I guess the problem is that there is a very specious rebuttal that says that plato objected to writing, people flipped out about calculator usage, and computers etc and we are all fine.
But we aren't fine. I am deeply embedded in high tech stuff and it makes me exceptionally uncomfortable how specialized our thinking has become and how disconnected we are from almost everything we use. LLMs are the next rung on the ladder of delegation, and instead of saying "it's fine, look at all the runs we've already climbed, this the natural progression of things" I feel like we should be saying "we should maybe descend a little?" It is nuts how many things your average Joe interacts with that they have zero understanding of, and it's allowing for all kinds of nasty consequences (algorithmic feeds, dynamic black box pricing with real consequences, i.e. insurance). AI labs can't really explain why models do what they do, and while they are chipping away at the problem, we are sprinting towards using them everywhere.
I feel for the young'uns. I have no idea how they will navigate this without the grace and generosity that was afforded to me when I was a teen to make mistakes without something ubiquitous and available and way smarter than me whispering answers in my ear.
But just look at the history of human civilization and all technological advancement for examples of this over thousands of years. People write without knowing how to make paper, pens, and colored inks. Artists paint without knowing how to make their own paints, brushes, canvas, sthretchers and frames. Books are made by authora who don't know how to print the pages, bind them together, or work a leather cover. Bronze workers create things from bronze without knowing how to mine it, or smelt it. We drive our cars without having worked the facotry lines, or the oil rigs, or the refineries.
There is literally too much to know in the world to become an expert in such a wide range in a single human lifetime. The only way to continue pushing the boundaries of human knowledge is through specialization.
I understand the argument that AI may make it so that no human is the specialist any longer, so who do you go to when you want a bespoke frame made as an artist and no one knows how to make them any longer. That is a problem that already happens, though. There are art forms and traditions in Japan and Korea that only a select few people have been trained how to do: traditional ketsugi and soju come to mind for me. I'm not sure I buy the argument that AI will cause this to happen more.
if anyone can write papers and proposals and code as fluently as he could, then people like him lose their competitive edge.
It's funny, as someone from a third world country, I worry about the exact opposite. LLMs will only exacerbate the current global inequality. Someone who can comfortably spend 300 USD on tokens will always have an advantage over someone for whom 20 USD is a tenth or even a twentieth of their income, even if their level of understanding is the same.
Edit: I realized that I did the math wrong and didn’t mean to use such low numbers. I recently met a developer who makes 500 USD a month and is subscribed to the 100 USD ChatGPT tier. Somehow, in my mind, “spending a substantial amount of your income” automatically translated to the cheapest subscriptions. Regardless, my original point still stands.
That's been on my mind a lot too. I'm pursuing study in pure math, which as a field has always prided itself on being uniquely accessible in the sense that all you need to do math research is pen and paper. It's seeming like lately you also may need a GPT Pro subscription...
I enjoyed this read and I think it sums up my thoughts about AI: if you don’t do the grunt work you can’t understand what you are doing. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t check it, and you lose half the reason of doing it in the first place (that deep understanding).
I tend to avoid LLMs in the same way I avoid using th car for trips I can walk- I don’t want those muscles to atrophy, and learning to struggle sometimes makes you strong and competent.
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly my biggest issue with AI. I'm grumpy about all sorts of other issues that it brings, but this is the one that can't really be "fixed" in my mind. I'm in an interesting position that I'm somewhat new to my field but not new to learning technical skills. The balance of doing grunt work to strengthen my chops and just getting things done or avoiding annoying work is ongoing. I don't have answers, but more and more I've been doing the grunt work. One, because I've found some flagship models less useful lately, not sure if they've been detuned or just tuned away from how I like to us them. And two because I've found that using AI is more friction over the long term than doing the work to memorize or master the boring or annoying thing. There's joy for me in knowing things and as the article points out: you can't nod along with an answer and call it knowledge gained.
bme | 16 hours ago
I guess the problem is that there is a very specious rebuttal that says that plato objected to writing, people flipped out about calculator usage, and computers etc and we are all fine.
