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

arxiv.org

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

#371

Post by nottorp »

wiseowise wrote: post #364
nottorp wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common bullshit. Expert not realizing that even if they are capable of using these tools because they can - subconsciously in your case - verify them, it doesn't mean it helps non experts.

Touché. On this I agree with you, since I’ve started in different age.

I haven't written serious assembly since high school :)

But I'm 100% sure i have some "natural" neural connections based on those experiences and those help me even when doing high level languages.

By the way, I am using LLMs. They help until they don't. One real life example i'm hitting at work is they keep mixing couchdb and couchbase when you ask about features. Their training dataset doesn't seem to be large enough in that area.

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

#372

Post by AnthonyMouse »

xnorswap wrote: post #332
Etheryte wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a way this is a good analogy, because it also includes the downside. If you always drive everywhere and do everything by car, your health will suffer due to lack of physical activity.

And you'll randomly kill people on your way there. ( Of course dear reader, YOU won't randomly kill people because you're a "good driver". )

Do you really think it's random? 30% of car accidents are from drunk drivers. Some large fraction of the remainder are a result of some other impairment or distraction. Don't drive on two hours of sleep and don't text behind the wheel and your chances of hitting someone go way down.

And it will be the same thing with AI. You want to ask it a question that you can verify the answer to, and then you actually verify it? No problem. But then you have corporations using it for "content moderation" and end up shadow banning actual human beings when it gets it wrong, and then those people commit suicide because they think no one cares about them when it's really that the AI wrongly pegs them as a bot and then heartlessly isolates them from every other living person.

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

#373

Post by dumpsterdiver »

noio wrote: post #343
llamasushi wrote: post #279

Socrates: "And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the…

Hah, this is super interesting actually. Is this comment ridiculing critique of AI by comparing it to critique of writing? Or.. is it invoking Socrates as an eloquent description of a "brain on ChatGPT". I guess the former? But I can easily read it as the latter, too.

I just thought it was a good example of something written long ago that’s only grown in relevance over time, and with LLMs we can see clearly what he envisioned. The people who don’t want to dig deeper and really wrap their head around a subject can just recite the words without ever having done that.

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

#374

Post by bodge5000 »

santiagobasulto wrote: post #308

Wasn't THE SAME said when Google came out? That we were not remembering things anymore and we were relying on Google? And also with cellphones before that (even the big dummy brickphones), that we were not remembering phone numbers anymore.

A comment on another similar thread pointed out it goes as far back as Socrates saying that writing things down means your not exercising your brain, so you're right, this is the same old argument we've heard for years before.

The question is, were they wrong? I'm not sure I could continue doing my job much as SWE if I lost access to search engines, and I certainly don't remember phone numbers anymore, and as for Socrates, we found that the ability to forget about something (while still maintaining some record of it) was actually a benefit of writing, not a flaw. I think in all these cases we found that to some extent they were right, but either the benefits outweighed the cost of reliance, or that the cost was the benefit.

I'm sure each one had its worst case scenario where we'd all turn into brainless slugs offloading all our critical thinking to the computer or the phone or a piece of paper, and that obviously didn't happen, so it might not here either, but there's a good chance we will lose something as a result of this, and its whether the benefits still outweigh the costs

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

#375

Post by nottorp »

falcor84 wrote: post #363
nottorp wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but your cell phone contacts don't have a chance to call a completely different number out of thin air once in a while. At least for now, while Apple and Google haven't put "AI" in the contacts list. Can't guarantee tomorrow.

That would actually be an amazing feature. Like in those movie meet-cutes where the person you were supposed to meet doesn't show up, and instead you make a connection with a random person.

Those services are available already, but the random person at the other end is "AI" generated :)

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

#376

Post by xiphias2 »

jwblackwell wrote: post #356
delegate wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite to be true. I am a lot more productive, so I work on more things in parallel, which makes me extremely tired by the end of the day, as if my brain worked at 100% capacity..

Yeah I do feel the pressure to run multiple instances of Claude Code now. Haven't really managed to find a good workflow, I find I just get too distracted swapping between tasks and then probably end up working slower than if I had just stayed in one IDE instance

Codex is the perfect workflow for me: instead of swapping, just accept / reject cls / refine tasks

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

#377

Post by benterix »

michelsedgh wrote: post #349
delegate wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite to be true. I am a lot more productive, so I work on more things in parallel, which makes me extremely tired by the end of the day, as if my brain worked at 100% capacity..

Yeah and after a few days of this, I find I can't do anything and stop all the side projects for a few days until im recharged again and can get back to it.

I bet we will all need a new type of therapy for that at some point in the future.

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

#378

Post by danielbln »

acc_297 wrote: post #160

This has been on my mind for awhile and is why I only briefly used copilot on a daily basis. I'm at the beginning of my career and learning every day - I could do my job faster with an LLM assistant but I would lose out on an opportunity to acquire skills. I don't buy the argument that low-level critical thinking skills are obsolete and high level conceptual planning is all that anyone will need 10 years from now. On…

Not disagreeing with you, but the skill ceiling around using LLMs effectively and sustainably is higher than you might think.

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

#380

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dyauspitr wrote: post #312
santiagobasulto wrote: post #308

Wasn't THE SAME said when Google came out? That we were not remembering things anymore and we were relying on Google? And also with cellphones before that (even the big dummy brickphones), that we were not remembering phone numbers anymore.

Google was like a faster library. ChatGPT just does most of the work for you.

It's the doing the work for you which is the trouble.

Suppose you want to know how some git command works. If you have to read the manual to find out, you end up reading about four other features you didn't know existed before you get to the thing you set out to look for to begin with, and then you have those things in your brain when you need them later.

If you can just type it into a search box and it spits back a command to paste into the terminal, it's "faster" -- this time -- but then you never actually learn how it works, so what happens when you get to a question the search box can't answer?

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