Live data from Hacker News

Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

artfish.ai

421–430 of 512 posts

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

#421

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…

TBH, the calculator example isn’t an encouraging one. I use a calculator (these days N PP, or spotlight). But by the time I do that I already have an approximate ide of why the answer is, so if it’s way off, or the sign is wrong, I see it immediately.

Same with GPS, though many folks have no idea how to navigate on their own anymore so often don’t notice when they’ve accidentally had a typo or chosen the wrong Springfield.

So I find using an LLM can be useful when I already have an idea of that the problem is.

At their request I reviewed a colleague’s plan for a project. I looked up some of the baseline parameters so I could understand the plan, than I made some comments w/questions about things I didn’t quite understand.

A couple of minutes late for our morning mtg I came in while my colleague was saying that I had found a bunch of things that Claude had not.

This is why they are bad news for new grads who haven’t yet learned the and pitfalls of their fields. And this was a senior person who just outsourced the work to the LLM.

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

#422
post #365

Consider the following scenario. You're a beginner or with very little experience go on a popular programming forum to ask a question, in the typical way someone with little experience asks, what do you get? An answer? No, you get bad manners, insults, "you don't know how to ask questions", "RTFM". At best you'll get some people challenging you to clarify and refine your question, which you can't do because you don't…

lol. you get answers, guidance and tutoring if you ask with respect (cf Godfather, 1972)

Respect alone is not always enough, though.

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

#423
post #322
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that’s like teachers saying “you won’t always have a calculator They were right, though. For one, you still need to now what kind of equation to put into the calculator. If you don't know the concepts, what are you going to calculate. Real life situations don't actually spell out neat textbook questions. And just take a look throughout the day how many quick maths you do subconsciously. Just things like cooking or…

> They were right, though. They were not. I'm not dead yet so I suppose there's still a chance, but so far in decades of living life I've always had calculators when I've needed them. > For one, you still need to now what kind of equation to put into the calculator. That's a very different construct. Math concepts don't care how the arithmetic is performed. > If you don't know the concepts, what are you going to calc…

I have a calculator (and many other tools, of course) in my pocket at all times, now... and yet I don't pull it out very often. Because I can add $1.99 + $3.49 faster in my head ($2 plus $3.50 minus two cents = $5.48) than I could get the result by pulling out the phone, swiping my access pattern, tapping the calculator app, and punching in the results. Heck, even if I had a dedicated calculator that only required pulling it out and pressing an On button, I'd still come up with the result faster than I could punch the buttons.

It's definitely worth it for kids to invest the time it takes to learn the little shortcuts involved in mental math: that effort gets repaid many times over during the course of a normal human lifetime.

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

#425
I use this little three liner regularly with people in regards to AI (applicable as much to coding as it is business work):

- I don't care how you produce the words

- I expect you to use tools to be as efficient and productive as possible

- You are accountable for every word you produce

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's fast food thinking You're simply drawing the line where it suits you. I don't consider it pure human coding if you use anything but Notepad.

> You're simply drawing the line where it suits you. I'm drawing the line where the human effort is no longer there. There was a similar argument against electronic music. No effort because no instrument is played. But the fact is the instrument just changed shape, drastically. Like there's an artist I am sure a few here would be familiar with: Master Boot Record, a video game heavy metal electronic blend fully compo…

> It's just a really good illusion from a well tuned stochastic parrot.

The stochastic parrot claim is long gone.

Someone with actual skill in their respective field can create something new and original from current AI systems.

The real danger is that creative/intelligent people are giving up those abilities and letting the AI do it for them.

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

#427
post #195
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing my this very much, so I have a question: what fun parts are there left for me? It feels like this message of “offloading mundane tasks so you will have more time to do fun parts” is being pushed so hard, but in reality the opposite is happening. Fun parts are being offloaded while I’m left doing the soul sucking and mundane parts

I need a bash script for example. I don’t like dealing with bash or debugging scripts written by others. I have that part covered by AI so I can get multiple servers up and running and then eventually fix some config or networking here and there which I like. Instead of bashing my head against the wall.

I love churning out crazy Bash scripts, though. The first scripts I wrote sucked, as it always goes with a new language, but Bash is an awesome swiss army knife now that I know how to really push it. It sucks that doing this by hand now is so heavily discouraged because so many people see this as drudge work (that they never cared to learn).

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

#428

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 mean that's basically 1984 except we now have the technology for telescreens and minitruth at scale

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

#430
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be that you don't appreciate the relationship between the author and the reader and the author and the text, which is fine, but is a bit tragic. Not that I doubt that one day people will simply gather around the AI infinite story creation bot. They just won't know what they're missing. :(

I once read Ben Franklin's autobiography. I have yet to experience any great blossoming of our relationship. More seriously, the novel is a unidirectional medium of communication. Not a relationship. That said, it is meant to convey a perspective. I don't care if it's a human, a robot, or a little green man's perspective. It just has to be an interesting, useful, or enlightening perspective that I didn't already shar…

> I once read Ben Franklin's autobiography. I have yet to experience any great blossoming of our relationship.

I've also read it, and got to know the man that much better. It especially added a great deal of texture to the experience of visiting his home site, his church, and his grave.

I'd argue that humans rarely have unique perspectives, being highly influenced by their environment and experience. And have we not seen AI coming up with novel math?

I don't think unique perspectives are necessarily the compelling part. I think the words are just a medium for thoughts. AI only produces the former, not the latter.

That's my relationship with Ben Franklin. It's not that I read what he wrote; it's that I know what he thought.

Post reply on HN