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Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

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

#371

Post by chongli »

chowells wrote: post #354
SamPatt wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The world has absolutely gotten wealthier over the last few centuries. Wealth is obviously not zero sum. Humanity is far wealthier today than before the industrial revolution, and the trend is still towards increasing wealth.

As Led Zeppelin once said, "you know sometimes words have two meanings". That definition of wealth is all well and good for books about how markets are magical fix-everything pixie dust. But it's not the definition of wealth that applies when used to describe a person. A wealthy person is not someone with a lot of things. That's a hoarder. A wealthy person is someone who can use their economic power to shape the worl…

That definition of wealth is all well and good for books about how markets are magical fix-everything pixie dust

No, it actually means something. We have access to refrigeration, climate control, near-limitless computation, entertainment, transportation, knowledge, communication, and medicine. All of this stuff would BLOW THE MINDS of medieval kings. Even if you're living in a 1BR apartment, working at Walmart and struggling to pay rent, you enjoy many luxuries Charlemagne could scarcely dream of.

Go to the store, grab a pineapple off the shelf, take it home, and eat it. Then read about the great lengths [1] the wealthy people of the past went to in order to try to grow pineapples in Europe, and how obsessed the culture became with this fruit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_mania

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

#372

Post by resonious »

elmer2 wrote: post #105
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…

"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…

I consider myself an LLM maximalist, at least in the context of software engineering. Even after delegating everything you can to LLMs, there's still work left for you. And it's far more interesting. Even the delegation to LLMs is interesting - it's not that easy to make it work well.

In my domain (web app CRUD), we build the same thing over and over and over. And it's not beautiful or interesting like furniture. It feels like with LLMs, all that repetitive stuff is gone and I can focus myself on the tricky problems.

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

#373

Post by ColdStream »

obscurette wrote: post #274
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 I think that most of people misunderstand what calculator changed. Calculator didn't replace people doing math, calculator replaced mathematical tables, slide rulers and other already existing devices. And regarding making people dumber ... Math teachers who saw this change said that there was a clear shift – students started to think less critically. With slide rulers and tables y…

One could argue that those who think calculators didn't make themselves dumb cannot be the judge of that. Cannot be the claimant, defendant and judge all at the same time.

I would say that calculators definitely reduced my more simplistic mathematics skills but did open up some more advanced stuff. I wouldn't say it was a gain or a loss, just depends on what your needs are.

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

#374

Post by buildbot »

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…

Not particularly related, but “whispering earring” made me think of the hemalurgic earring in Brandon Sanderson's later Mistborn books.

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

#375

Post by drewbeck »

voncheese wrote: post #339
evolve-maz wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a manager for some years. Without sounding too up myself, what made me good at management was the fact that I knew how to do the things I asked people to do. It allowed me to critically evaluate the work, set realistic timelines, and champion the contributions up the chain. I also maintained the ability to perform this work (by design and happenstance sometimes, since we could be understaffed due to sicknes…

> There's a world of difference between managing a dozen or so individual contributors vs managing senior managers / directors. I agree, but in my opinion, your point about needing to know how things work still holds. It's less relevant as you move up to managing managers and larger orgs, but it never goes to zero if you're going to be successful.

I think it holds true throughout if you scope it to knowledge about your reports’ domain. If you’re managing managers you should have a good handle on what a manager does and different ways to do it.

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

#376

Post by ColdStream »

roncesvalles wrote: post #352

I fear more for the future where you're forced to offload your thinking to AI. Everything you say must be cited with LLM, everything you do must be signed off by The LLM. If you're in a meeting and have an idea, but Fable 9 says it's not a good idea, you cannot pursue it or you lose your job. The low-friction path will always be to do what the LLM tells you, and many people will shut off and surrender completely. (th…

I would like to push back on this, but I cannot. Alas, for most people they will take the easy path for sort term gains than the longer road for resilience.

I see it all the time now, people constantly outsourcing their thinking to LLM's and getting upset when you point out that it is wrong. I have people calling/emailing my work place about a service of product that we do not provide. But those folks simply cannot comprehend that the LLM is wrong and many have made the accusation that us at the business are wrong. There is a very strong feeling from many people now that it is the higher authority over professionals. It is a saddening position to be in.

We are only 3 1/2 years into this and it is already happening on a much larger scale than many think.

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

#377

Post by backwardsponcho »

protocolture wrote: post #361
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…

>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 their children, to manage relationships, to design products. So what's your unique contribution to this world - is it the prompt you once wrote? You're standing in front of a token-generating…

When people interact with spouses and coworkers, it's still human-to-human interaction. There is a person on the other end. Not quite the same when your head doctor, DJ, gym coach, and nutritionist are the same sycophant machine who's eager to let you know how absolutely right you are.

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

#378

Post by SamPatt »

customguy wrote: post #351
SamPatt wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The world has absolutely gotten wealthier over the last few centuries. Wealth is obviously not zero sum. Humanity is far wealthier today than before the industrial revolution, and the trend is still towards increasing wealth.

You are talking about access to resources and technologies, which is basically constantly rising, we couldn't stop that if we wanted to, so that's a given and more importantly orthogonal to the wealth that buys you goods and services. The latter is absolutely zero sum, because of everybody has a billion, a billion isn't that much any more. E.g. human trafficking exists because some people are rich and others are poor…

>You are talking about access to resources and technologies, which is basically constantly rising, we couldn't stop that if we wanted to

We could very obviously stop our progress in resources and technology. It has happened throughout history many times and we see plenty of modern examples.

You seem to be treating the accumulated products of civilization as though they are geological facts rather than fragile outputs of maintained institutions.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you believe that 1) access to resources and technology are "basically constantly rising" and 2) why the relative difference in wealth today is more important than the (magical?) existence of a system were everyone has continually gotten more access to resources and technology.

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

#379

Post by SamPatt »

chowells wrote: post #354
SamPatt wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The world has absolutely gotten wealthier over the last few centuries. Wealth is obviously not zero sum. Humanity is far wealthier today than before the industrial revolution, and the trend is still towards increasing wealth.

As Led Zeppelin once said, "you know sometimes words have two meanings". That definition of wealth is all well and good for books about how markets are magical fix-everything pixie dust. But it's not the definition of wealth that applies when used to describe a person. A wealthy person is not someone with a lot of things. That's a hoarder. A wealthy person is someone who can use their economic power to shape the worl…

>A wealthy person is not someone with a lot of things.

No one made that claim.

By nearly any sane metric the world is wealthier. You can verify this on sites like Our World in Data.

We are healthier, have more leisure time, are less likely to die in natural disasters, etc.

It's willful ignorance to define wealth in a way that wouldn't show humanity as having gotten more wealthy. You're doing harm by overlooking massive gains we've made and understanding why we made them and instead redefining the common sense understanding of basic terms.

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

#380

Post by iutbaqbiabth »

Yes. Absolutely.

I feel like it's also making people even more lazy. It feels like people just ask questions without putting ANY effort in themselves beforehand to find the answer, like they assume everything is an AI and we're all just going to drop everything and give them a gushing answer. Like the whole concept of a manual or documentation for something seems like the biggest waste of time now, because it feels like no one reads it (or maybe haven't got the attention span to read anything anymore either?), or can be bothered reading it, or even bothered to look to see if there was any manual or documentation in the first place. Zero ability to think and do things for themselves. Granted yes, it has always been a bit like that, but I definitely feel like this sort of thing has been much worse since LLMs have been around.

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