In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

Plato's _Phaedrus_ features Socrates arguing against writing; "They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."

I have heard people argue that the use of calculators (and later, specifically graphing calculators) would make people worse at math; quick searching found papers like https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED525547.pdf discussing the topic.

I can't see how the "LLMs make us dumber" argument is different than those. I think calculators are a great tool, and people trained in a calculator-having environment certainly seem to be able to do math. I can't see that writing has done anything but improve our ability to reason over time. What makes LLMs different?

Because they do it all for us and they frequently do it wrong. We're not offloading the calculation or the typing to the thing we're using it to solve the whole problem for us.

Calculators don't solve problems, they solve equations. Writing didn't kill our memories because there's still so much to remember that we almost have to write things down to be able to retain it.

If you don't do your own research and present the LLM with your solution and let it point out errors and instead just type "How do I make ____?" it's solving the entire thought process for you right there. And it may be leading you wrong.

That's my view on how it's different at least. They're not calculators or writing. They're text robots that present solutions confidently and offer to do more work immediately afterwards, usually ending a response in "Want me to write you a quick python script to handle that?"

A thought experiment, if you're someone who has used a calculator to calculate 20% tips your whole life, try to calculate one without it. Maybe you specifically don't struggle because you're good at math or have a lot of math experience elsewhere but if you have approached it the way this article is calling bad, you'd simply have no clue where to start.

That's wild. My experience has been vastly different. ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Gemini, etc whatever it may be even the simplest scripts I've had them write usually come out with issues. As far as writing functions is concerned, it's way less risky for me to write functions based on my prior knowledge than to ask ChatGPT to write the entire thing for me and just paste it in and call it good.

I do use it for learning and to help me access new concepts I've never thought about but if you're not proving what it's writing yourself and understanding what its written yourself then I hope I never have to work on code you've written. If you are, then you are not doing what the article is talking about.

If it's doing the thinking for you, just like social media, but much more intense.

Plato was against writing, as it makes us dumber.

https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/