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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?

#441

Post by customguy »

rmunn wrote: post #413
customguy wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 immun…

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

I claimed no such thing, you read way too much into your missing the point.

> if the Vikings (or whoever) caught you alone, or outnumbered and overpowered your hired guards

Wait, I thought it was just because "some people do evil things", nothing to do with relative power?

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

#442

Post by customguy »

SamPatt wrote: post #386
customguy wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you should ask yourself why you believe that 1) access to resources and technology are "basically constantly rising" Because people have and share ideas, and I was using that as a shorthand. Even if they aren't, if you completely strike that part -- my point remains completely untouched. > why the relative difference in wealth today is more important than the (magical?) existence of a system were everyone has…

>There was no default "state", at least by the time you're talking about humans, we probably already learned from each other by observation. Sure, politics and wars and religion and feudal dynasties and whatever make bumps in the line, but generally it goes up. No, that's not the shape of the line. You can view it here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-ca... The hockey stick upturn in recent…

> The hockey stick upturn in recent centuries needs explanation.

Why? It goes up. As I said.

> I think it's silly to do that when we have an unbelievably dramatic increase in wealth in recent centuries which needs understanding first.

That's not pushing back, that's wanting to talk about something else first. That's just not something I'm interested in.

> distorting what wealth means?

It simply means both things, from context it was obvious how it was used in this instance, you ignoring that and going on tells me explaining it yet another time won't help.

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

#443

Post by intended »

abalashov wrote: post #310
ClikeX wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would contend you got the knowledge by typing the code yourself, that there's no other way to get it, and that if you stop typing the code yourself--and the slogging that entails--you'll lose the ability to prompt LLMs effectively. For sure, and I've tried picking up a new language with the use of LLMs, but the concepts just don't stick because I don't actually do the work. That's why I do try to limit my use of…

> the concepts just don't stick because I don't actually do the work Yes! And this is the part of the de-skilling puzzle that is completely unaddressed by AI boosters. Maybe LLMs are a force multiplier, but there still has to be some force to multiply, and I don't think a lot of folks ask the question of how that force is actually cultivated. This nebulous, airy-fairy notion that humans add "architecture" or "taste"…

Yes! If anything both, the supply of veterans and the ratio of judgement capacity to generated content, will only go down with time.

So where are the new veterans going to be coming from? You can’t spin up experienced workers overnight.

Essentially the same supply chain issue which nation states are worrying about today, except for skill.

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

#444

Post by ForgotMyUUID »

About offloading the decisions : As I was reading the text, I couldn’t shake the thought that freedom of choice might not be as natural as we think. When I see animals at the zoo, it saddens me that they spend their lives in confinement. Some animals don’t even reproduce in captivity. It’s clear that it’s human nature to delegate decisions to a machine. One could explain this from an evolutionary perspective: by avoiding the stress of responsibility, we expend less energy and our bodies wear down less. I agree. But then it follows that dictatorship is also very much part of human nature. And it’s not so sad to live in a cage where everything is decided for you. It’s just that the decisions aren’t made by a communist party or a totalitarian cult, but by a machine programmed to milk you dry as long as you have even a penny left. It all adds up to some kind of grim dystopia. One of my family members suffers from AI-cyberpsychosis. A year ago, he had just one $20 subscription, but now he’s spending $200, monthly. What is this if not a cage he’s voluntarily locked himself into?

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

#445

Post by kakacik »

dTal wrote: post #355
garciasn wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had been explaining it to others as 'My Iron Man suit' before reading the exoskeleton essay, months later. So, you are definitely correct.

It feels more like a BMX bike to me. The quality of what I get out seems to be a direct function of what I put in. The threshold of what I can achieve is raised slightly, the speed with which I can achieve it is raised quite a lot - but it's not a magic rocket ship that whisks me to far off hostile environments and protects me while I'm there. I'm still "naked". The code is still mine, and I can get off the bike at a…

Thats... not how most of the world is using llms. Students are getting measurably dumber (as in lacking actual topic understanding, since actually learning sonething properly is much harder than shallow knowledge), every other day I read about somebody losing their wealth due to listening to llms with finances.

Other recent articles - psychologists start seeing people losing their uniqueness and many people slowly veering towards same middle bland opinions.

