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AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

heidenstedt.org

161–170 of 202 posts

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#161
post #90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you rather have them take an additional 30 minutes looking up their technical manual? Yes

You know that plumbers charge by the hour, right?

Water damage is generally more expensive than a half hour of a plumber's time

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#162
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…

> But what actually happens is we have formalized processes and can externalize them.

Even if I believe that is what happens in 10% of uses of AI, it doesn't excuse what happens with the rest.

Many people can not do mental math anymore and still more question why we need to learn math at all in the first place when we have simple calculators. "When will I ever use XYZ?" is a common refrain.

AI is currently developed and owned by billionaires who also happen to own news sources. If that correlation doesn't spark questions about why we shouldn't externalize processes to AI, you have likely been using AI too much already.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#163

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 trav…

> I can't traverse as much land on foot as my ancestors did, but I can travel further by car/plane/etc Which is partially how we found ourselves in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

Only either indirectly or extremely partially. Everybody was driving by the 40s in the US but the obesity epidemic didn't start until the late 70s. Really, obesity is an example of exactly what the GP was talking about- our evolved relationship with food is not inherently good, and it's better for us to change our behaviors than to abandon our advancements and return to the food-scarce world we're adapted to.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't traverse as much land on foot as my ancestors did, but I can travel further by car/plane/etc Which is partially how we found ourselves in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

Only either indirectly or extremely partially. Everybody was driving by the 40s in the US but the obesity epidemic didn't start until the late 70s. Really, obesity is an example of exactly what the GP was talking about- our evolved relationship with food is not inherently good, and it's better for us to change our behaviors than to abandon our advancements and return to the food-scarce world we're adapted to.

>our evolved relationship with food is not inherently good, and it's better for us to change our behaviors than to abandon our advancements and return to the food-scarce world we're adapted to.

So are you arguing we should change our relationship with human intelligence? What does that even mean?

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If you want to watch Shakespeare on your TV you are welcome to. But also I don't think that's the point at all. If it's my job to hammer 100 nails a day, and then my boss gives me a hammer that is 10x more effective. I don't get to go home early, I'm just expected to hammer 1000 nails now. Maybe the work becomes more pleasant, maybe it doesn't. But either way it definitely benefits the boss and the person who makes the hammer.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#166

> 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,…

In school we were often required to have a specific edition, or we got notice about a certain thing that changed. People that relied on print knew that it could be wrong. Deliberate changes like a name change, will lead to errors, everybody expects and deals with that. In digital space we expect that to be rather unlikely, at least for major maintained sources.

I think the difference is that LLMs are a very complex mix of information and concepts, which can be combined in higher orders. So an underlying wrong fact could be undisclosed and contribute to faulty reasoning. A hard fact like a wrong city name would blow up quickly. A wrong assumption about political dynamics is probably harder to detect, as it is a complex mix of information.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#168
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I take that non response as a yes.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#169
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I take that non response as a yes.

I call the author out for not being widely read in areas where they are attempting to coin neologisms. If that seems like insulting someone’s intelligence and telling them to calm down to you then I’m not sure this will be a productive conversation.

Coining new terms for established ideas is not intellectual contribution — it is, in Wiredu’s language, the opposite of conceptual decolonization. The topic does not need new vocabulary. The author needs to read more widely, cite more justly, and recognize that the scholars they overlook understood these problems first, understood them more deeply, and in some cases paid significant professional costs for doing so.

Re: AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?

#170

> 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,…

In school we were often required to have a specific edition, or we got notice about a certain thing that changed. People that relied on print knew that it could be wrong. Deliberate changes like a name change, will lead to errors, everybody expects and deals with that. In digital space we expect that to be rather unlikely, at least for major maintained sources. I think the difference is that LLMs are a very complex m…

But couldn't the same failure mode happen in traditional information sources? Can a textbook not also have a wrong assumption about political dynamics? Could I not make a google search, and then read one of the top results that makes a wrong assumption about political dynamics? I'm still not seeing a failure mode that's unique to AI or LLMs here.
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