exhausting, no question about it. I spend my days fighting to get it to drop its em dashes and simplify its vocabulary, without turning it into mush. The balance is all the harder because everyone has their preferences. Ultra-technical jargon doesn't bother me when it's a field I master, but the moment it steps outside my comfort zone, I'm lost.
I understand the temptation. Why write when Claude has all the documentation? Except I've done it, and nothing frustrated me more than spending twenty minutes getting it to say something I could have written in five.
AI can compile information into digestible lists and provide detail when needed. But chances are it doesn't know as much about your audience as you do. Context has to be fed in at the start or mid-session; the details about your interlocutor are part of the thousands of subliminal cues we unconsciously accumulate every day.
David Brooks put it well: when intelligence becomes abundant, it's volition that becomes valuable. Our value is no longer in possessing information, it's in being able to transmit it, knowing what deserves to be said and what doesn't. What might be useful, what's necessary, what's superfluous. Nobody doubts the quality of Claude's answer, but just as an encyclopedia is very interesting, you don't need to differentiate cloud types when someone asks for the temperature. It's your personal filter and your judgment to deliver only what's necessary that become valuable.
That filter doesn't just protect your value, either. Greg Brockman (co-founder of OpenAI) raised a point along the same lines. Many employees connected GPT to their Slack and used this automated system to ask colleagues for help with certain tasks. In normal times, they would have completed these tasks without hesitation, but they noticed a rise in general discontent.
He concluded that we greatly underestimate the importance of human contact in helping relationships. And that we should avoid adding layers that separate us.
So next time you're about to answer "Claude says," reread, cut, trim. Yesterday's pencil pusher had at least one merit: he read what he was copying.
Don't become a mere "meat proxy."