Yeah I think a bad prompt can create an output which is meaningless. I had such experience reviewing a software architecture diagram generated by Claude.
Worse, I noticed that people in an office environment themselves have adopted a more speculative, communication style.
In the past, people remembered what was said and would draw attention to discrepancies. I could trust what people said.
Nowadays it's like; someone can say one thing one day and the opposite the next day (through convoluted language) and nobody bats an eyelash. Or sometimes someone will agree with me but then what they say immediately after reveals that they didn't understand the essence of my point at all. I didn't notice these things 5 years ago.
I guess this is what AI researchers refer to as 'model collapse' - it seems to affect people too though...
I've noticed this too. Because people are generating work so quickly , and maybe not understanding it entirely, then they hit a bug, pivot, and pretend it was the plan the whole time. Or drop something they were very excited about 3 days ago and never speak of it again.
There is a lot more hustling and bravado.
It feels like people don't value knowledge as they used to.
It's really hard to avoid mistakes when everyone is subtly covering them up. It feels like a lack of care and I find it demotivating.
I think because engineers are afraid for their job, they are under more pressure to talk a big game. Also under more pressure to deliver short term visible results. Bad combo.