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The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

arxiv.org

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Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#61

Post by RGS1811 »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #55
io84 wrote: post #7

A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth. Every time the AI solves a problem that I would not have been able to efficiently solve alone, it has replaced an interaction that previously would have happened with a mentor/supervisor/code reviewer. This is faster for the person seeking the micro-assistance, but there is a flipside: fewer human-to-human…

If the LLMs work as advertised, we won't need experts. Even today, with the current state of the art, we need far fewer experts. LLMs are already much better at debugging than humans are, for example. Math proofs are falling at a unprecedented rate. And so on. In the future, we may not find mere human levels of intelligence so useful. Let consumers consume.

The future you're describing is Wall-E.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#62

Post by nomel »

doug_durham wrote: post #54
xendo wrote: post #2

For anyone that does LLM supported work it's crystal clear that skill decline is real. Surprisingly, the leadership at my work doesn't give rats ass about it. They published AI engineering manifesto, pushing for loops, workflows, advocating for producing many times more code. All of this ignoring the elephant in the room.

I don't see it being "crystal clear" that skill decline is real. People are doing work they wouldn't have been able to do before. They are getting a more broad exposure to technologies than they have before.

Seems like pretty clear breadth vs depth tradeoff, with a reduced total area.

People rarely cared about the details to begin with. Now those that did care can no longer justify the time that was previously required.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#63

Post by schneems »

falcor84 wrote: post #19
io84 wrote: post #7

A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth. Every time the AI solves a problem that I would not have been able to efficiently solve alone, it has replaced an interaction that previously would have happened with a mentor/supervisor/code reviewer. This is faster for the person seeking the micro-assistance, but there is a flipside: fewer human-to-human…

>Every time the AI solves a problem that I would not have been able to efficiently solve alone, it has replaced an interaction that previously would have happened with a mentor/supervisor/code reviewer. I suppose that Socrates would strongly agree, seeing how the same argument could be applied to learning from a book.

The difference is that the act of writing a book is a type of knowledge generation/curation/distillation that Socrates didn't know about.

I don't think the act of writing prompts for an LLM advances thinking/cognition in the same way.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#64

Post by foxglacier »

zackmorris wrote: post #33

I thought the article was going to be about countless millions of minds trying to win the internet lottery and merely reinventing the wheel or failing. I'm not worried about AI taking jobs. I'm worried that humanity has lost the ability to share at such a monumental level that basic sustenance and financial security are out of reach, even with AI. After lifetimes of negative reinforcement, the only salvation seems to…

They are not out of reach - people just increase their expectations to ensure that they never achieve satisfaction. I think that's fine but it is optional - if you want to just exist without striving for anything, nobody's stopping you. It's easy to be self-sufficient if you'll tolerate pre-industrial standards of living. There are others who want that too and you can coordinate with them and share among yourselves. This already happens. Modern standards of living and your high expectations are a consequence of capitalism. Ironically, you can actually have your cake and eat it too. So many other people love to participate in capitalism, that they provide enough good things to make self-sufficient living easier today than it was in pre-industrial times.

No, humanity hasn't lost the ability to share - it's the exact opposite - trade (and capitalism) has enabled sharing far beyond what it ever was before. Even better, it's done though voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange rather than people being forced into a fixed role in life which was often something horrible like servant, slave-girl, or warrior.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#65

Post by TeMPOraL »

EGreg wrote: post #44
io84 wrote: post #7

A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth. Every time the AI solves a problem that I would not have been able to efficiently solve alone, it has replaced an interaction that previously would have happened with a mentor/supervisor/code reviewer. This is faster for the person seeking the micro-assistance, but there is a flipside: fewer human-to-human…

This already happened in many other areas. You don't ask locals for directions anymore. You just have Google Maps. There used to be jokes about how men don't want to ask for directions...

I mean why would you ask locals? There's a good chance that the person you asked is a tourist or an immigrant, and regardless of that, they'll all just... pull up their own phone and check on Google Maps, at the very least so they can show you the route on the map. Why would you ask another person to be a "meat proxy"[0] for the thing you can trivially check yourself?

