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Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

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Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#201

Post by exodust »

mcv wrote: post #98

This seems to confirm my feeling when using AI too much. It's easy to get started, but I can feel my brain engaging less with the problem than I'm used to. It can form a barrier to real understanding, and keeps me out of my flow. I recently worked on something very complex I don't think I would have been able to tackle as quickly without AI; a hierarchical graph layout algorithm based on the Sugiyama framework, using…

Similarly I leave Cursor's AI in "ask" mode. It puts code there, leaving me to grab what I need and integrate myself. This forces me to look closely at code and prevents the "runaway" feeling where AI does too much and you're feeling left behind in your own damn project. It's not AI chat causing cognitive debt it's Agents!

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#202

Post by Elizer0x0309 »

There's a skill of problem solving that will differentiate winners versus losers.

I'm so grateful for AI and always use it to help get stuff done while also documenting the rational it takes to go from point A to B.

Although it has failed many times, I've had ZERO problems backtracking, debugging its thinking, understand what it has done and where it has failed.

We definitely need to bring back courses on "theory of knowledge" and the "Art of problem" solving etc.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#203

Post by hluska »

Difwif wrote: post #196
thefaux wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it conflates problem solving with the production of artifacts. It seems highly possible to me that the explosion of ai generated code is ultimately creating more problems than it is solving and that the friction of manual coding may ultimately prove to be a great virtue.

This statement feels like a farmer making a case for using their hands to tend the land instead of a tractor because it produces too many crops. Modern farming requires you to have an ecosystem of supporting tools to handle the scale and you need to learn new skills like being a diesel mechanic. How we work changes and the extra complexity buys us productivity. The vast majority of software will be AI generated, tool…

I’ll be honest with you pal - this statement sounds like you’ve bought the hype. The truth is likely between the poles - at least that’s where it’s been for the last 35 years that I’ve been obsessed with this field.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#204

Post by Madmallard »

duskdozer wrote: post #169
Madmallard wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought I recall Vinay Prasad saying (back in 2020 or 2021) that masks don't really work well enough for us to force all kids to wear them. Like chance passing encounters they have some effectiveness, but an imperfectly used non-n95 mask is basically worthless. But the latter scenario is what nearly everyone was doing.

>Vinay Prasad frequent touter of other right-wing ideas surround the pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinay_Prasad#COVID_response >but an imperfectly used non-n95 mask is basically worthless. also not true. Even surgical or cloth masks on bearded individuals provide 30-40% aerosol filtration https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8130778/ The myth that laypeople couldn't effectively use masks was just turning…

[redacted because the replier is in the business of not telling the truth]

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#205

Post by hluska »

PatronBernard wrote: post #161
mcv wrote: post #98

This seems to confirm my feeling when using AI too much. It's easy to get started, but I can feel my brain engaging less with the problem than I'm used to. It can form a barrier to real understanding, and keeps me out of my flow. I recently worked on something very complex I don't think I would have been able to tackle as quickly without AI; a hierarchical graph layout algorithm based on the Sugiyama framework, using…

> a hierarchical graph layout algorithm based on the Sugiyama framework, using Brandes-Köpf for node positioning. I am sorry for being direct but you could have just kept it to the first part of that sentence. Everything after that just sounds like pretentious name dropping and adds nothing to your point. But I fully agree, for complex problems that require insight, LLMs can waste your time with their sycophancy.

I’ve been forced down that path and based on that experience it added a whole lot. Maybe you just don’t understand the problem?

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#206

Post by fatherwavelet »

TheColorYellow wrote: post #175
PatronBernard wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a hierarchical graph layout algorithm based on the Sugiyama framework, using Brandes-Köpf for node positioning. I am sorry for being direct but you could have just kept it to the first part of that sentence. Everything after that just sounds like pretentious name dropping and adds nothing to your point. But I fully agree, for complex problems that require insight, LLMs can waste your time with their sycophancy.

