31–40 of 72 posts
Just for giggles, I asked Claude 4.7 to write a script that would automatically up or downvote people on Reddit with a 5 second timer to bypass botting restrictions. It told me it would not help me. Past iterations of Claude have done this without blinking. I don’t like that it’s telling me what I can and can’t do with technology. That feels like it’s trying to make judgment calls like it’s a Terminator instead of ju…
AI killed curiosity. At least Google made you search and look at alternatives, AI just gives you solutions, whether right or wrong. In a few years, the cognitive decline will be obvious. The only people who remain curious are the people who actively want to, despite AI, and most of the time against it. Our ability to keep digging into things is entirely tied to the will of the people controlling AI to let us do so. K…
Only if you let yours be killed.
There will always be a demand for high-value signal, even though it might not be as easy to find anymore. But then again, has it ever been?
> Our ability to keep digging into things is entirely tied to the will of the people controlling AI to let us do so.
I have sympathy for that argument when it comes to locked bootloaders, closed-source software etc., but with AI? How? Is the existence of ChatGPT and Claude somehow preventing you personally from reading a book or looking at source code?
I do see big problems around motivation of the next generation of engineers to keep looking under the hood if avoiding it is becoming so easy, but you should, individually, arguably feel more enabled to do so than ever.
AI killed curiosity. At least Google made you search and look at alternatives, AI just gives you solutions, whether right or wrong. In a few years, the cognitive decline will be obvious. The only people who remain curious are the people who actively want to, despite AI, and most of the time against it. Our ability to keep digging into things is entirely tied to the will of the people controlling AI to let us do so. K…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google killed curiosity. At least libraries made you search and read alternatives. Google just gives you solutions, whether right or wrong.
Google search doesn't "just give you solutions"
Just for giggles, I asked Claude 4.7 to write a script that would automatically up or downvote people on Reddit with a 5 second timer to bypass botting restrictions. It told me it would not help me. Past iterations of Claude have done this without blinking. I don’t like that it’s telling me what I can and can’t do with technology. That feels like it’s trying to make judgment calls like it’s a Terminator instead of ju…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI enables curious people to explore. Why do you say it kills curiosity? If anything, it's so recognizable with output I'd say it kills creativity.
It enables people to solve , not explore. It's a solution engine not a curiosity engine. Getting effortless answers at every turn is the opposite of curiosity.
Do you never click through to the sources or experimentally test the information presented to you by the LLM? If not, who's stopping you? To me, this seems a bit like a tenured academic complaining about the abundance of research assistants working for them preventing them from properly understanding things anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It enables people to solve , not explore. It's a solution engine not a curiosity engine. Getting effortless answers at every turn is the opposite of curiosity.
It can enable people to go directly to solutions, but it also enables alternative paths. AI may not be nurturing creativity where it is not present but it doesn't seem to be responsible for people's disinterest in anything beyond their immediate need. The real problem is that most people either don't see the value in or don't have the time to indulge in their curiosity. Even the language we use, indulgence to describ…
It is indeed. Curiosity, for me, very often stems out of a particular kind of idleness and boredom, paired with a tricky question I can't find an immediate answer to.
And I can definitely still be bored that way even with LLMs.
Whether that's Linux on your personal desktop and Windows on your work machine...
Oh and you built that desktop yourself, didn't you? But you can't even open the one at work or it's a violation.
GrapheneOS on your personal phone, and iOS on your work phone...
When this AI bubble crashes, we'll all be flooded with graphics cards no one else will want and all kinds of cool things will be built (are being built).
If you can stick it out a little longer you'll be fine. The tech you want to tinker with will be there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI enables curious people to explore. Why do you say it kills curiosity? If anything, it's so recognizable with output I'd say it kills creativity.
It enables people to solve , not explore. It's a solution engine not a curiosity engine. Getting effortless answers at every turn is the opposite of curiosity.
Whenever I tried the same with Google in the past, more often than not I couldn't find what I was looking for, because I didn't know the correct keywords to search for in order to start getting relevant results. With ChatGPT & co. I can just pose the question in natural language, get results and continue exploring.