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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?

#201

Post by purav0788 »

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 don't relate with this at all, are you saying that founders who execute through employees are not creating anything by "themselves", they have no "unique contribution"? Most of us just want to create great products and hopefully get paid for them. And at the end, if I create a great product through this method, I feel equally happy, who wants to grind for a decade over some manual software creation process ?

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

#202

Post by slibhb »

runarberg wrote: post #102
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.

You do care though. You may not think you care but you absolutely do. If somebody tells you that in the Hood canal west of Seattle, there is a population of endangered tree octopuses, who are unique among octopuses in that they climb up to land and lay their eggs under fallen tree trunks in old growth forests, and that they are now endangered because road construction is cutting their access to the old growth forests…

Your example hinges on whether a bunch of words is true, not on how they came to be written.

> When we read personal stories it affects our emotions as we empathize with the author, or otherwise share the feelings that the author is trying to convey. When we find out there is no such author, our empathy and our notion of shared feelings vanishes with the new information even though the words stay the same.

This isn't true for me. If I read an incredibly moving poem and later learned that it was written by someone casting the I Ching and picking words out of a hat, it would not affect how I felt about the poem.

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

#203

Post by bsoles »

I thought it was a myth until the junior developer on my own team responded with "I don't know" to a question about why he made a certain computation during a design review. Because the (wrong) computation was fully AI generated and he couldn't even tell the difference.

Most people don't use AI to learn new stuff. They use it to do "the job" for them and they don't even understand the result. What is the point of a person if they don't bring any value to the table other than being a "resource" to generate prompts?

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

#204

Post by tines »

horsawlarway wrote: post #104
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.

Generally speaking - I agree with you. Source bias is a real logical fallacy, and failing to evaluate the content itself, regardless of the source, is a problematic view of the world. In the same way that I don't need the lumber in my house "hand sawed" for it to achieve my goal of creating a habitable space. --- But more broadly, I do think there's space to at least question the use and role of AI. Because while con…

> Source bias is a real logical fallacy

This is irrelevant because we’re not using the source to judge the strength of an argument. Logical fallacies have only to do with the strength of a logical argument, nothing else.

To illustrate this, if I sell you some energy and you ask whether the energy comes from burning children or from a solar farm, I can’t say that it’s a logical fallacy for you to care because all energy powers your home just the same. You don’t owe any consideration to the content (energy) at all, because energy is not an argument that is subject to the source fallacy, to treat it as such is a fundamental category error.

Even to take your tack and say “We should consider the energy generated from burning children apart from its source, because we don’t want to fall prey to the source fallacy. However, the societal effects should also be taken into consideration…” shouldn’t be countenanced.

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

#205

Post by ben_w »

MisterTea wrote: post #120
elmer2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?" Many of the LLM maximalists I know don't have the skills or knowledge to excel in technology and need to use LLMs to do their job. It's seen as a cheat code to get work done. As an example, A person I went to high sc…

> At some point, it will be impossible to tell the difference. Many people already can't tell if something was generated by AI. So what if its indistinguishable - its not a product of human intellect or effort. I feel there is a large disconnect where people look at artful output such as music or writing as a thing no different than a box of paper clips. To them, "It's just there." They don't care how it got there, t…

I'm not sure what you're arguing here?

If it's indistinguishable, that could be because the user doesn't care to look closely, or it could be because it's just that well made now. For simple profile pictures, I genuinely stopped being able to tell if I'm looking at a real photo or not last year.

> That's fast food thinking; It's engineered to be "tasty" in the sense that they put the right amount of chemicals into the food to tickle the right nerve endings. It's junk food that exists to turn a profit. Whereas even the local diner puts effort into its food and has a damn fine Greek menu and the best mozzarella sticks.

The former is molecular gastronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy

The digital version fast food we already have and is a little different, in that it's the tuning of "the algorithm" to addict us, while text and image models* seem to be trying to actually fool us.

* I suspect video and music models are trying to addict, but I'm not super sure either way.

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

#206

Post by nathias »

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…

LLMs are bicycles for the mind, they do not think instead of you

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

#207

Post by ben_w »

ericfr11 wrote: post #185
ElProlactin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you knew how the modern music industry and local diners work, you might not be so impressed. It's not all artisanal, made with love goodness just because human hands did it.

But the AI would not be able to perform live on a stage, producing emotions. I can't imagine staying 3 hours in a crowded room looking at a robot or a computer screen, even if it produces great music. Or if we get to that point, what gives the right and permission for humans to exist anymore?

> I can't imagine staying 3 hours in a crowded room looking at a robot or a computer screen, even if it produces great music.

May I introduce you to the runtime of The Lord of the Rings films?

Also the American Federation of Musicians' campaign against "robot" musicians replacing live musicians in movie theatres? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-ag...

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

#208

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #181
elmer2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?" Many of the LLM maximalists I know don't have the skills or knowledge to excel in technology and need to use LLMs to do their job. It's seen as a cheat code to get work done. As an example, A person I went to high sc…

This is the classic gatekeeping our industry loves: "This guy couldn't do a thing we found easy, now he can! Boooo!" Yes, I can now set up a Drupal website in a few hours. That is great for me.

"Gatekeeping" is a derogatory way of saying "maintaining standards of quality", usually by those who stand to benefit from lowered standards. I heartily approve of "gatekeeping" because I like having competent co-workers.

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

#209

Post by dml2135 »

slibhb wrote: post #197
dml2135 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love reading, and I was explaining precisely why I love it.

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

#210

Post by sebastiennight »

ben_w wrote: post #193
paytonjjones wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cliché…

> 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.

I don't believe this is how chess works, and I don't believe this is how Stockfish works, and I don't believe this is how AI works.

Stockfish isn't winning because it's playing a better sequence of programmed steps, and having access to "the next version of Stockfish" doesn't mean it can "guess the next move" and play against that.

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