Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

theargumentmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 341 posts

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#241

Post by johnnyanmac »

crazygringo wrote: post #238
johnnyanmac wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Planning routes isn't exactly rocket science. There's not much to learn. And people can't go that far to begin with. SThat's the scary part. These little things we think of as insignificant add up and give us our ability to think. Change how we perceive and navigate (no pun intended) the world. Letting one or two of these factors rust probably won't cost us, but how far off are we really from the WALL-E future of we…

Yeah but it's not like everyone could back then either. My mom had a masters degree but couldn't read a map to save her life. On the other hand, I never "learned", it was just obvious. I could rotate in my brain without trying. I think we're nowhere close to WALL-E, nor are we headed in that direction. For everything that becomes easier, new harder skills become more important.

>. For everything that becomes easier, new harder skills become more important.

I'll ask point blank, then: what new "hard skills" are becoming more important in the short and mid terms that you see on the horizon? My biggest fears are that the technocrats very much want to raise a generation of "sheep" dependent on them to think. They don't need thinkers, only consumers.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#242

Post by fragmede »

leptons wrote: post #229
fragmede wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to out myself as old, but I learned to program before ChatGPT before stack overflow and before Google. There are some here that are even older. There were paper books with indexes. Indexes! That way of life is gone for me. I've got a smartphone and I doomscroll to my detriment. What's new and fascinating to me is the models themselves. https://fi-le.net/oss/ currently trending here is the tip of a whole new area…

I've been programming for 46 years. The first program I wrote was on a piece of notebook paper, in anticipation of getting my first computer a few weeks later (Atari 400).

How has your experience with AI been?

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#243

Post by zelphirkalt »

dagmx wrote: post #96
Narciss wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually thinking about this the other day while vibe coding for a side project. I am a lead engineer, but I’ve been using AI in much of my code recently. If you were to ask me to code anything manually right now, I could do it, but it would take a bit to acclimate to writing code line by line. By “a while”, I mean maybe a few days. Which means that if we were to do a coding interview without LLMs, I would prob…

In your scenario though, how do you avoid hiring based on blind faith? How do I know you aren’t just a lead with a very good team to pick up the slack? How do I separate you from the 20 other people saying they’re also good? Why would I hire someone who can’t hit the ground running faster than someone else who can? Furthermore, why would I hire someone who didn’t prepare at all for an interview, even if just mentally…

You invest time into actually looking at applications properly and look at their previous work and ask them questions about that. The curious and learning mind will probably have some projects, because they are not only into the job for the money, but because they have a passion for the job. That's not a requirement, but it distinguishes the great ones from the mediocre ones.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#244

Post by jncfhnb »

ineedasername wrote: post #120
jncfhnb wrote: post #80

Can’t say the author’s fixation on reading long texts resonates with me. I’m sure Newton’s Principia is interesting and all but… no I’m not going to read that. Conciseness is a valuable thing. It wasn’t practical to convey knowledge in a short form previously because printing and distributing a blog post worth of info was too expensive. On some level long form content just seems… poorly written. It’s long for the sak…

“I don’t buy that a lack of long form books are the culprit” I agree that they might not, in themselves, be a necessary requirement, however: the ability to engage with material, short or long, at a level of deep focus and intentionality is important. And one of the (extremely common, historically) stronger methods of doing this is with long form content, the less passive and more challenging the better. It touches o…

I don’t really agree about the premise here. We want people to surpass some basic level of competency in literacy and numeracy skills. The bars which people fall below here are not impressive. Are forced courses a good means to achieve that? In my opinion, no, these forced courses are functionally useless.

You can’t teach things students don’t care to learn.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#245

Post by dagmx »

1718627440 wrote: post #188
dagmx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t test rote algorithmic knowledge in our coding tests. Candidates can pick their language Candidates can ask for help, and can google/llm as well if they can’t recall methods. I just do not allow them to post the whole problem in an LLM and need to see them solve through the problem themselves to see how they think and approach issues. This therefore also requires they know the language that they picked to do s…

> including iterating iterables I would've chosen a language without iterators, what would you do then??

It doesn’t need to explicitly be an iterable. But can you loop through an array as part of the problem solve.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#246

Post by johnnyanmac »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #119
alchemism wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we are seeing junior hiring fall off a cliff, whether or not LLMs are responsible is hard to say. But if it does turn out that everyone performs to the level of the LLM, then a vast amount of business dollars can be saved by hiring starving English majors exclusively and dispensing with STEM majors altogether.

I keep hearing this however I was just at a career fair for University of Washington CSE new grads (representing my company) and it was packed with companies hiring. Obviously, this is just an anecdote, is there any good data showing the real situation?

I mean, I don't know if I can specifically find new grad tech industry that gets a tech job. But definitely look at hiring numbers in tech and among the youngest demographic. They both aren't good, like pretty much all jobs right now outside of healthcare

The BLS works as well, for now. I think that's quickly going to change with future reports.

