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Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

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Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#131

Post by orphea »

isubkhankulov wrote: post #75
nilirl wrote: post #60

I haven't written a full function of code in over a year. That being said, I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties. So, yes, I do feel like I've lost some of that very low-level skill. But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context? N…

We never learned how to use IBM punch cards. Writing functions by hand for modern languages is fast becoming anachronistic.

Absolutely not, not until LLMs stop being unreliable bullshit generators, and I believe that the current generation of AI is simply not capable of it. Even the best available (lol) model, Fable/Mythos, is still a bullshit generator, just one that's a bit more powerful.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#132

Post by AlexandrB »

cortesoft wrote: post #77

I wonder if this same effect happens for very wealthy and/or very senior executives? Those sorts of people have always had numerous people they could 'outsource' their thinking to; delegating work, asking for research/summaries, assigning tasks. Does handing off that sort of work to people also ruin your skills in the same way? Or are AIs fundamentally different, and if so, why? Because we have no moral or social pre…

This is why the rich and powerful often seem so out of touch. There's no one around them willing to tell them they're wrong or push back on bad ideas. It doesn't just ruin skills but fundamentally distorts one's perception of the world.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#133

Post by leptons »

_bypa wrote: post #113

For the people peddling LLMs this is actually good news: 1. Force AI down everyone's throats claiming it's going to boost productivity 2. See people lose valuable skills because they rely too much on AI 3. Peddle more AI to make up for the lack of skills in professionals

It's not good news if the AI companies have to raise their prices 10x to deliver the same service while paying down the crippling debt they've incurred getting everyone hooked on AI.

If my mechanic started charging 10x more to fix my car, I'd learn to fix my car.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#134

Post by dofm »

cortesoft wrote: post #77

I wonder if this same effect happens for very wealthy and/or very senior executives? Those sorts of people have always had numerous people they could 'outsource' their thinking to; delegating work, asking for research/summaries, assigning tasks. Does handing off that sort of work to people also ruin your skills in the same way? Or are AIs fundamentally different, and if so, why? Because we have no moral or social pre…

Yes. It even happens to e.g. professors and the deans of universities.

This is why I think even the fuss about Noam Shazeer joining OpenAI needs to be seen within a context; as good as this hire is, there is no inherent reason to believe he still brings some secret undiscovered magic that others do not have in a more current form.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#135

Post by rvz »

It is not said here much given the AI psychosis, but firms like Anthropic do not allow you to use AI in their interviews for a reason.

They know that this is one of the biggest de-skilling programmes they have seen.

So expect the return of in person Leetcodes and whiteboard challenges.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#136

Post by ragequittah »

witx wrote: post #45
largbae wrote: post #14

My compiler writing skills atrophied with the advent of high-level languages, but in exchange I got more done. There is still a very well paid market for compiler writers, but the fact that not everyone needs to be one has made the world richer overall.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about if you think compilers are a good analogy.

They really are though. There seems to be some confusion about "determinism" as if everyone writes perfect code and every compiler interprets that code perfectly. There's bugs and nondeterminism in every step of the chain with human coders and, say, a .NET compiler too. The idea that we've got coding down to a pristine and exact science and AI is some random chaos element that muddies it makes no sense to me after seeing how most human created code works.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#137

Post by Retric »

sdesol wrote: post #125
Retric wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI needs a great deal of handholding which is different than just offloading tasks. You spend a lot of cognitive energy playing a slot machine hoping the RNG works out this time. There’s definitely a skill to using AI but it just doesn’t generalize very well.

> playing a slot machine hoping I still believe the slot machine analogy holds to some extent, but I can honestly say my winning percentage is at least 90% for one shot generated code now. I think if you know it's limitations (inlcluding your own), I don't think about hoping anymore. I should note that when I say AI, I mean the collective models from all the major providers. The most important lesson is, you need to…

When it works the first time you’re done, when it fails you spend more time on it. This biases the cognitive investment around failure.

> I don't think about hoping anymore.

Running the exact same prompt again that already failed doesn’t have a that high success rate, but it’s also very low effort. So IMO it’s often worth attempting.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#138

Post by goodluckchuck »

beej71 wrote: post #111

How many of you feel this, anecdotally? I had to come up with a class hierarchy for a roguelike game the other day. This should be something that's dead simple, off the top of my head, no problem. And suddenly I was stuck! It was like thoughts weren't forming properly. My instinct was to use Claude to help brainstorm, but I resisted. 5 minutes later, I finally broke free and instantly came up with the plan. What the…

I think it’s like shoes. Shoes are generally better than callouses at protecting your feet, providing traction, etc. Almost everyone accepts the trade-off and wears shoes as opposed to going barefoot. To be sure, your feet lose some of their toughness. You may become reliant to some degree on the tool. I know that when my kid started wearing shoes, walking became actually a bit harder and be fell a few times. The shoes were a little clunky and lacked the same sensation. He changed he gait to accommodate, but over-compensated. They took a while to get used to wearing. AI also often feels a bit clunky and lacks the same feel. However, I think some people are confusing the shoes for the feet. The shoes don’t do the walking. The LLM is the words, but not really the ideas. If you stand or pose in shoes, move your legs around and wait for the shoes to take you somewhere… that’s not going to work.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#139

Post by lbrito »

nilirl wrote: post #60

I haven't written a full function of code in over a year. That being said, I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties. So, yes, I do feel like I've lost some of that very low-level skill. But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context? N…

>But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context?

That's not the way the economics behind this work.

Supposing the AI priests are right (they aren't) and using AI creates a thought surplus on the user, freeing cognitive capacity to think of higher things. What do you think will said user's boss want to do with that surplus? Let the user develop higher-level cognitive abilities? I don't think so.

The doctors in the article performed worse post-AI: suppose AI saved them so much time that they did 100 exams in the time they used to take doing 10 exams. What will their employers do with that freed up labour time? They'll of course have the doctors do more exams and perhaps fire some now-redundant doctors that are no longer needed. The surviving doctors are left deskilled, doing the same or more work, and society gets worse quality medical care. But hey, its not all bad - the employer gets to save on labour, and shareholders will be happy.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#140

Post by Jtarii »

lelanthran wrote: post #115
hodder wrote: post #61

Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. New sports, new businesses, new academic pursuits. Technology is a lever and AI is the biggest lever we've ever had. It enables laziness or incredible productivity. Choose your own path forward.

> Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing . We've known this for ages: simply reading a maths book without drilling on the problems will not get a student to pass. Best case scenario, you're reading stuff. For users of coding agents, they're not even doing that.

>You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing.

You can have it write a program that generates drills for you.

I wanted to become better at reading sheet music so I generated a sheet music reading program. You can have it generate maths drills, then ask questions about it if you get stuck or whatever. If you genuinely want to get better at something then AI will help you learn it faster. Obviously its going to hamper more people's cognitive ability that it will enhance but that is a separate problem.

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