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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?

#411

Post by saidinesh5 »

Yesterday, I had an interesting situation where a colleague was using LLM to type up the chat responses to me.

They used an LLM to come up with a Hackathon idea. They tried to use LLM to get to the implementation part. One of the permissions they (/the LLM) were asking for wasn't even needed for their project. When I pointed that out, I got a response from them that starts with "You are right about the permissions".

Today they've successfully finished the project too.

Not sure what I even think/feel about this but it's definitely weird to think about this.

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

#412

Post by burningChrome »

SamPatt wrote: post #379
chowells wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 massi…

>> By nearly any sane metric the world is wealthier.

I would also point out people living in "poverty" in the US would be considered quite wealthy in other countries like Cuba or Haiti.

Everything is relative to how you define wealth and what you're comparing it to.

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

#413

Post by rmunn »

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…

> ... human trafficking exists because some people are rich and others are poor ...

No, it doesn't. This is an absurd claim, and nobody intelligent should take it seriously. Human trafficking exists because some people choose to do evil things. There are plenty of relatively-rich people who are actively trying to stop the evil of human trafficking.

Furthermore, just being wealthy has not, historically, made you immune to being made a slave. For just one example, look at the story of Joseph in the Bible. He was his father's favorite son, the heir presumptive to fantastic wealth for his time (that "coat of many colors" his father gave him cost the equivalent of what a sports car would today), and yet his brothers who hated him sold him into slavery while his father wasn't around to protect him. Throughout history, cross-border slave raiding has been a thing, too: it didn't matter how much gold you had tucked under your bed if the Vikings (or whoever) caught you alone, or outnumbered and overpowered your hired guards: once they hauled you away and slapped chains on you, you no longer had access to your wealth, and your life depended on making your captors happy with your work.

To think that slavery, ancient or modern, is caused by relative wealth differentials reveals an abysmal ignorance of both history and human nature.

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

#415

Post by jagenabler2 »

wincy wrote: post #198
parl_match wrote: post #106

Earlier 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…

you should really consider trying things that don't exactly fit your ideals. Listen to music you don't think you'll like, or watch a movie that you've never heard of. You find threads that you do like and learn to understand the parts you don't. Discomfort and friction is how we grow as people, it's how we gain perspective, and how our interests evolve.

Otherwise, if you're going to keep consuming the exact slop content that you're looking for, you're going to stagnate as a person.

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

#416

Post by jagenabler2 »

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.

Reading is beautiful because of language's inability to fully capture emotion and reality. Every author tries to tell a story in the way they think captures their perspective best. Every author and book you read is a different perspective on the world that shapes your own.

Reading writing from an LLM loses all that. It's just words, there is no expression. It's literally the most boring parts of reading.

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

#417

Post by rmunn »

bitwize wrote: post #385
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…

Except it's not really a mechsuit; inasmuch as it is, it's more like an Evangelion: it's got bits of people's souls floating around in there; it only works well with a high synch rate with the user, which is difficult to achieve consistently; and sometimes it pops off and does its own thing anyway. And the way you achieve and maintain deep knowledge of the shape of the output you want is... well, to write and test it…

That Evangelion analogy is a good one. I don't necessarily agree with all of it (for example, I think the high synch rate is the weakest part of the analogy, and LLMs can be used as tools with some decent success without needing to plunge into them too deeply), but every piece of it can be coherently argued for (for example, perhaps I'm missing an even higher threshold of success that I could achieve with a higher "synch rate" equivalent, and I just don't know about it).

But kudos for coming up with such an evocative analogy.

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

#418

Post by rmunn »

MisterTea wrote: post #381
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.

> If you knew how the modern music industry and ... This just assumes I'm listening to mainstream music or whatever when I mostly buy grungy metal and whatever else I enjoy off Bandcamp. Many times, directly supporting the artist. > ... local diners work, you might not be so impressed. I already stated the homemade gyro platter and they're mozzarella sticks w/sauce are slammin and they are proud of it. Sure it's busi…

I love gyros; you're making me want to go visit that diner. Do you mind revealing its name and the city it's in? (If you don't want to because that would reveal too much about your own location, I understand perfectly well and have no objections). Odds are I'm nowhere close to it, but sometimes my job takes me to unexpected locations, so I'm always happy to have a list like "If you're ever in Topeka, Kansas, check out (name of hole-in-the-wall burrito joint), they make the best darn burritos I've ever had". (For clarity: that's a made up example, I don't know anything about restaurants in Topeka).

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

#419

Post by rmunn »

ben_w wrote: post #207
ericfr11 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

One of my college buddies, when getting set up for a marathon viewing of the trilogy (extended editions, naturally), referred to it as "twelve hours of butt-numbing Tolkien goodness". Exact words: it was more than 20 years ago but that phrase was so evocative it stuck in my memory.

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

#420

Post by rmunn »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #190
hoppp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about punch cards? Real programmers write the code and throw it away after compilation. All the fixes happen in the binary. You are not a real programmer unless you debug hex dumps and add changes directly to the compiled program. Text editor? No. You punch the program on cards and then wait 1 week to get your turn and get a compiler error.

Nope, I draw my line at Notepad!

EDLIN.EXE or bust!
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