I think top parent is correct - we are in the process of visibly losing a lot from our humanity, much more than we are gaining. We shouldnt be listening too much to loudest mouths here that praise efficiency gains, many of those are 'semi-autistic' folks with tunnel vision focused on 1 aspect and ignoring larger picture.

I dont see any change of course possible, the sweet nectar of efficiency and offloading decisions and work is too strong a drug to ignore. But everything has its set of benefits and drawbacks, and drawbacks here seem pretty brutal so far.

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

#446

Post by kakacik »

gretch wrote: post #384
dakolli wrote: post #298

Earlier 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…

I definitely retain it. In the case of the gardening - I pretty much immediately go outside and practice it. In other words, how I get the info doesn’t matter (book, video, llm) because I’m locking in the skill by doing the thing in the garden. And sometimes it is kinda wrong/suboptimal, but not more than e.g. asking a friend for gardening tips. Usually this is based on lack of context, like eg im growing cherry toma…

I dont think you are getting the topic - sure if knowledge gleamed from llms is immediately practiced repeatedly, it stays, why would anybody question that.

Now add 30 or 50 or 100 other topics you dip into on any given day. No way in hell you do same technique of repetition till you learn it. This is gist of problem to me. Most students these days fall into this category and the amount of time/energy to properly learn something has stayed the same or even increased (due to distractions and pushing through mental barrier of 'I know it well enough')

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

#447

Post by ssl-3 »

rmunn wrote: post #439
ssl-3 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do simple math like that in my head all the time, despite having had special permission to use a calculator in school. It was the same back then: Some quick mental math was often faster than using a calculator, so that's what I used first. The calculator came second. I reject all notions that these are mutually-exclusive concepts.

> I reject all notions that these are mutually-exclusive concepts. Agreed; just because I "rarely" pull out the calculator doesn't mean I never use it. Sometimes my wife asks me "If this cake recipe calls for filling a 9-inch pan with batter, and makes 3 layers, but I have an 8.5-inch pan and I'm making two layers, then how much should I reduce the recipe?" The π terms cancel each other out in that math, but I still…

Sure. So to bring it all back together:

I don't think I'd want to rely upon having a rental pocket calculator to use. It could become unavailable at any time, for any reason. For something as common, inexpensive, and easy to find as pocket calculators have been for decades, renting one sounds crazy.

But that's the way that clown-based LLMs are: They're rented. They could disappear at any time.

And sure, I do use the bot to get some stuff done, anyway. I think of it as somewhat akin of the time-sharing computer systems of yore, where people absolutely rented (often far-away) computing resources to accomplish their work.

Those time-sharing systems were only temporary. The giants like Control Data Corp fell out of favor as computers became smaller, faster, and cheaper. (And then they came back in the shape of things like AWS, but that has a lot of non-technical things driving it; AWS is, strictly-speaking, completely optional.)

Unless we stop making computers smaller/faster/cheaper (which we haven't, despite the present-day supply/demand market blip) I think it is certain that we will get there again with LLMs, where the giants fall. Not this year, or next, but small systems will catch up.

And these little machines don't even have to win the race. They just have to be Good Enough.

So it seems inevitable that people like you and I will live to see fantastic local LLMs happening with affordable hardware that fits on a desk.

And then, eventually, into our pockets -- like a calculator.

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

#448

Post by baranul »

snapetom wrote: post #251
jeromechoo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow what a read! Thanks for sharing. Really helped me unpack why I’m so bothered by people who c/p AI answers verbatim.

I did a code review for a really, let's just say "challenging", co-worker a few years ago. There was one block of code that was really obtuse and I couldn't figure out why it was there and what it did. So I asked him. He sighed like he was taking responsibility for a grave sin and I should admire him for it, and said, "I don't know. I copied that from StackOverflow." I've felt that AI is just an amplification of what…

Way too many people like to reach for the easiest path. They will often assume or have blind faith that the AI or online answer is correct. Coming up with the solution themselves or taking time to understand why something might be the correct answer, can be just too much work to be bothered with.

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

#449

Post by chrisjj »

zerobees wrote: post #235
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…

It cracks me up that you bring up the exoskeleton metaphor, because I'm pretty sure it originated from a 100% AI-generated essay that made it to the top of HN a while back. So I guess, AI is whispering things into our ears whether we notice or not.

> I'm pretty sure it originated from a 100% AI-generated essay

There's no such thing. You're probably thinking of a 100% "AI"-/regurgitated/ essay.

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