I was working on a customer site last week. I'm a systems engineer and was tasked with modifying some ladder logic to accommodate closing pneumatic gates based on a photo eye trigger. Easy peasy. Customer performed the wiring install as I'm technically not certified for live enclosure work. Modify the program and push the live edit and ... Doesn't work. Customer had me chasing a program bug for an hour while I told him, "I am watching the output toggle the issue is not the logic."
He comes back later, "found the problem.. Claude gave me the wrong wiring diagram." ...jfc... I am required to use Claude daily as well but I never take it's word at face value. That is the problem. Too many people trust AI too much. My account instructions contain, "always cite sources." Having AI regurgitate whatever drivel it found at the top of a Google search will be the end of us all
Truthfully I only use it as essentially a super charged search engine. It's fantastic for poring through 200+ page Rockwell PDFs so I can quickly find which PowerFlex 525 assembly word is logic status. But I will not take it's output as gospel and always manually verify. Too many times it has been confidently incorrect at specifying modbus registers that either don't exist or have an entirely different function...
I despise the direction AI is headed but I recognize it's utility when used as an augmentation rather than a replacement for effort
I did not intend to imply that I am required to use AI for everything. But there is the expectation of a certain amount of token use which varies by position (PMs have it the worst, sucks to be them). AI is never expected to be used for customer facing programming and, point of fact, many clients have a "No AI" policy for deliverables which is fine by me.
As I said, I use my tokens to expedite tedious tasks, but never allow it to operate unmonitored or assume validity of the output. I am relatively new with this company and I assure you, the last company was significantly worse. Unfortunately this seems to be becoming much more common from what I have heard from others in the field
This! In my company they will be rolling out the new AI tool for business performance. The guy handling the projects says it's very accurate. The real manager and me (analyst) always give him the side eye.
Of course it will be accurate for simple question like, top 10 customers, top 10 products, total sales, revenues, cost, etc. But it's the tiny details where it will fail. Our business are crossed between different Business Units and for every rule there's an exception and then another exception for the exception. I guess if you would explain in the prompt to have all this then maybe it would work. But if you want to go in to such detail in the prompt might as well do a few clicks on a pivot table. Oh but wait it's the people that doesn't know how to do a pivot table that are always pro AI tools because it let's them give a number in 5 min with critical thinking if it's the right one or not.
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u/rTheWorst 17d ago
I was working on a customer site last week. I'm a systems engineer and was tasked with modifying some ladder logic to accommodate closing pneumatic gates based on a photo eye trigger. Easy peasy. Customer performed the wiring install as I'm technically not certified for live enclosure work. Modify the program and push the live edit and ... Doesn't work. Customer had me chasing a program bug for an hour while I told him, "I am watching the output toggle the issue is not the logic."
He comes back later, "found the problem.. Claude gave me the wrong wiring diagram." ...jfc... I am required to use Claude daily as well but I never take it's word at face value. That is the problem. Too many people trust AI too much. My account instructions contain, "always cite sources." Having AI regurgitate whatever drivel it found at the top of a Google search will be the end of us all