The title seems to imply there's a constant amount of thinking. Isn't massively increasing the quantity of cognition likely to be a good thing?
Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
341–350 of 512 posts
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#342When I use a calculator, I atleast try to get with in a few digits of what I think the anwser is in my head. Mostly since when I was younger I had a very passionate teacher about how much slower everyone is now because of calculators on simple math. I just apply the same thing with LLMs, just try and think of how and what I would have said and see how close I was. Only thing I change is I don't trust the anwsers and…
The calculator comparisons are truly meaningless imo, a calculator does nothing if you don’t know how to use it and what to input, an LLM circumvents all that, but a lot of people seem to think it’s the same.
Socrates thought similar of reading and writing, if that analogy lands any better.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#343@grok is this true?
I laughed. underrated comment
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you retain that information? Or are you just constantly relying on having access to an llm to re-look things up. The amount of information I retain when using llms to learn is far less than other methods, not sure why, you'd think it would be just as effective as reading a book, but it's definitely not. Probably for the same reason that learning math and always using a calculator does not make you great at math. I…
For me it depends, if I simply take the answer from the LLM it goes straight into the shortest memory neurons my brain has. Now, if I go back and forth with the LLM to say, taking the language learning example, to explore the etymology of the word (which for me is far more interesting than the translation itself), then I learn a ton more.
I'd add that this is also how it used to work with Google search too: there's been facts that would show up as the first result, then you'd just forget it 10 minutes later and have to re-google it. I know this happened to me many times.
For better or worse, there's less friction now for seeing an answer to a question you have. You can ask in more arbitrary ways than Google required, and something will still come up. For looking up factoids, it's much faster. For picking up more complex topics, I'd say it's more or less the same, because you still have to spend time ruminating on the topic.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#345I 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'm acutely aware that even 6-12 months off the keyboard is brutal to come back from, it's a real issue now because there are pockets of work where the agents can drive the whole thing. If you just autopilot there? The comprehension and skill debt becomes really hard to pay down in as little as a week or two for the really high complexity stuff.
I try hard to keep a serious feature branch going on every project where I'm driving it in emacs or vscode or whatever. `gptel` is great for this because it can tool call for the docs, be a super search engine like Google used to be but you're keeping your reflexes up, keeping the comprehension debt under control.
For me this is almost exactly like being in an EM role: it's so easy to lose track of the details, you have all these other demands on your time, there's pressure to grow headcount, and the costs of letting the skills slip is all but invisible for a while. But before you know it you're rubber stamping stuff you don't really grasp, you're not able to help people who are having trouble in the codebase, it's all bad. And depending on why you got into this business, it can become pretty joyless to be totally out of the loop.
Now every engineer has to navigate this. It's going to be interesting.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#346the Ken Liu story linked in the article is actually spot on. would recommend giving that a quick read
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#347Earlier 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.
Why does anyone need you then?
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mus…
> I suddenly have the power and time to make things I enjoy.
You don't make. You ask the ai to make a song about some vague concept and then clap like a seal as it delivers you un-challenging and bias-confirming slop.
> I think there’s going to be a hollowing out ... All that matters to me is that I like the song.
Everyone consumes, and nobody makes everything. But you're describing a future in which nobody makes anything and we all just suckle directly on the soft serve machine.
How grim.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do daily. So far I am doing fine, not sure what exactly your point is, sorry.
Same here. If anything, I think most here outsource too little thinking to AI. What am I supposed to be afraid of? Losing skills I no longer need to get the job done?
Why should anyone ever hire you? We'll just hire the LLM you use.
Re: Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
#350I 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…
> 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 because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share.
In my mind, it's pretty simple too and not dissimilar to what you say: we've got cognition, LLMs don't. When a human writes a novel, it doesn't look like a novel because the human has been trained by reading every single novel ever written in every single human language out there.
The human doesn't imitate the act of writing a novel: the human just writes a novel.
> 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?
Really not much. The IQ of an oyster more or less. But the LLM is not thinking, so it's not possible to "offload your thinking".
But tbh those who believe these LLMs are thinking machines and that it's normal to offload "thinking" to those non-thinking machines probably don't have very deep thoughts anyway.
So nothing of value is lost.
P.S: I happily not one but three AI subscriptions and use LLMs daily to code. Which is probably why I'm such a critic of AI. They're both useful and pathetically bad. They really write crappy code.