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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

#421

Post by jedwards1211 »

vidarh wrote: post #167
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…

My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems. Writing code has just typically been how I've needed to solve those problems. That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code and focusing on the architecture and domain models. I get to spend more time on my actual job.

Some of the biggest improvements I've made in the clarity and typesafety of the code I write came from seeing the weak points while slogging through writing code, and choosing or writing better libraries to solve certain problems. If everyone stops writing code I can only imagine quality will stagnate

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

#422

Post by keybored »

vidarh wrote: post #167
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…

My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems. Writing code has just typically been how I've needed to solve those problems. That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code and focusing on the architecture and domain models. I get to spend more time on my actual job.

> My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems.

Air quotes and more and more general words. The perfect mercenari’s tools.

The buck stops somewhere for most of us. We have jobs, we are compelled to do them. But we care about how it is done. We care whether doing it in a certain will give us short term advantages but hinder us in the long term. We care if the process feels good or bad. We care if it feels like we are in control of the process or if we are just swimming in a turbulent sea. We care about how predictable the tools we use. Whether we can guess that something takes a month and not be off by weeks.

We might say that we are the perfect pragmatists (mercenaris); that we only care about the most general description of what-is-to-be-done that is acceptable to the audience, like solving business problems, or solving technical problems, or in the end—as the pragmatist sheds all meaning from his burdensome vessel—just solving problems. But most of us got into some trade, or hobby, or profession, because we did concrete things that we concretely liked. And switching from keyboards to voice dictation might not change that. But seemingly upending the whole process might.

It might. Or it may not. Certainly could go in more than one direction. But to people who are not perfect mercenaries or business hedonists[1] these are actual problems or concerns. Not nonsense to be dismissed with some “actual job” quip, which itself is devoid of meaning.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692039

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

#423

Post by danielbln »

footy wrote: post #304
theblazehen wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try running multiple agents - more task switching overhead, but I find planning in one agent while another is executing is a good balance for me, and avoids the getting-distracted trap

task switching is precisely an issue with adhd though

It helps to be able to ask at inside any session at any point "yo, what were we doing and how's it going"

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

#426

Post by jedwards1211 »

jedwards1211 wrote: post #421
vidarh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems. Writing code has just typically been how I've needed to solve those problems. That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code and focusing on the architecture and domain models. I get to spend more time on my actual job.

Some of the biggest improvements I've made in the clarity and typesafety of the code I write came from seeing the weak points while slogging through writing code, and choosing or writing better libraries to solve certain problems. If everyone stops writing code I can only imagine quality will stagnate

for example, I got fed up with the old form library we were using because it wasn't capable of checking field names/paths and field value types at compile time and I kept having unexpected runtime errors. I wrote a replacement form library that can deeply typecheck all of that stuff.

If I had turned an AI loose against the original codebase, I think it would have just churned away copying the existing patterns and debugging any runtime errors that result. I don't think an AI would have ever voluntarily told me "this form library is costing time and effort, we should replace it with such and such instead"

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

#427

Post by bowsamic »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #143
bowsamic wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they've always been wrong before Were they? It seems that often the fears came true, even Socrates’

Writing didn't destroy memory, it externalised it and made it stable and shareable. That was absolutely transformative, and far more useful than being able to re-improvise a once-upon-a-time heroic poem from memory. It hugely enhanced synthetic and contextual memory, which was a huge development. AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has t…

Regardless of whether memory was externalised, it’s still the case that it was lost internally, that much is true. If you really care about having a great internal memory then of course you’ll think it’s a downside.

So we’ve externalised memory, we’ve externalised arithmetic. Personally the idea of externalising thinking seems to be the last one? It’s not clear what’s left inside us of being a human once that one is gone

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

#428

Post by [deleted] »

waterhouse wrote: post #338
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…

Has anyone here switched roles from programmer to manager (of human programmers), and is it a similar feeling?

[deleted]

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

#429

Post by tjr »

chairmansteve wrote: post #153
sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

"Socrates worried writing would destroy memory". He may have been right... Maybe our minds work in a different way now.

Back when I routinely dialed phone numbers by hand (either on a keypad or on a literal dial), I memorized the numbers I called most frequently. Many of those numbers I still have memorized today, years after some of those phone lines have been disconnected.

But now? I almost never enter a new phone number anywhere. Maybe someone shares a contact with me, and I tap to add it to my contact list. Or I copy-paste a phone number. Even some people that I contact frequently, I have no idea what their phone number is, because I've never needed to "know" it, I just needed to have it in my contact list.

I'm not sure that this is a bad thing, but definitely is a thing.

Ah, well, more memory space for other stuff, eh? I suppose. But like what? I could describe other scenarios, in which I used to have more facts and figures memorized, but simply don't any more, because I don't need to. While perhaps my memory is freed up to theoretically store more other things, in practice, there's not much I really "need" to store.

Even if no longer memorizing phone numbers isn't especially bad, I'm starting to think that no longer memorizing anything might not be a great idea.

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

#430

Post by inglor_cz »

KittenInABox wrote: post #414
inglor_cz wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that clear to me. Let us use an analogy. Many (most?) people can tell a well-written book or story from a mediocre or a terrible one, even though the vast majority of the readers hasn't written any in their lives. To distinguish good from bad doesn't necessarily require the ability to create.

I'm not actually sure that's true. Theres plenty of controversy now that books that are popular and beloved now are actually not very well written. I mean I've been hearing this complaint since Twilight was popular.

Sure, but a professional developer is (or should be) equivalent of a more demanding reader and critic, not just any customer in a bookshop.
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