Technology

Man getting people to listen to me when I essentially talk about the same thing you brought up is impossible. It is great for these kinds of things but I just get shouted down by all of the "AI bad no matter what" people.

when in reality there was no prior test to ensure the individual could do the task at all

Why would such a test be needed? I presume the researchers did the reasonable thing and assigned the participants to the two groups randomly.

Ironically, the people that agree with the headline won't bother to critically think about the study.

I remember the times before search engines. I used to have to wait for the weekends and walk 40 minutes to the library to look stuff up if I had questions. I remember how I even though encyclopedia britannica being available online was revolutionary and I spent hours reading just because I finally had access from home. It felt like it wouldn't always be there, so I tried to read as much as possible so I would just know stuff. I'm kinda nostalgic for it and where I live now, the library is only a few blocks away. You've inspired me to try to recreate that a bit.

I've been using LLMs with a project that I simply don't have enough time for. I've built the core of it during most of last year. And in the past 6 months or so I've been using LLMs to help me out with some of the more tedious stuff. Half the time it doesn't quite get it right, and some of that time it's just flat out wrong. It's usually when I get the LLM to try to hunt down some bug or something. After a couple tries, I give up on the LLM and figure out the problem myself.

I genuinely don't believe this "offloading your thoughts to an LLM" idea is universal. For someone still in school and learning? Probably 100% true. But for someone established in a skill, I don't think it's true, at least not entirely.

Yeah, but reproducible results is a hallmark of a scientific peer review

Can you shorten your sentence please, oh wait, I'll copy it to AI.

Thank you! This makes me think maybe our brains reward themselves for finding easier ways to do something and LLMs become just that sometimes. But at the same time atrophying our existing skill. We need brain gyms like we do physical gyms.

"Students who cheat on their homework don't learn as much" is a better headline.

"Using a compiler for ten minutes erodes your ability to write raw machine code"

Forgive me, but i’m not understanding why you find the headline to sensationalize or over state the actual findings of the study. The abstract of the paper directly says:

we provide causal evidence for two key consequences of AI assistance: reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance.

I’m struggling to discern a meaningful difference between “erodes your ability to persist at hard things” and “reduced persistence of unassisted performance”. Forgive me for not understanding but I would appreciate your explanation. The paper's very own conclusion actually uses the term erosion:

Here, we show that AI interaction can result in significant impairments in independent performance and persistence – capacities that are foundational to life-long learning. If brief exposure produces measurable erosion, the cumulative effects of daily AI use over months or years may be profound and difficult to reverse

I found a definition of erosion: "the gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process". Trust can erode and be rebuilt; soil can erode and be restored.

I agree that 10 mins of foundation model assistance likely doesn’t “permanently damage your brain or destroy your ability to think for yourself”. However, in my reading of the Berkeley news piece, I find no claim of this specific kind. Does the text of the press release explicitly claim the duration of effect is long-term or lasting? Does it explicitly claim the the erosion is permanent? Again, I find myself confused what you are arguing against.

Yeah my first thought looking at the title was literally... But I'm doing an extremely hard task while the dumb slop machine is doing an entirely different task.

I'm not just sitting there waiting around not thinking.

So how is that causing me to lose the ability to persist at hard things.

The article after reading it raises some good points but that head line is nonsense.

Deferring all your work to anything or anyone would do the same thing.

That's not a llm unique problem but a byproduct of not engaging your mind or skills. You can still do that while also using an llm or taking on human help.

If you hired a human to do everything for you, you also end up becoming a potato.

The problem is that llms make it too easy for people to actively choose that route because of lack of self discipline or desire to improve.

But a lot of technology is like that and not just computer tech.