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In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

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Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#31

Post by scarface_74 »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #15
CuriouslyC wrote: post #14

LLMs haven't made me dumber, but they have made me lazier. I think about writing code by hand now and groan.

thats kinda embarrassing

I don’t get paid to “write code”. I use my 30 years of professional industry experience to either make the company money or to save the company money and in exchange for my labor, they put money in my account and formerly RSUs in my brokerage account.

It’s not about “passion”. It’s purely transactional and I will use any tool that is available to me to do it.

If an LLM can make me more efficient at that so be it. I’m also not spending months getting a server room built out to hold a SAN that can store a whopping 3TB of storage like in 2002. I write 4 lines of Yaml to provision an S3 bucket.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#32

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #5

I buy this for writing. There's a very limited set of things GPT is good at for improving my writing (basic sentence voice and structure stuff, overusing words), but mostly I find it makes my writing worse, and I don't trust any argument it makes because, as the post observes, I haven't thought them through and had the opportunity to second-guess them myself. Also it has a high opinion of Bryan Ferry. Deeply untrustw…

[deleted]

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#33

Post by WD-42 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #21
sitzkrieg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats kinda embarrassing

Would you groan if you had to take public transit while your car was broken down? If you love to knit that's cool but don't get on me because I'd rather buy a factory sweater and get on with my day. I love creating things, I love solving problems, I love designing elegant systems. I don't love mashing keys.

I love how you immediately go for public transit as an analogy for something regrettable. Fits.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#34

Post by CuriouslyC »

WD-42 wrote: post #33
CuriouslyC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you groan if you had to take public transit while your car was broken down? If you love to knit that's cool but don't get on me because I'd rather buy a factory sweater and get on with my day. I love creating things, I love solving problems, I love designing elegant systems. I don't love mashing keys.

I love how you immediately go for public transit as an analogy for something regrettable. Fits.

I put my time in on the city bus brother. In the time that I had the displeasure I had bodily fluids thrown on me and someone almost stabbed me. Maybe you have first class magic fairy busses with plush reclining seats and civil neighbors but that's not the norm.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#36

Post by spondylosaurus »

tptacek wrote: post #5

I buy this for writing. There's a very limited set of things GPT is good at for improving my writing (basic sentence voice and structure stuff, overusing words), but mostly I find it makes my writing worse, and I don't trust any argument it makes because, as the post observes, I haven't thought them through and had the opportunity to second-guess them myself. Also it has a high opinion of Bryan Ferry. Deeply untrustw…

> Also it has a high opinion of Bryan Ferry. Deeply untrustworthy.

Whoa, whoa, are we talking Bryan Ferry as an artist, or Bryan Ferry as a guy? Because I love me some Roxy Music but have heard that Bryan is kind of a dick.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#37

Post by gerdesj »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #14

LLMs haven't made me dumber, but they have made me lazier. I think about writing code by hand now and groan.

So how do you interact with your LLM? (by hand perhaps?)

I find prompt fettling a great way of getting to grips with a problem. If I can explain my problem effectively enough to get a reasonable start on an answer, then I likely thoroughly understand my problem.

An LLM is like a really fancy slide rule or calculator (I own both). It does have a habit of getting pissed and talking bollocks periodically. Mind you, so do I.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#38

Post by evanjrowley »

Impressive research but I can't help feeling like it's fundamentally flawed. The analysis considered "essay ownership" a property of LLM, Search, and Brain-Only participants, but what would have been more valuable is flipping all of the graphs based on percieved ownership levels. On average, less LLM users felt a sense of ownership, and this should not surprise anyone. The researchers lumped together people who let LLMs do all of the writing vs using LLMs constructive ways. What would have been more interesting is studying the LLM users who maintained a sense of owership, because then we could learn more way to use LLMs that potentially make us smarter.

I also feel like there's more to be said about LLMs fostering the ability to ask questions better than you might if you primarily used search. If the objective was to write, for example, about an esoteric organic chemistry topic, and a "No Brain" group of non-experts was only allowed to formulate a response by asking real-life experts as much as they can about the esoteric topic, then would users more experienced with LLMs come out ahead on the essay score? Understanding how to leverage a tight communication loop most effectively is a skill that the non-LLM groups in this study should be evaluated on.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#39

Post by sys_64738 »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #15
CuriouslyC wrote: post #14

LLMs haven't made me dumber, but they have made me lazier. I think about writing code by hand now and groan.

thats kinda embarrassing

How much of your coding time do you spend writing mundane, repetitive code that should just instantly appear? I think there's a dual benefit of removing the drudgery of that but also gives you more time to write new, interesting code to achieve your goals and priorities sooner.

Re: In the long run, LLMs make us dumber

#40

Post by amdivia »

codespin wrote: post #25

Just as the engine replaced physical strength, artificial intelligence, through models like large language models, is now replacing cognitive labor and thought. From the article "Muscles grow by lifting weights" yet we do that now as a hobby and not as a critical job. I'm not sure I want to live in a world where thinking is a gym like activity, however if you go back 200 years it would probably be difficult to explai…

I doubt that would happen.

The engine provides artificial strength, granted, but AI does not provide artificial intelligence. It's a misnomer.

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