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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Your steroids comparison made me think of Cal Newport's recent blog post[1] where he argues that AI is making us lazy. He quotes some researchers who hooked people up to EEG machines then had them work. The people working without AI assistance incurred more brain "strain" and that's probably a good thing.

But even he doesn't think AI shouldn't be used. Go ahead and use it for stuff like email but don't use it for your core work.

[1] https://calnewport.com/does-ai-make-us-lazy/

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I haven't read the entire paper, but just looking at the abstract and conclusion it ironically seems...lazy? Like we're going to have some people use ChatGPT 4 times in 4 months and draw conclusions on long-term brain activity based on that? How do you even control for noise in such a study?

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that LLMs can create atrophy in our ability to code or whatever, but I dislike that this clickbaity study gets shared so much.

Of all the things I think AI shouldn’t be used for AI is one of them (unless you’re like completely illiterate). Whenever I get a “project status update” and the section header emojis show up I instantly just want to throw that garage in the trash.

That usage of emoji predates LLMs.

Woah

It's worth noting this is the exact argument people used against adopting electric calculators.

Calculators are a very narrow form of intelligence as compared to the general-purpose intelligence that LLMs are. The muscle/steroid analogy from this same discussion thread is apt here. Calculators enhanced and replaced just one 'muscle', so the argument against them would be like "ya but do we really need this one muscle anymore?", whereas with LLMs the argument is "do we really even need a body at all anymore?" (if extrapolated out several more years into the future).

You don't need the analogy. If you have a tool that does a job for you your capacity to do the job degrades alongside other associated skills.

Tools that do many things and tools that do a small number of things are still tools.

> "do we really even need a body at all anymore?"

It's a legitimate question. What's so special about the body and why do we need to have one? Would life be better or worse without bodies?

Deep down I think everyone's answer has more to do with spirituality than anything else. There isn't a single objectively correct response.

They weren’t wrong. There are lots of cognitive and conceptual benefits to slide rules.

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