[flagged]
Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
191–200 of 512 posts
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#192Humans have been offloading thinking to something/some entity forever. From gods to influencers.
AI is the current popular way (at least in these circles) and if it's too much or too little it might not matter. What will matter is if this offloading is making people unhappy and having any negative impact in civilization. I have no idea
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Eventually, that becomes interesting. Before we get to that stage, I think we pass through (almost) everyone following almost the exact same advice as each other.
Such people are extremely predictable.
You may have already noticed, before LLMs, cliché? Talking points that make a group identifiable? Words and phrases that act as applause lights or cognitive stop signs? (That last sentence itself being a pair of clichés that you can use to identify where I hang out online).
Anyway, point is, LLMs will give us a memetic monoculture before they turn us all into a world of correctly personalised Whispering Earring wearers. That makes them predictable, that makes them exploitable. It'll be like playing chess against someone you know is using a specific version of Stockfish: even though it would beat you if you tried to fight the system unaided, you can win by asking your own copy of the AI to go one step further ahead, and it will be accurate precisely because it's playing against itself and reacting to its own moves.
(Of course, the fact I've said this in writing means this is in the training data; in the general case this means the LLMs will know that and account for that, but I suspect comments like this won't shift the needle all that much compared to the aggregate output of 3 billion people reacting to short-form emotional manipulation A/B slop)
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#194The normal application of Betteridge's law of headlines is "no" but I think this is one of the rare instances where it's "yes."
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I need a bash script for example. I don’t like dealing with bash or debugging scripts written by others.
I have that part covered by AI so I can get multiple servers up and running and then eventually fix some config or networking here and there which I like.
Instead of bashing my head against the wall.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#196I'm going to say: yes.
I think partially it is because of the amount of data you can get out of an LLM and because it looks pretty good, a lot of people treat it as authoritative.
This means they send it around and then other people have to go through the work of actually validating it before being able to act on it.
So what this really means is that the person you go the information from offloaded their thinking to the AI, while cannibalizing on yours.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#197Earlier 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…
It seems to me that you don't like reading (which is fine). Some people enjoy reading words strung together in a certain way. The value comes from the simple relationship between the text and the reader, not on some kind of social connection.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#198I 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…
> 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 I'd extend on this as well: the process of creating changes you. In a technical sense, where you approach a problem and the way you solve that problem informs you. Both your problem solving skills, creative skills, but also even understanding how a compromise works. This is why…
I use AI to make songs and pictures for my friends. I barely even listen to music that I didn’t have a hand in making. It’s my favorite genre by far. My kids too. Personalized studio quality songs all day, every day. I suddenly have the power and time to make things I enjoy. I think there’s going to be a hollowing out that’s going to happen where we might not have another Michael Jackson or Taylor Swift or famous musicians because why bother when you can just listen to your own custom tailored tunes. All that matters to me is that I like the song. I don’t care if someone built a custom keyboard or did it on a Stradivarius violin.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#199The value of thinking in language is going down, the value of acting on your dreams is going up
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#200[flagged]
> You are not arguing in good faith mate.
Look in the mirror.
> Are you for real, do you want to go back to the Stone Age? Go ahead!!!
That, my "friend," is called a strawman.
> You are absolutely delusional.
That's a knockout argument there, for sure. /s