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LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

arxiv.org

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Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#51

Post by simlevesque »

camgunz wrote: post #41
dvt wrote: post #35

I just don't see that the main thrust of their argument, (oversimplified) "humans will become so dependent on AI, they'll become dumb," holds any water. I mean even from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence is (by far) our most valuable competitive advantage. Arguing that "cognitive offloading" (their term) will have runaway effects is reaching to say the least. It's like saying that moving from manual-labor-inte…

> humans, on average, are healthier and live longer than ever in human history. Kinda. We also have incredible rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes. While I do mostly buy that the mind and the body are connected, I don't think being able to bench press 250lbs is a necessary, fundamentally human capability. I do think being able to think is. Literally Rene Descartes cogito ergo sum. If we lose cognit…

The higher rates don't make any sense if you don't try to take into account the fact that we live longer. Of course we will accumulate more diseases if we last longer.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#52

Post by CheerioThen »

IshKebab wrote: post #42
SoStupid wrote: post #29

The wording alone is just so Idiocracy . What our descendants will think when they look back on this time period. They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living, they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others. They wondered whether or not a word calculator was the antichrist. They assembled in the highest courts of the day and involved the most brilliant min…

I sort of agree with you... The trouble is your logic is trivially obviously nonsense. "Word calculator", "linear algebra"... This is just a variation on it's just a stochastic parrot / it's just a next token predictor. The implication is that because it is "just" this simple-sounding thing, it can't be a complex thing! Except we know empirically that that doesn't hold. What are humans if not "just" next action predi…

> trivially obviously nonsense

I read it in that high pitched British accent that goes up into falsetto

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#53

Post by tripleee »

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

I'm not sure what the point you're making is.

We're in the midst of figuring out what the tradeoffs are of LLM usage - all the things you list are already mostly known and found worth it. You trade a tiny amount of time and fuel to cook food in exchange for not getting sick. How is that relevant to anything?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#54

Post by canjobear »

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

> What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

In evolutionary time, we lost the ability to digest raw meat because we offloaded so much of process of the digestion to the cultural technology of cooking.

Do you like the looks of a future where that happens but for thinking?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#56

Post by EyeEmOe »

I mean, state and information mirroring is just how the brain works:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synch...

https://knowridge.com/2026/08/first-findings-of-mirror-like-...

The only way I can come up with to avoid exposure to a "cognitive virus" is lock oneself in a rubber room.

But extreme isolation merely fosters other mental illnesses.

It's an irrational world with no empirical evidence as to why it even exists. Get over it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/02/how-we-...

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#57

Post by dented42 »

SoStupid wrote: post #29

The wording alone is just so Idiocracy . What our descendants will think when they look back on this time period. They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living, they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others. They wondered whether or not a word calculator was the antichrist. They assembled in the highest courts of the day and involved the most brilliant min…

> They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living, they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others.

What are you talking about? Those are absolutely issues that are being worked on right here, right now. This framing is obviously false.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#58

Post by qarl »

canjobear wrote: post #54
qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

> What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food. In evolutionary time, we lost the ability to digest raw meat because we offloaded so much of process of the digestion to the cultural technology of cooking. Do you like the looks of a future where that happens but for thinking?

Do you truly believe that AI will prevent people from thinking?

It seems clear to me that people will continue to think, but in different ways.

I hate to bring this analogy up again, but it seems impossible to escape: did losing the ability to do long division really impact humanity?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#59

Post by ofjcihen »

This premise seems pretty solid (and somewhat obvious) to me. The distinction between scaffolding and substitution can be applied to just about any skill so why not here?

This makes more sense at least than the “just another abstraction layer” argument that’s been thankfully dying out recently.

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