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Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

arxiv.org

231–240 of 442 posts

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#231
What I still wonder is whether using LLMs is helpful in some ways, or it is, as other users say, just useful for man-made problems such as corporate communication or bureaucracy. I use it for coding and it makes me confident to tackle new things.

I try to use it to understand the code or to implement changes I am not familiar with, but I tend to overuse them a lot. Would it be better, if used ideally (i.e. only to help learning and guiding), to just try it harder before using this or using a search engine? I wonder what's the most optimal use of LLMs in the long run.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#232

It feels, more and more, that LLMs will be another technology that society will inoculate itself against. It's already starting to happen in education: teachers conversing with students, observing them learn, observing them demonstrate their skills. In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people -- as authors of what they want to…

> another technology that society will inoculate itself against

I like the optimism. We haven't developed herd immunity to the 2010s social media technologies yet, but I'll take it.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people I believe that one of the most underappreciated skills in business is the ability to string a coherent narrative together. I attend many meetings with extremely-talented engineers who are incapable of presenting their arguments in a manner that others (both technical and non-techni…

> I believe that one of the most underappreciated skills in business is the ability to string a coherent narrative together. I attend many meetings with extremely-talented engineers who are incapable of presenting their arguments in a manner that others (both technical and non-technical) can follow them. Yes, but the arguments they need to present are not necessarily the ones they used to convince themselves, or thei…

To give a brief example of this -- a college asked why an exec had listened to my argument but not theirs recently, despite "saying the same thing". I explained that my argument contained actual impacts: actual delays, actual costs, an actual timeline when the impact would occur -- rather than nebulous "there will be problems".

Everyone comes to execs with hypothetical problems that all sound like people dressing up minor issues -- unless you can give specific details, justifications, etc. they're not going to parse properly.

This would be one case where a person asking an LLM for help is not even aware of the information they lack about the person they're trying to talk to.

We could define expertise this way: that knowledge/skill you need to have to formulate problems (, questions) from a vague or unknown starting point.

Under that definition, it becomes clear why LLMs "in the large" pose problems.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#234
post #226

It feels, more and more, that LLMs will be another technology that society will inoculate itself against. It's already starting to happen in education: teachers conversing with students, observing them learn, observing them demonstrate their skills. In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people -- as authors of what they want to…

Sad reality is that most people are not smart. They’re not creative, original, or profound. Think back to all the empty and pointless convos you had prior to AI or the web.

I strongly disagree with this idea.

If you evaluate a fish by asking it to climb a tree, it'll look dumb.

If you evaluate a cat by asking it to navigate an ocean to find its birthplace, it'll look dumb, too.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#235

It feels, more and more, that LLMs will be another technology that society will inoculate itself against. It's already starting to happen in education: teachers conversing with students, observing them learn, observing them demonstrate their skills. In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people -- as authors of what they want to…

> In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people I believe that one of the most underappreciated skills in business is the ability to string a coherent narrative together. I attend many meetings with extremely-talented engineers who are incapable of presenting their arguments in a manner that others (both technical and non-techni…

I find that LLM extremely good in training such language skills by using following process:

a) write a draft yourself.

b) ask the LLM to correct your draft and make it better.

c) newer LLMs will explicitly mention the things they corrected (otherwise ask for being explict about the changes)

d) walk through each of the changes and apply the ones you feel that make the text better

This helped me improving my writing skills drastically (in multiple languages) compared to the times where I didn't have access to LLMs.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#236
post #207

I think we need to shift our idea of what LLMs do and stop thinking they are ‘thinking’ in any human way. The best mental description I have come up with is they are “Concept Processors”. Which is still awesome. Computers couldn’t understand concepts before. And now they can, and they can process and transform them in really interesting and amazing ways. You can transform the concept of ‘a website that does X’ into c…

Are you invoking a 'god of the gaps' here? Is 'true' thinking whatever machines haven't mastered yet?

Not at all, I don’t think humans are magic at all.

But I don’t think even the ‘thinking’ LLMs are doing true thinking.

It’s like calling pressing the autocomplete buttons on your iPhone ‘writing’. Yeah kinda. It mostly forms sentences. But it’s not writing just because it follows the basic form of a sentence.

And an LLM, though now very good at writing is just creating a very good impression of thinking. When you really examine what it’s outputting it’s hard to call it true thinking.

How often does your LLM take a step back and see more of the subject than you prompted it to? How often does it have an epiphany that no human has ever had?

That’s what real thinking looks like - most humans don’t do tonnes of it most of the time either - but we can do it when required.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#237
post #184

I worry about the adverse effects of LLM on already disfranchised populations - you know the poor etc - that usually would have to pull themselves up using hard work etc studying n reading hard. now if you don't have a mentor to tell you in the age of LLM you still have to do things the hard / old school way to develop critical thinking - you might end up taking shortcuts and have the LLMs "think" for you. hence agai…

People could in theory also get a college-level education by watching videos on YouTube, but in practice the masses just end up watching Mr. Beast.

15 years ago, people were sure that the Khan Academy and Coursera would disrupt Ivy League and private schools, because now one good teacher could reach millions of students. Not only this has not happened, the only movement I'm observing against credentialism is that I have good amount of anecdata showing kids preferring to go to trade school instead of university.

> pull themselves up using hard work etc studying n reading hard.

Where are you from? "The key to success is hard work" is not exactly something part of the Gen Z and Zoomers core values, at least not in the Americas and Western Europe.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#238
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people I believe that one of the most underappreciated skills in business is the ability to string a coherent narrative together. I attend many meetings with extremely-talented engineers who are incapable of presenting their arguments in a manner that others (both technical and non-techni…

I find that LLM extremely good in training such language skills by using following process: a) write a draft yourself. b) ask the LLM to correct your draft and make it better. c) newer LLMs will explicitly mention the things they corrected (otherwise ask for being explict about the changes) d) walk through each of the changes and apply the ones you feel that make the text better This helped me improving my writing sk…

I use Grammarly sometimes to check my more serious texts, but there's a gotcha. If you allow all of its stylistic choices, your writing becomes very sterile and devoid of any soul.

Your word and structural choices adds a flair of its own, makes something truly yours and unique. Don't let the tool kill that.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#239

It feels, more and more, that LLMs will be another technology that society will inoculate itself against. It's already starting to happen in education: teachers conversing with students, observing them learn, observing them demonstrate their skills. In business, quickly I'd say, we will realise that the vast majority of worthwhile communication necessarily must be produced by people -- as authors of what they want to…

Shallow take. LLMs are like food for thought -- the right use in the right amounts is empowering, but too much (or uncritical use) and you get fat and lazy, metaphorically speaking.

You wouldn't go around crusading against food because you're obese.

Another neat analogy is to children who are too dependent on their parents. Parents are great and definitely help a child learn and grow but children who rely on their parents for everything rather than trying to explore their limits end up being weak humans.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#240
> All participants were then reassured that though 20 minutes might be a rather short time to write an essay, they were encouraged to do their best.

Given that the task has been under time pressure, I am not sure this study helps gauging the impact of LLMs in other contexts.

When my goal is to produce the result for a specific short term task - I maximize tool usage.

When my goal is to improve my personal skills - I use the LLM tooling differently optimizing for long(er) term learning.

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