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Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

artfish.ai

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

#141

Post by smoothbraindev »

saulpw wrote: post #35
helterskelter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is really cool! After entering the software field, I felt uncomfortable not having a sense of relative size while working with digital storage units. Piece of mind was achieved after sitting down and mapping the units (Gb, Mb, etc) to common artifacts(audio file, plain text, database).

I've been planning forever to do something similar with length, duration, power, etc.

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

#142

Post by Fordec »

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…

Managers, good technical ones anyway, also dive deeper into technical understanding. They don't do it to write more code, they do it to figure out what the developer is saying to ensure the developers aren't blowing smoke.

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

#144

Post by throwitaway222 »

I've been doing computer stuff all my life. I am learning the construction trades now. LLMs help you learn the rules for doing weird and specific stuff in the trades. One of my favorite LLM prompts is for plumbing tasks. For example: I have 1" pex b and I need to convert to a typical 1/4" RO connection line, what fittings on supplyhouse.com should I buy? So much easier than standing in Home Depot in the plumbing aisle for 25 minutes staring at the wall of fittings.

I think in the software trade you will definitely use your brain less. But in other trades, it removes the time sucks and gets you back to work.

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

#145

Post by AnEro »

techpression wrote: post #135
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…

The calculator comparisons are truly meaningless imo, a calculator does nothing if you don’t know how to use it and what to input, an LLM circumvents all that, but a lot of people seem to think it’s the same.

It’s not a perfect analogy. I’m approaching it from perspective of a more universal experience of people losing aspects of a skill over time by using a tool. When ultimately the skill learned with out it allows them to use the tool much better

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

#146

Post by throwatdem12311 »

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…

Deep knowledge is going to be the opposite of a commodity.

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

#148

Post by specproc »

I am increasingly finding my consulting work to be orientated around clearing up after people who outsourced their thinking to AI.

I'm seeing some incredibly dumb stuff: researchers spending months on Claude trying to do insane deduplication, unrelated to their research question, using regex; whole research methodologies YOLO'd out of ChatGPT.

The results invariably chaotic, resulting in huge amounts of stress and wasted time.

Non-technical people are treating LLMs like an oracle, making big assumptions and decisions with little regard for their implications, because their clanker told them to.

It's scary out there. The lack of critical thinking I'm seeing in some of these projects is horrific. Not unique to the post-AI era, certainly, but on a whole new level. Bad things are undoubtedly happening everywhere, right now, because someone's just like "let's ask Claude".

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

#149

Post by jagged-chisel »

Information is seldom presented in a way that makes sense to me. That’s not quite right. Let me attempt to explain.

I want certain answers that the docs and the code are not giving me yet. Nothing is more irritating than working through a tutorial on a new framework and then throwing all that work out because that’s not really how one should use the framework. Nothing is more frustrating than having to get through a treatise on why this framework is The Solution before I can actually see code that uses the solution. And it’s beyond annoying when this End All Be All framework has a glaring omission that’s not obvious until you’ve built large amounts of your project on top of it.

Hand the docs and the example code to the LLM, and now I can get answers. “How can I do X?” Example code. “Then I need Z” Modified code. “How is this going to handle Q?” Explanation. “That doesn’t seem quite right. Give me a reference to the doc or code showing this.” Links.

Great, in 15 min, I have learned what I need to know, I can see that this solves a problem that I have, and I have discovered that I need an implementation of S to complement this solution.

That is usefulness. And it requires experience.

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

#150

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

mrctte wrote: post #111
zerobees wrote: post #40

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 t…

> I'm not good at lifting weights or running, so my thinking is the only thing I have I'm not saying this to be snarky, but maybe it's time to work on lifting weights and running. The worth of a novel is, of course, subjective, but most people would judge it based on the entertainment value it provides and not how much human effort went into it. Hobbies like fitness (which don't have an output that's meant to be cons…

I was going to say, neither of those forms of exercise are expressions of a natural talent... they're things you simply do (at whatever levels you can currently manage) to stay healthy. They're good for your mental state, too! (And I could stand to do both a bit more regularly...)
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