This is a technical forum, isn't pretentious name dropping kind of what we do? Seriously though, I appreciated it because my curiosity got the better of me and I went down a quick rabbit hole in Sugiyama, comparative graph algorithms, and learning about the node positioning as a particular dimension of graph theory. Sure nothing ground breaking, but it added a shallow amount to my broad knowledge base of theory that…

I think many are not doing anything like this so to the person who is not interested in learning anything, technical details like this sound like pretentious name dropping because that is how they relate to the world.

Everything to them is a social media post for likes.

I have explored all kinds of graph layouts in various network science context via LLMs and guess what? I don't know anything much about graph theory beyond G = (V,E). I am not really interested either. I am interested in what I can do with and learn from G. Everything on the right of the equals sign Gemini is already beyond my ability. I am just not that smart.

The standard narrative on this board seems to be something akin to having to master all volumes of Knuth before you can even think to write a React CRUD app. Ironic since I imagine so many learned programming by just programming.

I know I don't think as hard when using an LLM. Maybe that is a problem for people with 25 more IQ points than me. If I had 25 more IQ points maybe I could figure out stuff without the LLM. That was not the hand I was dealt though.

I get the feeling there is immense intellectual hubris on this forum that when something like this comes up, it is a dog whistle for these delusional Erdos in their own mind people to come out of the wood work to tell you how LLMs can't help you with graph theory.

If that wasn't the case there would be vastly more interesting discussion on this forum instead of ad nauseam discussion on how bad LLMs are.

I learn new things everyday from Gemini and basically nothing reading this forum.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#207

Post by paulcole »

hluska wrote: post #203
Difwif wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement feels like a farmer making a case for using their hands to tend the land instead of a tractor because it produces too many crops. Modern farming requires you to have an ecosystem of supporting tools to handle the scale and you need to learn new skills like being a diesel mechanic. How we work changes and the extra complexity buys us productivity. The vast majority of software will be AI generated, tool…

I’ll be honest with you pal - this statement sounds like you’ve bought the hype. The truth is likely between the poles - at least that’s where it’s been for the last 35 years that I’ve been obsessed with this field.

They may be early but they’re not wrong.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#208

Post by CuriouslyC »

doublerabbit wrote: post #199
CuriouslyC wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brains are adaptive. We're not getting dumber, we're just adapting to a new environment. Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse. As for the productivity paradox, this discounts the reality that we wouldn't even be able to scale the institutions we're scaling without the tech. Whether that scaling is a good thing is debatable.

Brains are adaptive and as we adapt we are turning more cognitive unbalanced. We're absorbing potentially bias information at a faster rate. GPT can give you information of X in seconds. Have you thought about it? Is that information correct? Information can easily be adapted to sound real while masking the real as false. Launching a search engine and searching may spew incorrectness but it made you make judgement, t…

I see a lot of people grinding and hustling in a way that would have crushed people 75 years ago. I don't think our lack of desire to crack an encyclopedia for a fact rather than rely on AI to serve up a probably right answer is down to laziness, we just have bigger fish to fry.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#209

Post by player1234 »

Difwif wrote: post #196
thefaux wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it conflates problem solving with the production of artifacts. It seems highly possible to me that the explosion of ai generated code is ultimately creating more problems than it is solving and that the friction of manual coding may ultimately prove to be a great virtue.

This statement feels like a farmer making a case for using their hands to tend the land instead of a tractor because it produces too many crops. Modern farming requires you to have an ecosystem of supporting tools to handle the scale and you need to learn new skills like being a diesel mechanic. How we work changes and the extra complexity buys us productivity. The vast majority of software will be AI generated, tool…

[dead]

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#210

Post by doublerabbit »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #208
doublerabbit wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brains are adaptive and as we adapt we are turning more cognitive unbalanced. We're absorbing potentially bias information at a faster rate. GPT can give you information of X in seconds. Have you thought about it? Is that information correct? Information can easily be adapted to sound real while masking the real as false. Launching a search engine and searching may spew incorrectness but it made you make judgement, t…

I see a lot of people grinding and hustling in a way that would have crushed people 75 years ago. I don't think our lack of desire to crack an encyclopedia for a fact rather than rely on AI to serve up a probably right answer is down to laziness, we just have bigger fish to fry.

Valid point, amended my viewpoint to cater to that, thanks.
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