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Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

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Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#31

Post by dentm42 »

The question presumes that most of us are "thinking" in the first place, when in actuality, most of us are just acting according to the patterns that have emerged from our encounters with the thoughts of others. We generally adopt them and/or try to hallucinate coherence when they conflict. Very few people actually "think". It's hard work and takes time. We neither have (take) the time nor are we particularly motivated to put in the work because the patterns we have learned from others are useful enough to achieve the low goals we set for ourselves.

IOW - modern AI is simply an extension of the lack of thinking that characterizes the modern life... It just does it faster and uses a hulluva lot more energy.

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#34

Post by georgeburdell »

ofjcihen wrote: post #2

I know that the common refrain is “think of yourself as a manager now” but I’ve actually taken the opposite approach and have been telling anyone I train the same. Diving deeper into technical understanding makes more sense to me at this point both as a way to make yourself more useful in the age of AI and also to use AI more effectively. I regularly tell the kids to grab a text book on a subject that interests them…

I too give juniors the advice to crack open $textbook. It’s just painful to see the complex things they’ve created with horrible performance and no cohesive data model because they don’t have the requisite academic foundation to hand code the same thing given unlimited time

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#35

Post by saulpw »

helterskelter wrote: post #17
AnEro wrote: post #6

When I use a calculator, I atleast try to get with in a few digits of what I think the anwser is in my head. Mostly since when I was younger I had a very passionate teacher about how much slower everyone is now because of calculators on simple math. I just apply the same thing with LLMs, just try and think of how and what I would have said and see how close I was. Only thing I change is I don't trust the anwsers and…

OT, but if we made kids learning math use log tables and slide rules for all their calculations I expect that they would engage their brains more and actually think about what they were doing, ie: form a strategy to solve a problem before they started calculating. Also I think that they would get a better "feel" for working numbers in general. I have no evidence, but I suspect that by abstracting away a lot of the "g…

I'm working on this! https://magworld.pw

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#36

Post by ergonaught »

It's a well done and thought-provoking article.

The reality is that most humans do very little actual thinking of their own anyway, and, if you believe that what LLMs produce constitutes a form of intelligence, it does seem "more intelligent" than most humans.

So: is outsourcing thinking a net improvement for a majority of users?

I use several models, daily, and they seem "reasonably conditioned" that they are only input to my thinking and not "my thinking". I correct them constantly; they are wrong (in reasoning/logic, in actual facts) frequently. They are demonstrably "not smarter" than I am. And yet I know many people who can "do more" with them as a "thinking" tool. I can say that "the problem" is they can't spot the errors, but they can't or won't do that in their ordinary lives, either, so, again, is it a net improvement for them?

Interesting times and all that.

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#37

Post by nsxwolf »

voidfunc wrote: post #25
inigyou wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run both. Benchmark them. Performance is notoriously difficult to predict and much easier to test. If you have a load balancer, run the new strategy on one or two servers and see how their throughput compares to the others.

Seriously its easy to build prototypes with AI and benchmark...

It's not quite as easy to simulate weird behaviors that emerge across clouds and on prem data centers.

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#39

Post by docheinestages »

It really depends on which angle you look at it. Is it purely to meet a business goal? Or is it also for personal growth? I think it's a mix of both, but for me it's always important that I engage mentally with the process, learn something, and solve puzzles, even if that involves letting the AI take care of the coding, which is an abstraction. You could still code and not think creatively.

Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

#40

Post by zerobees »

I don't know if this is a good framing. "Too much" is subjective, and every heavy AI user will assert that they're just unlocking their potential, that calculators didn't make us dumber, etc.

But to latch onto the calculator argument: if you outsource adding numbers to a calculator, you're still you. On the flip side, if you use an LLM do most of your thinking, what's left? We have people here who use LLMs to raise their children, to manage relationships, to design products. So what's your unique contribution to this world - is it the prompt you once wrote? You're standing in front of a token-generating machine, pulling a lever, sometimes receiving gifts. Is that your edge, your unique experience, your purpose in life?

Many LLM maximalists say they use the tech to learn new things, but to what effect? Are you going to apply that knowledge of physics or computer science yourself, or will you just prompt the LLM again?

In my mind, it's pretty simple: I'm a human, LLMs are not. If a human writes a novel, it's inherently worth more because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share. I want to support that. And I want to be a human who can write novels, the old-fashioned way. I'm not good at lifting weights or running, so my thinking is the only thing I have.

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