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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

#431

Post by Telemakhos »

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…

I see the opposite effect with AI: I quickly find some error that it has made, because it always makes errors in my field, and that keeps me from disengaging with the problem, because it helps define what can be wrong. I mainly use AI like I used to use my blog, for writing out my ideas in prose that I think is comprehensible and organized. Neither AI nor my old blog ever solved a problem for me, but they help me figure out how to talk about problems. I'll solve them on my own, but being able to describe a problem well is an important step in that.

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

#432

Post by agumonkey »

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…

I noticed a few states:

- why bother, ask the llm

- relief.. i can let the llm relay me while i rest a bit and resume with some progress done

- inspiration.. the llm follows my ideas and open weird roads i was barely dreaming of (like asking random 'what if we try to abstract the issue even more' and get actual creative ideas)

but then there day to day operations and deadlines

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

#433

Post by EinigeKreise »

alt187 wrote: post #40
tuckwat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a different way of writing code. Today you at least need to understand best practices to help steer towards a good architecture. In the near future there will be no developers needed at all for the majority of apps.

Becoming a moron is a different way of writing code?

It's all I've ever known.

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

#434

Post by alt187 »

casey2 wrote: post #322
alt187 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complex than that. The three pillars of learning are theory (finding out about the thing), practice (doing the thing) and metacognition (being right, or more importantly, wrong. And correcting yourself.). Each of those steps reinforce neural pathways. They're all essential in some form or another. Literacy, books, saving your knowledge somewhere else removes the burden of remembering everything in your head…

I don't buy your "theory" at all. Learning requires curiosity. If you want to know how something works you will do all those things irregardless if you saw it in a book or an AI spat it out. If you don't you won't. There is no free lunch, if you use writing to "scaffold" your learning, you trade learning speed for a limited "neural pathways" budget that could connect two useful topics. And when you stop practicing yo…

If you don't buy into the acquired, existing knowledge of neuroscience and the role of lymph nodes in learning, you can do whatever you want in your free time, but don't call it my theory, because it's neither mine nor a theory.

For the rest, maybe you're the chosen one, who doesn't need to expend any cognitive load to learn a subject, and just glide on your curiosity. Good for you. There are, to a degree of approximation, zero other people who work this way.

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

#435

Post by brookst »

bakugo wrote: post #390
alchemism wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet most organizations in existence pay the people “who hasn’t touched a computer in 30 years” quite a large amount of money to continue to solve problems, for some inscrutable reason… =)

Managers being overpaid and overvalued is a well known phenomenon, yes.

It’s as old as the issue of narrowly-focused ICs having no appreciation for or interest in anything outside their narrow (but deep) expertise.

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

#436

Post by blibble »

iso1631 wrote: post #403
coldtea wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems Solve enough problems relying on AI writing the code as a black box, and over time your grasp of coding will worsen, and you wont be undestanding what the AI should be doing or what it is doing wrong - not even at the architectural level, except in broad strokes. One ends like the clueless manager type who hasn't touched a computer in 30 years. At which poi…

I have very little knowledge of how transistors shuffle ones and zeros out of registers. That doesn't prevent me from using them to solve a problem. Computing is always abstractions. We moved from plugging to assembly, then to c, then we had languages that managed memory for you -- how on earth can you understand what the compiler should be doing or what it is doing if you don't deal with explicit pointers on a day b…

> Is relying on LLMs fundamentally any different than relying on AWS, or apt, or java

yes, because when I call "javac" it won't decide randomly to delete my home directory

> Is is different from outsourcing?

no, not really, and has about the same level of quality

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

#437

Post by brookst »

mirsadm wrote: post #411
iso1631 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very little knowledge of how transistors shuffle ones and zeros out of registers. That doesn't prevent me from using them to solve a problem. Computing is always abstractions. We moved from plugging to assembly, then to c, then we had languages that managed memory for you -- how on earth can you understand what the compiler should be doing or what it is doing if you don't deal with explicit pointers on a day b…

There's never been a case in my long programming career so far where knowing the low level details has not benefited me. The level of value varies but it is always positive. When you use LLMs to write all your code you will lose (or never learn) the details. Your decision making will not be as good.

This is true.

However, your ability to write specs and validate requirements before starting to build will increase.

It’s just trading deep hand-on expertise for deep product/spec expertise.

No different than how riding the bus all the time instead of driving results in different skill development (assuming productive time on the bus).

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

#438

Post by blibble »

vidarh wrote: post #282
blibble wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the standard consultant vs employee angle if you're a consultant/contractor that's bid a fixed amount for a job: you're incentivised to slop out as much as possible to hit the complete the contract as quickly as possible and then if you do a particularly bad job then you'll be probably kept on to fix up the problems vs. an permanent employee that is incentivised to do the job well, sign it off and move onto t…

You're making flawed assumptions you have no basis for. Most of my work is on projects I have a long term vested interest in. I care far more about maximally leveraging LLMs for the projects I have a vested interest in - if my clients don't want to, that's their business. Most of my LLM usage directly affects my personal finances in terms of the ROI my non-consulting projects generate - I have far more incentives to…

it appears as if I touched a nerve there

I'm making no assumptions

it is my observation of the contractor/employee relationship over my 20 year career, from tiny startups to megacorps

(and having been on both sides of the fence)

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

#439

Post by cstrahan »

mirsadm wrote: post #411
iso1631 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very little knowledge of how transistors shuffle ones and zeros out of registers. That doesn't prevent me from using them to solve a problem. Computing is always abstractions. We moved from plugging to assembly, then to c, then we had languages that managed memory for you -- how on earth can you understand what the compiler should be doing or what it is doing if you don't deal with explicit pointers on a day b…

There's never been a case in my long programming career so far where knowing the low level details has not benefited me. The level of value varies but it is always positive. When you use LLMs to write all your code you will lose (or never learn) the details. Your decision making will not be as good.

Or you already know all of the details, and you don’t want typing to be the bottleneck to getting things done.

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

#440

Post by drusepth »

coldtea wrote: post #377
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.

> My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems Solve enough problems relying on AI writing the code as a black box, and over time your grasp of coding will worsen, and you wont be undestanding what the AI should be doing or what it is doing wrong - not even at the architectural level, except in broad strokes. One ends like the clueless manager type who hasn't touched a computer in 30 years. At which poi…

> Solve enough problems relying on AI writing the code as a black box, and over time your grasp of coding will worsen, and you wont be undestanding what the AI should be doing or what it is doing wrong - not even at the architectural level, except in broad strokes.

Using AI myself _and_ managing teams almost exclusively using AI has made this point clear: you shouldn't rely on it as a black box. You can rely on it to write the code, but (for now at least) you should still be deeply involved in the "problem solving" (that is, deciding _how_ to fix the problem).

A good rule of thumb that has worked well for me is to spend at least 20 min refining agent plans for every ~5 min of actual agent dev time. YMMV based on plan scope (obviously this doesn't apply to small fixes, and applies even moreso to larger scopes).

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