But we aren't fine. I am deeply embedded in high tech stuff and it makes me exceptionally uncomfortable how specialized our thinking has become and how disconnected we are from almost everything we use. LLMs are the next rung on the ladder of delegation, and instead of saying "it's fine, look at all the runs we've already climbed, this the natural progression of things" I feel like we should be saying "we should maybe descend a little?" It is nuts how many things your average Joe interacts with that they have zero understanding of, and it's allowing for all kinds of nasty consequences (algorithmic feeds, dynamic black box pricing with real consequences, i.e. insurance). AI labs can't really explain why models do what they do, and while they are chipping away at the problem, we are sprinting towards using them everywhere.
I feel for the young'uns. I have no idea how they will navigate this without the grace and generosity that was afforded to me when I was a teen to make mistakes without something ubiquitous and available and way smarter than me whispering answers in my ear.
arch | 5 hours ago
But just look at the history of human civilization and all technological advancement for examples of this over thousands of years. People write without knowing how to make paper, pens, and colored inks. Artists paint without knowing how to make their own paints, brushes, canvas, sthretchers and frames. Books are made by authora who don't know how to print the pages, bind them together, or work a leather cover. Bronze workers create things from bronze without knowing how to mine it, or smelt it. We drive our cars without having worked the facotry lines, or the oil rigs, or the refineries.
There is literally too much to know in the world to become an expert in such a wide range in a single human lifetime. The only way to continue pushing the boundaries of human knowledge is through specialization.
I understand the argument that AI may make it so that no human is the specialist any longer, so who do you go to when you want a bespoke frame made as an artist and no one knows how to make them any longer. That is a problem that already happens, though. There are art forms and traditions in Japan and Korea that only a select few people have been trained how to do: traditional ketsugi and soju come to mind for me. I'm not sure I buy the argument that AI will cause this to happen more.
Kremor | 6 hours ago
It's funny, as someone from a third world country, I worry about the exact opposite. LLMs will only exacerbate the current global inequality. Someone who can comfortably spend 300 USD on tokens will always have an advantage over someone for whom 20 USD is a tenth or even a twentieth of their income, even if their level of understanding is the same.
Edit: I realized that I did the math wrong and didn’t mean to use such low numbers. I recently met a developer who makes 500 USD a month and is subscribed to the 100 USD ChatGPT tier. Somehow, in my mind, “spending a substantial amount of your income” automatically translated to the cheapest subscriptions. Regardless, my original point still stands.
[OP] evergoe | 5 hours ago
That's been on my mind a lot too. I'm pursuing study in pure math, which as a field has always prided itself on being uniquely accessible in the sense that all you need to do math research is pen and paper. It's seeming like lately you also may need a GPT Pro subscription...
Chiasmic | 21 hours ago
I enjoyed this read and I think it sums up my thoughts about AI: if you don’t do the grunt work you can’t understand what you are doing. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t check it, and you lose half the reason of doing it in the first place (that deep understanding).
I tend to avoid LLMs in the same way I avoid using th car for trips I can walk- I don’t want those muscles to atrophy, and learning to struggle sometimes makes you strong and competent.
jayrh | 16 hours ago
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly my biggest issue with AI. I'm grumpy about all sorts of other issues that it brings, but this is the one that can't really be "fixed" in my mind. I'm in an interesting position that I'm somewhat new to my field but not new to learning technical skills. The balance of doing grunt work to strengthen my chops and just getting things done or avoiding annoying work is ongoing. I don't have answers, but more and more I've been doing the grunt work. One, because I've found some flagship models less useful lately, not sure if they've been detuned or just tuned away from how I like to us them. And two because I've found that using AI is more friction over the long term than doing the work to memorize or master the boring or annoying thing. There's joy for me in knowing things and as the article points out: you can't nod along with an answer and call it knowledge gained.