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Comment by raincole | Hacker News Reader

I know it might be an offensive way to put it, but I honestly believe if AI ends up making people no longer need to use their brains as much, it's a great thing.

Think about it: do we rather to live in a world where heavy labor is a necessity to make a living, or a world where we go to gym to maintain our physique?

If mental labor isn't (as) necessary and people just play Scrabble or build weird Rude Goldberg machines in Minecraft to keep their minds somewhat fit, is this future really that bleak?

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It is quite bleak to me. Thinking has always been an important part of what makes us human, much more so than physical labor.

Craftsmanship and tool usage are physical activities that also define us as a species and you will find no shortage of people lamenting our loss of those skills, too. Both those and thinking are categorically different than water carrying, ditch digging, and other basic heavy labor.

You don't have to stop thinking. Just switch to thinking about other stuff that is more interesting to you and potentially more complicated.

AI will never completely replace human thinking; it will just ease the annoying/boring parts.

The same arguments were given for the innovation of the calculator, but we didn't stop thinking with math/calculations, we just make the calculator do the boring computation part (and now you can calculate with much bigger and more complexe operation without having to spend loads of times and paper for it).

> I know it might be an offensive way to put it, but I honestly believe if AI ends up making people no longer need to use their brains as much, it's a great thing.

This _might, arguably_ be true, if the output was as good as their output would have been. Very limited evidence right now, but what there is is largely not promising, eg https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m365_copilot_uk_gover...

If we end up with a society of people not thinking and producing nonsense, that seems fairly concerning.

I'd say it is a constant fight against laziness. Sure it is convenient to drive everywhere with a car but at some point you might understand that it makes more sense to walk somewhere once in a while or regularly. Sure, escalators are convenient but better take the stairs so you don't need to go to the gym and save some money. If you ask me should all do more physical labour and the same goes for the mental labor. If we give that up as well the future is really bleak, to answer your question.

Our society is laid out for cars, not walking or biking.

My wife and I live about a mile from some favorite places to eat, but the walk home in the dark is dicey with a high speed limit and not a lot of lights, doubly so biking (she is not a strong pedaler). We end up driving even in the summer.

Human settlements usually do not exceed a couple of miles in diameter, for a pedestrian life style. A person can only deal with distances around a mile or two for daily activity. Modern cities are designed for a species called cars. Humans walking in these cities would be so alien and awkward.

Modern cities tend to have means for effective transport called public transit. I have lived in two big city centers and now live in one of their suburbs and I have never felt the need to own a car, even though I do have a driving license. Moving around is as easy as hopping onto a tram, metro, train or bus. In special cases there's always a possibility to call a ride.

It's still more car-centric than it should be here - it's absurd how much space we waste on all these parked cars around - but fortunately it's been improving over time.

In what area of the world to you live? I've been to places like that with highways and fences, it's terrible. Fortunately it's not like that in most places in Europe.

Chicago Suburbs

The analogy here is probably physical exercise. Lack of exertion sounds great until your body falls apart and destroys itself without frequent exercise.

> where we go to gym to maintain our physique

Average people don't do that though.

It is paramount to not ignore the state of the world. Poverty, wars, inequality in the distribution of resources, accelerated natural disasters, political instability… Those aren’t going to be solved by a machine thoughtlessly regurgitating words from random text sources.

Even if a world where people don’t use their brains were desirable (that’s a humungous if), the present is definitely not the time to start. If anything, we’re in dire need of the exact opposite: people using their brains to not be conned by all the bullshit being constantly streamed into our eyes and ears.

And in your world, what happens when a natural disaster which wasn’t predicted takes out the AI and no one knows how to fix it? Or when the AI is blatantly and dangerously wrong but no one questions it?

I said "if." In case you're not aware, the statement following "if" is usually a hypothetical situation that might not actually happen in reality.

And I responded to your hypothetical in detail and followed up with a request for clarification. That’s how discussions progress and it’s what forums such as HN are designed for.

You were clearly advocating for a particular future (“honestly believe (…) it’s a great thing”), so hiding behind it being a hypothetical feels disingenuous. Of course it’s an hypothetical, because it obviously does not describe the current state of the world. That doesn’t mean the idea is beyond criticism or commentary. On the contrary, that’s exactly what hypotheticals are for.

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