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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?

#251

Post by snapetom »

jeromechoo wrote: post #234
jvanderbot wrote: post #76

Earlier 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…

Wow what a read! Thanks for sharing. Really helped me unpack why I’m so bothered by people who c/p AI answers verbatim.

I did a code review for a really, let's just say "challenging", co-worker a few years ago. There was one block of code that was really obtuse and I couldn't figure out why it was there and what it did. So I asked him.

He sighed like he was taking responsibility for a grave sin and I should admire him for it, and said, "I don't know. I copied that from StackOverflow."

I've felt that AI is just an amplification of what we've all done and been through with SO answers.

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

#252

Post by planb »

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 it’s so simple. I went on a trip with friends this weekend and cut a video from all the short clips we filmed on our phones. Before AI I would have used some song from my music library as the background tune. This time I created a song with Suno that fits the clips and includes some funny anecdotes from our vacation. If I was very talented and had the time, I could have written the lyrics and recorded the song myself (which undoubtedly would be even more awesome), but I can’t do this. So I used AI as a tool to do it for me. Everyone agrees it’s more personal and a better conserved memory of our shared experiences.

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

#253

Post by walt_grata »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #231
bluefirebrand wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried to do the thing you learned without the LLM holding your hand? Or are you just assuming you learned something because you made a finished product of some kind?

The question is does that even matter You may argue what if LLMs are inaccessible but that’s like teachers saying “you won’t always have a calculator”

Sure it does. I still nees to know the correct mathematics to type into the calculator and the calculator is deterministic. If you don't understand it without the llm explaining it, how can you be sure you actually understand it? How can you catch mistakes made due to it being non-deterministic? Ask another llm? Same problem

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

#255

Post by dolebirchwood »

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…

> You would care about that story

No, I wouldn't. I don't live in Seattle, and I don't care about octopi. Why project what you think a reader cares about?

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

#256

Post by jvanderbot »

zerobees wrote: post #235
jvanderbot wrote: post #76

Earlier 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…

It cracks me up that you bring up the exoskeleton metaphor, because I'm pretty sure it originated from a 100% AI-generated essay that made it to the top of HN a while back. So I guess, AI is whispering things into our ears whether we notice or not.

That's a pretty mid-tier metaphor on my part, along with Iron Man + Jarvis, that I don't think I'd even want to claim credit for :)

I will claim the CNC analogy though - I sometimes feel like a modern machinist just walking between machines and listening for screaming metal.

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

#257

Post by beepbooptheory »

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…

This has a nice, Borgesian, charm to it but I feel like it's premise is confused. If it's just about the here near-empty signifier of "happiness," what does the magic tech of the earring actually contribute to the parable that some hypothetically perfect narcotic wouldn't?

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

#258

Post by sbloz »

Since the author starts with a short story about AI I want to recommend one about technology and progress in general: "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" from Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

I think about it a lot in conversations like this. The story does a much better job of telling it, so I won't summarize more than: It's a discussion about how technology changes culture and how its very hard to judge if that's a good or bad thing.

It's online https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane...

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

#259

Post by boothby »

ryandvm wrote: post #175
boothby wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not spend even 5 minutes on facebook. Aside from a comment or two per day on HN, the only human interactions I have on the internet are with coworkers, a of whom I regularly see in person.

If you find yourself consuming more than 5 minutes of content you don't find thoughtful per day, I would ask why. "Touch grass" seems to be the common advice to combat this.

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

#260

Post by ah1508 »

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…

> calculators didn't make us dumber

For most people, GPS did not improve sense of direction, spellchecking did not help to write without making mistake, deepl did not help to be better in foreign languages. But replacing a bicycle by a motorcycle forces to acquire new skills without losing any, and we can find many example of symbiosis between "The man and the machine" (Lindbergh wrote a book named "WE"). AI could be something like that, after all it is human knowledge reachable in a conversational and contextual manner.

So AI can be used to learn: "tell me what's wrong in my code, or if it can be improved". I also tend to think that the more we code, the more we give AI valuable piece of knowledge to learn from, the best code it can produce, the less the produced code seems alien. It can be a win/win, all depend on the mindset. I like to code and even if I am skeptical about many aspects of AI I can share the workload with a robot, as an exercise or if the time or budget is constrained.

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