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Comment by blindhippo | Hacker News Reader

I think this is overestimating the impact of LLMs.

Fact is, even if they are capable of fully replicating and even replacing actual human thought, at best they regurgitate what has come before. They are, effectively, a tutor (as another commentator pointed out).

A human still needs to consume their output and act on it intelligently. We already do this, except with other tools/mechanisms (i.e. other humans). Nothing really changes here...

I personally still don't see the actual value of LLMs being realized vs their cost to build anytime soon. I'll be shocked if any of this AI investment pays off beyond some minor curiosities - in ten years we're going to look back at this period in the same way we look at cryptocurrency now - a waste of resources.

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> A human still needs to consume their output and act on it intelligently. We already do this, except with other tools/mechanisms (i.e. other humans). Nothing really changes here...

What changes is the educational history of those humans. It's like how the world is getting obese. On average, we have areas we empirically don't choose our own long term over our short term. Apparently homework is one of those things, according to teachers like in TFA. Instead of doing their own homework, they're having their "tutor" do their homework.

Hopefully the impact of this will be like the impact of calculators, but I also fear that the impact will be like having tutors do your homework and take your tests until you hit a certain grade and suddenly the tools you're reliant on don't work, but you don't have practice doing things any other way.

I appreciate your faith in humanity. However you would be surprised to the lengths people would go to avoid thinking for themselves. Ex: a person I sit next to in class types every single group discussion question into chatgpt. When the teacher calls on him he word for word reads the answer. When the teacher follows up with another question, you hear "erh uhm I don't know" and fumbles an answer out. Especially in the context of learning, people who have self control and deliberate use of AI will benefit. But for those who use AI as a crutch to keep up with everyone else are ill prepared. The difference now is that shoddy work/understanding from AI is passable enough that somebody who doesn't put in the effort to understand can get a degree like everybody else.

I'd suggest this is a sign that most "education" or "work" is basically pointless busy work with no recognizable value.

Perpetuating a broken system isn't an argument about the threat of AI. It's just highlighting a system that needs revitalization (and AI/LLMs is not that tool).

>at best they regurgitate what has come before

I keep seeing this repeated, but it seems people either take it as being self evident or have a false assumption about how transformers work.

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