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AI may be making us think and write more alike

dornsife.usc.edu

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Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

mpalmer wrote: post #86
sobiolite wrote: post #56

Human communication and reasoning is the end result of billions of years of evolution. I'd be very surprised if LLMs can fundamentally alter it in a few years. When considering phenomenon like these, I think people seriously underestimate what I'd call the "fashion effect". When a new technology, medium or aesthetic appears, it can have a surprisingly rapid influence on behaviour and discourse. The human social brain…

Think of all the things that took hundreds/thousands/millions of years to develop and mature, which humans have managed to destroy in relatively short order. Every 50 years we cycle out an entirely new batch of thinking humans. What cognitive legacy is it exactly that you think is going to be self-preserving?

You're talking about system altering the environment. GP was talking about the system altering itself. The system is a massive self-stabilizing collection of feedback loops. Unlike the static environment[0], it's incredibly hard to intentionally move such system to a different equilibrium. If it weren't, we'd already solved all the thorny world problems long ago.

--

[0] - Any self-stabilizing system that operates much slower than us - such as ecosystems or climate - is, from our perspective, static.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#92

Post by [deleted] »

SkyeCA wrote: post #30
rdevilla wrote: post #7

This state of affairs presages the advent of a second dark age - one that will forever eclipse the era of radical openness & transparency that once served the software community for decades. Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM whok would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale, until any possible information asymme…

> Interaction contracts into small meshes of trusted, verifiably human participants to keep the tides of spamslop at bay This is already happening and you don't have to look far to find it. Personally HN is the only site I browse and comment on anymore (and I'm on here less than I once was). The vast, vast majority of my time online is spent in walled off Discords and Matrix chats where I know everyone and where ther…

[deleted]

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#93

Post by dfxm12 »

sobiolite wrote: post #56

Human communication and reasoning is the end result of billions of years of evolution. I'd be very surprised if LLMs can fundamentally alter it in a few years. When considering phenomenon like these, I think people seriously underestimate what I'd call the "fashion effect". When a new technology, medium or aesthetic appears, it can have a surprisingly rapid influence on behaviour and discourse. The human social brain…

Fads are often driven by moneyed interests. AI is no different. As long as guys Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. are trying to bend the world to their will, and as long as they have the resources to do so, AI will be zeitgeist for just as long. On a smaller scale, this extends even to a CEO outsourcing support to AI, etc.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#94

Post by misterflibble »

jerrygarcia wrote: post #18
misterflibble wrote: post #2

Subtly? I beg to differ. My team leader only communicates to me using his LLM and so his "thoughts" are not his own!

I often wonder if the popularity of LLMs among company executives is that they are the perfect yes men. They rarely disagree with any idea or proposal, providing a salve for the insecurities of their users.

Definitely see our internal company agents enforcing the status quo!

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

davebren wrote: post #90
rdevilla wrote: post #7

This state of affairs presages the advent of a second dark age - one that will forever eclipse the era of radical openness & transparency that once served the software community for decades. Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM whok would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale, until any possible information asymme…

> Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM who would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale I've already started thinking this way, there's stuff I would have open sourced in the past but no longer will because I know it would get trained on. I'm not sure of any way I can share it with humans and only humans. If I let…

It's worth questioning the underlying assumptions. It's humans - all humans - that benefit from LLMs. I see a lot of people having this attitude, but I can't help but see it as really being about seeking credit instead of generosity, and/or Dog in the Manger mindset.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#96

Post by misterflibble »

embedding-shape wrote: post #71
nidnogg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilty as charged. In my mind, when I'm insecure about a response or if I don't have enough expertise in the topic at hand I end up running it through an LLM. Lately I've been really trying harder to keep my original ideas as much as possible. I'm seeing a bit of an improvement, but still early to tell

"running it through an LLM" doesn't mean "Give LLM my text -> Copy-paste the output of the LLM" does it? Checking against an LLM then using your own voice feels completely fine, just another type of validation before you share something, but if you actually let the LLM rewrite what you say, then I feel like that's beyond "running it through an LLM", it's basically letting the LLM write your text for you instead of ju…

Yes checking and validation is one thing, but there are several engineers in my area that only communicate using agent copy paste. I challenged one fellow about that and he was furious!

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#97

Post by misterflibble »

sumeno wrote: post #44
SecretDreams wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be looking for another job. I'm fine with using LLMs as coding tools. But I find it deeply offensive when someone is very explicitly using them to communicate with me. Communication is such a deeply human experience. It lets people feel each other out, and learn things beyond just the words being said. To have that filtered out by an LLM is just disgraceful.

Good luck finding a company that doesn't have these people if LLMs are used

Yes true! It's everywhere now!

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#98

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

plasticchris wrote: post #81
npsomaratna wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow made me think of Warhammer 40k (maybe pre men of iron?)

It’s a recurring theme, see dune’s references to Samuel Butler.

I say this with a multiple decades-spanning love of the game and the lore, but Warhammer 40k is what you get when teenagers try to create something immediately after reading Dune.

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#99

Post by misterflibble »

nusl wrote: post #40
misterflibble wrote: post #2

Subtly? I beg to differ. My team leader only communicates to me using his LLM and so his "thoughts" are not his own!

https://not-an-llm.bearblog.dev/meat-based-llm-proxies/

That's terrific lol thanks for the link BTW!

Re: AI may be making us think and write more alike

#100

Post by konschubert »

sobiolite wrote: post #56

Human communication and reasoning is the end result of billions of years of evolution. I'd be very surprised if LLMs can fundamentally alter it in a few years. When considering phenomenon like these, I think people seriously underestimate what I'd call the "fashion effect". When a new technology, medium or aesthetic appears, it can have a surprisingly rapid influence on behaviour and discourse. The human social brain…

Social media has shaped us. Why should AI not do the same?

It may finally [help us fix out the bullshit asymmetry](https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2026/03/31/ai-the-bullshi...) that has been exacerbated by social media.

If AI can provide us with a shared source of truth, it will be a big improvement over whatever twitter is doing to people.

And strangely, all these models seem to converge to a shared epistemology.

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