--

[0] - Some new phrase I suddenly saw pop up everywhere in the last few days. Must be popular with cool kidz.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#66

Post by tartoran »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
EGreg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened in many other areas. You don't ask locals for directions anymore. You just have Google Maps. There used to be jokes about how men don't want to ask for directions...

I mean why would you ask locals? There's a good chance that the person you asked is a tourist or an immigrant, and regardless of that, they'll all just... pull up their own phone and check on Google Maps, at the very least so they can show you the route on the map. Why would you ask another person to be a "meat proxy"[0] for the thing you can trivially check yourself? -- [0] - Some new phrase I suddenly saw pop up ev…

Maybe you make some friends and also maybe you obtain some information to get you off the well trodden path of tourism.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #28

The pseudo-academic style of the article is awful. All abstractions and buzzwords, no examples. Also, the tragedy of the commons concept is far older than 1968. The term "common" refers to common grazing land upon which anyone could graze animals. That's an English term. The American equivalent is "open range". Getting past that, the author has a point. There's a loss of shared expertise when there aren't people arou…

> Also, the tragedy of the commons concept is far older than 1968. The term "common" refers to common grazing land upon which anyone could graze animals. That's an English term. The American equivalent is "open range". The term is not "common" or "commons" but "tragedy of the commons" which dates back to a book in 1968 by Garrett Hardin. Elinor Ostrom subsequently showed that most or all of Hardin's assumptions and c…

Must be a glitch in the matrix or I got kicked into an alternate timeline, because until yesterday I never saw anyone here question the general meaning of "tragedy of the commons" and its stated implications, and suddenly it's the second time I see some 1968 book reference brought up and implications that "tragedy of the commons" is debunked, and that it's saying basically the opposite of what I know it to be saying...

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#68

Post by alexashka »

io84 wrote: post #7

A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth. Every time the AI solves a problem that I would not have been able to efficiently solve alone, it has replaced an interaction that previously would have happened with a mentor/supervisor/code reviewer. This is faster for the person seeking the micro-assistance, but there is a flipside: fewer human-to-human…

> A new and growing fear I have is that AI cuts off some of the most well-trodden pathways to intellectual growth

Good. No more growth.

There is nothing anyone needs to 'intellect' more of to make anyone's life better. Nothing. You can stop the inner monologue :)

Nothing.

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#69

Post by cadamsdotcom »

We will look back on this era as one of transition. AI is in its "look monkey can do tricks how cute" era - but it won't be long. For instance the era of "whoa" is happening right now in mathematics (Anthropic researchers are pushing math's frontier with little more than the prompt "you can do it" - ie. brute force), and in coding agents we're crossing over - look into leading-edge benchmarks like SlopCodeBench that are pushing labs to RL for long term codebase health and not just problem-solving. The reason I say coding agents will go in this direction is labs are competing to have the most appealing models and so seeking out new unsaturated benchmarks they can hill-climb and show flashy results from, demonstrate to customers they're the best and deserve spend.

What these cognitive tools do is make the mundane work we're lamenting the loss of redundant. Who cares if junior devs can't code? When this stuff really gets going they'll be using their answer boxes to both code AND to have have design discussions with a form of intelligence that has every PhD ever obtained and infinite patience.

Consider: long division used to be in school curricula; our forebears had to know it to be considered "educated"; and yet I, in my 40s, was never taught long division.

Where did it go?

Re: The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons

#70

Post by [deleted] »

RGS1811 wrote: post #61
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the LLMs work as advertised, we won't need experts. Even today, with the current state of the art, we need far fewer experts. LLMs are already much better at debugging than humans are, for example. Math proofs are falling at a unprecedented rate. And so on. In the future, we may not find mere human levels of intelligence so useful. Let consumers consume.

The future you're describing is Wall-E.

[deleted]
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