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AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

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Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#101

Post by Calazon »

SirMaster wrote: post #71
hn_acc1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but.. I've been coding for 40 years and I don't know everything. To me, a LOT depends on what the plumber asked chatgpt about. For example: building codes in that city, to figure out what his options are - like, is he allowed to just put in any old toilet, or is there a gpf restriction? What's the replacement part number for faucet XYZ's gasket? Those seem reasonable. "how do I fix a clogged toilet?" would be b…

>like, is he allowed to just put in any old toilet, or is there a gpf restriction? And if the LLM gets that wrong? It's his job to know the codes or how to go to a reliable resource to find out the correct codes.

Hopefully he would be using the LLM as an enhanced search engine that can point him to relevant authoritative sources that he can use to fact-check its output. I have done that in the past to some effect.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#102

Post by geitir »

godot wrote: post #9
cowlby wrote: post #4

Sometimes it feels like as developers we live in a a bubble. Don't most jobs endanger human development? I can't help but think about all the billions of factory, food service, assembly line type jobs. Do these not threaten "human development"? My cynical take would be all AI endangers is "white collar" work.

I think you're not wrong and I also think the author is not wrong -- and this just may be how technology/civilization/humans are going to change inevitably? For example a possibly trajectory might be that many years in the future because human thinking has degraded due to AI-assisted cognition, most people will get a chip implant and AI-assistance becomes integrated with the brain. Basically same pattern as most ever…

Doesn’t that sound lovely

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#103

Post by Lerc »

jbethune wrote: post #19

This was a bit word-salad-y but I share the same basic concern. I think more I worry about the tendency toward greater and greater cognitive off-loading to LLMs. My sister told me a story the other day about how she caught her plumber using chatgpt on his phone to fix an issue with her bathroom. I just think it's good for humans to know how to do stuff.

Would you prefer to have:

The plumber who turned up leave without fixing the problem,

The plumber fixing something that he didn't know how to do by looking up the answer.

The plumber attempting to fix something that they didn't know how to do.

While it's great to have the plumber who knows how to do everything, they are rare and in high demand, so cost way more than you can afford.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#104

Post by jojomodding »

measurablefunc wrote: post #78

Calculators endanger the development of mental arithmetic skills as well.

And we collectively decided that it's fine, you don't actually need to be able to solve 1234×5678 in your head.

But I am not sure you can compartmentalize the specific skill we can out-source to AI. I would not agree with "you don't need to be able to think in your head."

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#105

Post by c-hendricks »

enraged_camel wrote: post #73
daveguy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if a plumber moves fast and breaks things, I've got shit all over the place.

That, and also the plumber loses their license. So perhaps the solution is professional licensing for software engineers.

Engineer is a protected title in Canada after all

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#107

Post by bonesss »

_verandaguy wrote: post #42
palmotea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, not that tired thing again. I suppose your point is: people once were critical of the technology of writing, so all criticism of the technology-at-hand is illegitimate. You don't actually make a point, so one has to assume. Some points: 1. Technological inventions are not repetitions of the same phenomenon. Each invention is its own unique event, you cannot generalize the experience with previous inventions to…

While I agree with your rebuke of the GP, Socrates was materially wrong about writing (or at least, about the ability to persist information beyond any single human lifetime). Cumulatively, knowledge work (including, in particular, curating knowledge) is exceptionally energy intensive from an evolutionary standpoint. It does pay dividends, clearly, but to get compounding effects from it, being able to efficiently pas…

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Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#108

Post by drusepth »

This is absolutely something to potentially be worried about, but one thing I never see highlighted in critiques of AI-assisted cognition is that some elements of physiology may not actually be biologically necessary if they can be fully supplanted by some replacement (in this case, new tools). I can't traverse as much land on foot as my ancestors did (my muscles are weaker, my endurance is less, etc), but I can travel even further than they could by car/plane/etc.

Nothing about the nature of evolution implies our current cognitive processing is ideal/sacred and shouldn't ever change.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#109

Post by MillionOClock »

kmaitreys wrote: post #60
MillionOClock wrote: post #45

Say someone uses AI, treating it as if it was a developer (probably not recommended today due to the risk of errors), and working and speaking with it as if they were some kind of product manager or senior engineer who only makes architectural decisions etc. I wonder what kind of difference would it really make? Sure the person might not be as good anymore as a developer, but how is this different from being a usual…

Why and how do you think it applies to broader domains? Children learning in schools should not become product managers. If they are, what exactly is the "product" that they are "managing"? Reducing everything to and looking everything from a corporate viewpoint is bizarre.

I'm not saying this should be every single domain. This isn't about products or management, instead I would frame it like this: I notice that multiple cases where we are worried about the impact of AI are basically just about the replacement of certain activities that some humans already aren't doing in today's society. If we are worried we will be less good at doing job X once we don't do job X anymore, why are we not worried about people who never did job X in the first place? If we are worried about people not doing jobs anymore, why are not worried for the human development of people wealthy enough not to work anymore for the rest of their days? I would not assume someone who won the lottery is going to have their life become uninteresting or see some cognitive decline. It could probably happen, but you can also see a path where the person just chooses to do the activities they always wanted to do, where they keep learning and exploring without the burden of usual life constraints. People already play chess when machines have beaten us for decades, just because they enjoy it.

Regarding education I think AI is a huge revolution waiting to happen. Usual courses have become boring? Have future super powerful AI generate per student highly personalized programs, create bespoke video games where succeeding can only happen once the student has validated all the notions you wanted them to validate etc.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#110

Post by darepublic »

Manuel_D wrote: post #88

> In early 2026, the USA prepared to invade Greenland and, therefore, the EU4. Only a few months prior to that it was completely unthinkable that the USA would even think about threatening an invasion of Greenland. As AI base models are stuck in the past, they do not easily accept these events as real and often label them as “hypothetical”, “fake news”, or “impossible”. This also affects new models like Gemini 3 Pro,…

I agree that Google kind of serves this role even before llms. But these days people delegate their reasoning, brainstorming to the computer not just lookup. And beyond our generation are those who would have grown up doing this. Therefore I think concern is justified
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