This was also making the rounds last ywar: https://futurism.com/the-byte/berkeley-professor-grads-job-m...

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#247

Post by jncfhnb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #106
jncfhnb wrote: post #80

Can’t say the author’s fixation on reading long texts resonates with me. I’m sure Newton’s Principia is interesting and all but… no I’m not going to read that. Conciseness is a valuable thing. It wasn’t practical to convey knowledge in a short form previously because printing and distributing a blog post worth of info was too expensive. On some level long form content just seems… poorly written. It’s long for the sak…

> Can’t say the author’s fixation on reading long texts resonates with me It’s an attention and working memory test. I don’t think I’ve ever prided myself on focus. But signing off social media ten years ago has absolutely left me in a competitive place when it comes to deep thinking, and that’s not because I’ve gotten better at it. > It wasn’t practical to convey knowledge in a short form previously because printing…

> This is entirely ahistoric. Pamphlets and books published in volumes, where each volume would today be a chapter, was the norm. The novel is a modern invention.

I’d be curious to see some examples but I doubt these are anywhere near the size of a one or two page blog post.

The referenced example is principia mathematica

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#248

Post by AndrewKemendo »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #231
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is just proof that long ago we ceded The ballad of John Henry was written in the 1840s “Does the engine get rewarded for its steam?” That was the anti-automation line back then If you gave up anything that was previously called “AI” we would not have computers, cars, airplanes or any type of technology whatsoever anywhere

>Does the engine get rewarded for its steam?” That was the anti-automation line back then Sure, and it was wrong because it turns out the conductor does get rewarded. Given train strikes that had to be denied as recently as a few years ago, it's clear that's an essential role 150 years later. With how they want to frame AI as replacing labor, who's being rewarded long term for its thinking? Who's really being service…

Then its firmly an organizational problem with how reward is allocated in human society.

Humans haven’t figured out how to include all humans and ecological systems into the same “tribe” and therefore the infighting between artificially segregated human groups, disconnected with ecological “externalities” which prevents a sustainable cooperative solution.

So most likely it will continue to be a small number of humans dominating the rest with increasingly powerful tools that reduce the number of humans required to act in active domination or displacement roles.

Humanity long ago decided that its everyone for themselves and to encode “might makes right” into ritual, mythology and organizational formation-operations.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#249

Post by 1718627440 »

questionableans wrote: post #236
1718627440 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, that sounds like a reasonable plan, but this also means that we need to stop the decline at some point, and this is not currently a solved problems since that's what governments try to achieve right now. Also the decline happens in the regions were not much decline is needed and in regions were it would be needed the population is currently increasing. Also population growth was how we have dealt with technolog…

Immigration helps even out where populations are located. Immigrants built America. I really don’t think we have anything to worry about not having any people left. There’s still plenty of innate drive to reproduce, both biologically and intellectually (as in, educating far more people than the number of kids you could ever have).

Well, there is immigration and there is immigration. There are people that move between similar socialized countries, directly from one high-paying job to the next. Every country wants to have them. Then there are basically refugees, that are only named immigrants, because they happen to flee through another country. They might also have had a well paying job, but they often need to learn the language, they often need to learn the economic system, the law system, the social norms, etc. This takes quite some investment, both in time and money from them and the society they migrate to. Learning these things already takes years for young people, whose only job is to do this. It's much harder for an adult, because learning complete new things is harder for adults and they also need to cover the bills. They can be the smartest person in their country, but they will still struggle. On top, they need to fight with the immigration offices, have family abroad they want to support, might intend to return to their home, instead of settling. Thus, they will be an investment first, rather then an asset. Some place the time frame for this to be 18 years. I question whether investing in children is really the worse approach. Even when it is, then it is quite immoral to let another poorer country pay the bills for their education and then import them.

> Immigrants built America.

These were masses building a new country, not integrating into an existing; they had a way lower living standard, a lot of them died. It did not go well for the existing society in America. The people forming the government were british rich aristocrats. And don't think these situations are comparable.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#250

Post by jncfhnb »

1718627440 wrote: post #103
jncfhnb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have an inkling of how to navigate. I don’t really see the problem.

I just can't comprehend how people can accept that. I mean sure you can use your handheld computer, but when I wouldn't know where I am and what I need to do to go to where I intend to be, I would feel very alone, lost and abandoned, like being Napoleon on Elba. In a completely foreign city, often I just look at a map before the journey for the general direction and then just keep running, without thinking much. That…

Idk man I think maybe you should consider that there’s no upside to this insecurity.

I’ve blitzed through the formerly famous Tokyo subway system mindlessly without a clue.

I have utterly no idea what the different us highways in my area are but it’s never really affected me besides being unable to join in mundane discussions of traffic on 95 or whatever

Post reply on HN