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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?

#261

Post by dolebirchwood »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #177
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.

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

Anyone who's spent time in professions in or adjacent to social work would say that a lot of their clients would frankly be better off outsourcing these decisions to LLMs.

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

#262

Post by webdood90 »

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…

The system does not reward deep understanding. It's too slow.

An analogy that I think helps describe how I feel about it all:

AI is like having cheat codes in a video game. You don't have to try hard and develop a deep understanding of how the game works. You aren't challenged anymore and it doesn't feel like you earned winning the game.

It doesn't matter because nobody cares. Businesses truly do not care. You are a cog, a means to an end. It's only about "winning". Now it's no longer fun to play the game.

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

#263

Post by ryandvm »

boothby wrote: post #259
ryandvm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, and you're not wrong, but it sounds like you're filtering out most of the shit that humanity is producing and then lecturing folks that say LLMs are smarter than most people.

It's kind of like you hang out in a Buddhist monastery saying, "I don't know what you guys are talking about - people are so peace-loving!"

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

#264

Post by jr3592 »

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 is such a good point. It matters HOW you use the LLM.

Come to it with knowledge and understanding of a subject matter, asking for an implementation? That's different from going to it with no knowledge, asking for guidance on everything.

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

#265

Post by theturtletalks »

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…

> is it the prompt you once wrote?

Yes, but also the prompts you give after, and the iterations you continue to do. Art is rarely something you build once and forget about. A lot of that going on in AI no doubt, but the builders who polish their work and strive for perfection are still the builders they were before AI.

You mention the novel writer and yes that person who's great at writing novels will create great art. But the ones that are 80% of the way their, but maybe can't nail the ending, or segue into different plot-lines, can now create great art and have AI get them there. Subconsciously, they will get better at those things by using AI and seeing the result.

I'm always reminded of that I, Robot scene where the scientist says "you must ask the right questions." And that is true now more than ever.

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

#266

Post by jvanderbot »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #257
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…

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?

The earring doesn't make you feel better, it actually produces a better result. It's never wrong. You might regret addiction, for example? Also, it's a parable. Take it too literally and it loses its charm.

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

#268

Post by boothby »

ryandvm wrote: post #263
boothby wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, and you're not wrong, but it sounds like you're filtering out most of the shit that humanity is producing and then lecturing folks that say LLMs are smarter than most people. It's kind of like you hang out in a Buddhist monastery saying, "I don't know what you guys are talking about - people are so peace-loving!"

No, I'm interacting with people in person. I'd debate your claim that "most of the shit that humanity is producing" is internet-mediated, but your choice of noun renders that rather moot. Stop ingesting shit. There's a whole world out there.

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

#269

Post by bluefirebrand »

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”

An LLM always being accessible is not my problem

My problem is that filtering all of human creativity and expression through an LLM is ugly

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

#270

Post by muvlon »

ben_w wrote: post #215
sebastiennight wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 S…

I didn't say "the next version of Stockfish". You have Stockfish version n, see board state s. I have Stockfish version n, see board state s. I want to know what you're about to do, so I put Stockfish into state s, ask it what the best move is, and I know you'll make that move because I know you'll ask Stockfish version n the same question of the same state. I now know board state s+1. The steps are not pre-programme…

There is deliberate randomness in stockfish. The easiest way to see this is from the fact that, when playing the white pieces, it won't play the same opening move every time. Often it's e5, but it also goes for e4 or Nf3 or something else entirely.

This is by design, and very much necessary for a competitive chess engine. Otherwise, people could do basically what you say: Run an offline (as in, ahead of time, with ample compute resources) search against stockfish that finds a line where it loses, then make an engine that plays that every time.

As a consequence, even if you know that your opponent is running stockfish, you can't really use that against them. Your best bet is also just running stockfish.

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