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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?

#171

Post by fnoef »

ozim wrote: post #163
dspillett wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the common refrain is “think of yourself as a manager now” One of the many reasons I'm determined to remain a luddite wrt AI. I hate the idea of being a manager and have refused promotions to avoid it in the past. I don't want to manage automatons any more than I want to manage people. I want to do stuff, not manage .

I find a lot of people are actually happy that they can offload mundane parts of job to automatons and to be really busy with the interesting parts. It is not like you have to give them fun parts of the job. While being a team lead for people I actually have to do the opposite. Get interesting parts to hand over to people to keep them happy and pick mundane not interesting boilerplate myself.

I keep hearing my this very much, so I have a question: what fun parts are there left for me?

It feels like this message of “offloading mundane tasks so you will have more time to do fun parts” is being pushed so hard, but in reality the opposite is happening. Fun parts are being offloaded while I’m left doing the soul sucking and mundane parts

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

#173

Post by jrozner »

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…

Most people only do the simplest of math on a day to day basis. I’d bet that if you asked most adults to do something even remotely non-trivial (addition, subtraction, multiplication) a lot would have trouble without a calculator and/or make a large number of mistakes. That’s probably fine because it’s unlikely most adults are all of a sudden going to have to do non-trivial math without a calculator. That probably isn’t the case for people who are having agents do effectively everything for them in their lives

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

#174

Post by netsharc »

embedding-shape wrote: post #165
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…

> We have people here who use LLMs to raise their children, to manage relationships, to design products. My first thoughts were around trying to understand why these people would do that. What I see a lot around me, is people being afraid to fail, as it's some inherently dumb and bad thing, not realizing that sometimes failing is what makes you learn enough so you don't fail later, or builds resilience in other ways…

It's passing the buck, isn't it, if I ask AI and AI tells me something dumb, I can blame AI and absolve myself of responsibility.

At the same time, the troubling allure is that the machine has ingested a million books and has better knowledge than me (e.g. in things like JavaScript or Japanese), so why not trust it about how to raise kids.

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

#175

Post by ryandvm »

boothby wrote: post #66
dentm42 wrote: post #31

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 motivat…

This is such a strange perspective to me. I wouldn't describe anybody I know in this way. Do you not engage in thoughtful conversation with the people you meet? Do you not know people who make art as a hobby? When techies propound such a dim view of humanity, I truly fear for our species. Nobody will shed a tear when your bodily resources are reallocated to paperclip production.

Man, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't know how you can spend even 5 minutes on Facebook looking at the absolutely bonkers shit one's own relatives and neighbors post and still come away thinking that most people are "thoughtful".

Are humans capable of profound creativity? Of course. Are they actually doing it? No, not very often.

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

#176

Post by ericfr11 »

dml2135 wrote: post #110
slibhb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. While I appreciate you laying it out so plainly, I disagree. A novel is a bunch of words and I don't care if they were written by one person, five, an AI, or infinite monkeys on typewriters. What's valuable in a novel (or a poem) is in the words.

Wow, I could not disagree with this more. What’s valuable about a novel is the social relationships it fosters, both in relation to the author, and also all the others that have read it. I read a book to better understand what other people are thinking, how they see the world — both directly from the author, and indirectly, in discovering what other readers may have found valuable. I can maybe understand finding valu…

What if the original idea/concept was from a human, who used an LLM to extend and write the book?

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

#177

Post by budsniffer952 »

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…

>We have people here who use LLMs to raise their children, to manage relationships, to design products

It's not either/or. I think about designing a product in conjunction with AI "thinking" about it. Two heads are better than one.

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

#178

Post by palmotea »

grttw11p22 wrote: post #159

[dead]

> More technology does bring more progress in the long-run.

That's an article of faith, and I don't think it's true, or will stop being true at some point.

> Control of technology is a key issue. Social media wouldn’t be allowed to exist the way it does if govt’s regulated the internet much earlier. Are you happy with the trade off…?

Not necessarily. Human psychology needs limits and friction, and technology is almost always about removing limits and friction. We're not wise enough, collectively and individually, to say no in many, many cases when we should.

I don't think what I'm about to say is a black-and-white rule, but I think we get into trouble when technology isn't invented to solve actual problems, but invented as an end in itself.

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

#179

Post by Izkata »

boothby wrote: post #66
dentm42 wrote: post #31

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 motivat…

This is such a strange perspective to me. I wouldn't describe anybody I know in this way. Do you not engage in thoughtful conversation with the people you meet? Do you not know people who make art as a hobby? When techies propound such a dim view of humanity, I truly fear for our species. Nobody will shed a tear when your bodily resources are reallocated to paperclip production.

I'm guessing they're referring to the unexpected finding that most people don't have an "inner voice" - they don't think in words. It at least partially influenced the NPC meme.

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

#180

Post by paytonjjones »

jvanderbot wrote: post #76
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…

Have you read the "Whispering earring" essay? I love it for the LLM era.[1] You can treat AI as a whispering earring - "What should we do now? How do we fix this? What do you think?" Or you can treat it like an exoskelton - "Implement kd-tree with metric space xyz for this problem, mapping this to that blah blah". That's pre-thought execution automation that makes review much simpler - you already know the shape of t…

Something I never considered much is what happens when everyone else is using the Whispering Earring.

You may be more free and independent, but you may also be unable to compete as everyone else easily gains wealth and success. Natural selection doesn't particularly care about freedom of consciousness.

Bleak.

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