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AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

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Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#151

Post by Yokohiii »

svnt wrote: post #85

It is a quirky article but the author, instead of engaging with information sources to understand what important thoughts people have had about these topics, feels the best thing to do is introduce new terms that other terms already exist for. This is basically just inductive bias plus the AI homogenization idea producing a distribution shift. This is what happens in thought-isolation. It isn’t better than educating…

It's possible I miss something, but are you saying that the author should relax and she should leaves this to smarter people?

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#152

Post by antonvs »

cyberax wrote: post #142
antonvs wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obesity epidemic has much less to do with cars and much more to do with cheapness of food and volume consumed. A typical deli sandwich in the US should be enough to last any normal person three days. Same goes for e.g. ice cream from Shake Shack (random example I know, but one I came across recently). If you buy one of these and eat them in one sitting, the answer to "why am I obese" is simply "you eat way too mu…

Sorry, don't exaggerate please. A Subway sandwhich is about 600 calories. That's about 1/3 of the daily 2000 calories standard. A Shake Shack shake tops out at 1010 calories, a half of the daily norm.

I'm not talking about Subway. I specifically said deli sandwich. There's no world in which Subway is a deli.

As for Shake Shack, a single shake is half of the daily total calorie intake? Are you listening to yourself right now?

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#153

Post by antonvs »

nathan_compton wrote: post #134
antonvs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read pieces like this all I think is, resistance to change is a helluva drug. I've been working on a project and using LLMs heavily to inform my design decisions. There's already a long list of cases where it has taught me things I wasn't familiar with, alerted me to possibilities I didn't consider, shown me how to do things that I was struggling with. In those cases I ask for references, and it delivers. This…

I think it depends on the person. As a teacher, I see this. Some kids (the gifted ones) use AI to multiply their efforts. Most kids use to just get by and are actually coming out of the class with less knowledge than they would have without one.

Hence my final sentence:

> One real lesson from this is perhaps that we need to teach people how to use AI in ways that benefit their development, not just their output.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#154

Post by Yokohiii »

ThalesX wrote: post #27
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.

I've always wanted to be more of a handy man, never knew where to start. I used LLMs to create a toolkit and then used it to fix various stuff around the house. I'm at the point where I'm comfortable with beginner projects moving onto intermediate, and I feel like the quality of my works beats those of hired help at my level of competence. So... I'm glad I could off-load some cognition to LLMs and get to the actual u…

Even in this audience is a significant portion that doesn't have a clue about the limits and pitfalls of AI. For people outside tech it is obviously worse, much likely the vast majority. If you succeed with it, it doesn't mean everybody does.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#155

Post by [deleted] »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #121
enraged_camel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like a licencing process for software engineers would A) test lots of skills that are common but not universal. I'm thinking javascript trivia here, where I don't write any javascript in my professional capacity as a software engineer; but there are many people who think Software Engineer == Javascript Programmer B) shine too much of a light on the fact that this industry is full of people who demand high sala…

[deleted]

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#156

Post by dfee »

jessetemp wrote: post #138
dfee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the question was rhetorical. but, since you responded – do you think that there are limits to who can or should use ai? if the plumber's use of ChatGPT improved outcomes, isn't that preferable? some knowledge is likely "cached" in the plumber. maybe he doesn't ask the same question twice. i'm sympathetic to the plumber, but i think your concerns of erosion of knowledge or skill are worth pushing on further.

> do you think that there are limits to who can or should use ai? I don't think there should be imposed limits, but there might be an upper bound where expertise becomes atrophied by depending on AI too much. > if the plumber's use of ChatGPT improved outcomes, isn't that preferable? In the short term sure, and maybe even in the long term for the customer. I think the risk to the plumber is losing some of their exper…

I do, but again, it was a rhetorical question; a paradoxical thought experiment.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#157

Post by le-mark »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #115
svnt wrote: post #85

It is a quirky article but the author, instead of engaging with information sources to understand what important thoughts people have had about these topics, feels the best thing to do is introduce new terms that other terms already exist for. This is basically just inductive bias plus the AI homogenization idea producing a distribution shift. This is what happens in thought-isolation. It isn’t better than educating…

>This is a benefit if you can use your newfound capacity and free time for something better, which I think most people ultimately will. I think for a lot of of us the problem is that this is not a given. It’s often promised and rarely occurs, especially in the modern era. Increased productivity usually just means increased demands in the workplace.

Similar to What people were saying about television. They imagined it would bring Shakespeare to the masses, but what ultimately ended up happening is television met people where they are hence we got reality TV. There’s no reason to believe AI won’t be similar.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#158

Post by svnt »

Yokohiii wrote: post #151
svnt wrote: post #85

It is a quirky article but the author, instead of engaging with information sources to understand what important thoughts people have had about these topics, feels the best thing to do is introduce new terms that other terms already exist for. This is basically just inductive bias plus the AI homogenization idea producing a distribution shift. This is what happens in thought-isolation. It isn’t better than educating…

It's possible I miss something, but are you saying that the author should relax and she should leaves this to smarter people?

Rereading my comment I don’t see anything about the author’s intelligence or anxiety level.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#159

Post by bonesss »

_verandaguy wrote: post #137
bonesss wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I agree that those are all ways of preserving knowledge in a somewhat inter-generational way, a few thoughts. - None of these are as flexible as writing. They're more expressive, more engaging (arguably, at least to some), and might even be good at succinctly saving certain specific types of knowledge. Knot systems typically parallel the abacus, having been used for accounting and to keep a record of tax levies. Cert…

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Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#160

Post by Yokohiii »

gobdovan wrote: post #76

By the logic that today's news is fundamental to know as true, there really is no point in reading books older than 6 months old. If Einstein woke up from a coma, he'd be useless, as he doesn't even know who won the World Cup. For real now, if an AI can help you solve a problem using 2,000 years of human logic, does it really matter if it's "skewed" away from a political shift that happened three weeks ago? I also do…

The post doesn't question the value of historic knowledge.

The idea is that a base model could be years old, with all it's faults; superficially fixed and extended with knowledge over time. She points to a research that LLMs don't "fully believe" this new knowledge. The skew could be much longer then a few weeks.

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