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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

#171

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

>Because we have no moral or social pressure to not delegate everything?

"We" depends on where you are. Countries like Japan or Germany have maintained a gray collar, rather than a blue/white collar culture for exactly that reason. You will find business owners on the workshop floors frequently because there is an understanding that divorcing management from tacit work is going destroy leadership ability. That's the basis of vocational work culture, having general expertise across all domains of your job rather than being a kind of over-specialized idiot.

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

#172

Post by themafia »

mellosouls wrote: post #54

This is new, the scope of it, its not just about individual "skills" because its all of them ; we are being challenged at the very fundamentals of our ability to think deeply and widely and persistently. That has never happened before like this. It is quite extraordinary and breath-taking at times to see the agents in action; the flipside is that very power renders us both vulnerable to its seduction and enfeeblement…

> That has never happened before like this.

You should possibly spend some time reading what people used to say about the invention of Radio and Television.

> It is quite extraordinary and breath-taking at times to see the agents in action;

So is any magic trick. The unsettling notion that it may all just be an illusion that you've failed to correctly understand doesn't seem to weigh on people.

> its almost hard-drug like in its potential long-term psychological effects.

That might have more to do with how the owners of these products choose to market and deploy them. Perhaps if they peeled back the covers just slightly your euphoria would change to dread. There's an Upton Sinclair moment coming.

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

#173

Post by ForHackernews »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #154
arbitrary_name wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it to learn coding. i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before. now i am learning basic scripting and data modeling etc. it is phenomenal for learning languages. i built a chicken coop and some furniture. the skills and confidence i gained are real. am i failing to learn certain skills in the process? of course. but I'm getting further then i would on my own, and t…

> i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before You want us to believe you couldn't overcome the puddle-deep challenge of installing an IDE and using Pip or Node in the past, but now you're actually learning how to write functions? Cool for you if true I guess but I'm pretty seriously skeptical

I can sort of buy this, honestly. When was the last time you picked up a new language with unfamiliar tooling? Especially something older that won't hold your hand.

A lot of the most miserable parts of getting started coding have nothing to do with programming and everything to do with like, trying to apt-install the right compiler version or figure out which build headers you need or some other equally trivial bullshit that gets in the way of writing code.

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

#174

Post by Jensson »

hodder wrote: post #148
lelanthran wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Ive crafted LLMs to create drills and practice exams etc. Im not just reading about new sport activities, or videography/photography or linear algebra or physics. I'm putting it into action. As I said above, technology is a lever. Maybe you are just reading stuff and not drilling problems. That isnt me.

Not sure how good LLM are at that given they are so biased towards the user being right. You would need an LLM trained to disagree with the user to properly grade your results of those drills.

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

#175

Post by saulpw »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #154
arbitrary_name wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it to learn coding. i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before. now i am learning basic scripting and data modeling etc. it is phenomenal for learning languages. i built a chicken coop and some furniture. the skills and confidence i gained are real. am i failing to learn certain skills in the process? of course. but I'm getting further then i would on my own, and t…

> i could not get through the hurdles of installing an IDE and js/python modules before You want us to believe you couldn't overcome the puddle-deep challenge of installing an IDE and using Pip or Node in the past, but now you're actually learning how to write functions? Cool for you if true I guess but I'm pretty seriously skeptical

Python environment management is notoriously reticulate. I can totally imagine that they got stuck on some path bullshit so that the installed packages were on a different Python than the one they launched in the IDE. I've been using and configuring computers since they had DIP switches and if I were teaching someone to code manually I would absolutely let them use Claude to get their environment set up.

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

#176

Post by hodder »

lelanthran wrote: post #151
Jtarii wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

The people who say they are learning faster with it aren't mentioning drills, they're mentioning outcomes . I actually did have an LLM ingest some material and generate drills. It worked well. It's rare that happens, though. The difference between humans and other animals on the planet had always been the ability to reason. If we, as a species, lose that ability, we're looking at an extinction-level event.

Your initial response post was to me, and you absolutely injected the heavily biased assumption that I was doing no active learning.

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

#177

Post by fzeroracer »

wvenable wrote: post #147
cryo32 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not learning them. You're being told about them and given a hammer to leverage them with mediocre to low skill level. Learning requires a huge time investment. Using an LLM doesn't shorten that.

You've described school. You get told about things and given a hammer to leverage what you've been told. An LLM absolutely shortens the research part of learning. If I had a human of who had a moderate level of skill who would endlessly answer all my questions, the result would be the same. You might have a point when it comes to software development because the AI can tell you things but it also just do them for you…

> An LLM absolutely shortens the research part of learning

No, it doesn't. Because in any scenario where you are using AI in a potentially appropriate manner, you are verifying every single source it spits out and cross referencing everything it says. If you do not do this you are failing the process entirely.

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

#178

Post by hodder »

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.

When did I say I wasn't doing and just reading. That is your own heavy bias creeping in.

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

#179

Post by wvenable »

fzeroracer wrote: post #177
wvenable wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've described school. You get told about things and given a hammer to leverage what you've been told. An LLM absolutely shortens the research part of learning. If I had a human of who had a moderate level of skill who would endlessly answer all my questions, the result would be the same. You might have a point when it comes to software development because the AI can tell you things but it also just do them for you…

> An LLM absolutely shortens the research part of learning No, it doesn't. Because in any scenario where you are using AI in a potentially appropriate manner, you are verifying every single source it spits out and cross referencing everything it says. If you do not do this you are failing the process entirely.

If I ask my buddy for help, I don't cross reference everything he says either even though he could just as easily be wrong. A lot of what I'm talking about is every day stuff not nuclear physics.

LLMs are not even close to that unreliable.

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

#180

Post by Groxx »

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…

Having run into quite a few managers who used to be programmers who can barely do fizzbuzz after a few years of managing: yes, I think it's pretty similar. Much of your brain is "use it or lose it" and that's not using it.

I do think there's more than enough room to claim that LLMs are probably significantly worse than that kind of human delegation though, in part because you have such a rapid cycle time that not-incredibly-rich people can't afford from humans.

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