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Comment by rybosworld | Hacker News Reader

If you watch old videos of tradesmen using basic hand tools like hammers, you'll find examples of skill/dexterity with the tool that I think don't exist today at all except maybe in communities like the Amish.

I think it's true that we collectively lose something akin to beauty every time technology advances. But usually some new set of skills that have beauty emerge.

If LLMs end up being the pneumatic nail gun for the human mind, I personally think that's a fine thing for us to accept.

If they end up being more like some dark factory that autonomously does everything - then I think ultimately the thing that makes us human (our minds) will slowly decay and be lost, and that seems very sad. That's a version of the future we should try to prevent, I think.

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It seems pretty clear that LLMs are going to be extremely corrosive to culture in general.

Unfortunately it's already time to remove the "going to be" part of this.

No more corrosive than introduction of internet

Oh, so only extremely corrosive, cool

I mean the argument that is being put forward is that it isn't a pneumatic nail gun for the human mind - it atrophies are mathematical capability and quality of understanding.

Right - but you could imagine a similar sentiment anytime a skill was replaced by a new technology.

I think the jury is still out on whether LLMs actually lead to complete atrophy of skills that don't eventually get replaced with brand new skills.

Anecdotally people have been noticing atrophy quite a bit. Again its anecdotal because we can't possibly have a study that works in real time because the technology is rolling out insanely quickly.

And all the older technologies that have rolled out haven't competed against our cognitive abilities at speed and scale.

I don't think of cognitive ability as a skill per se - more of a critical core function of humanity.

I say this as someone who uses it extensively not some luddite but is also very aware of the risks which I assume are worse for people who have limited understanding on the matter.

I don't disagree at all actually.

I am just not completely sure that we won't gain something new on the other side of this, in the same way the calculator outsourced the need for doing arithmetic in our heads.

My argument is more that, the speed and scale is so unlike anything that we've seen before, that this time _feels_ like more of an attack on something to core to what humanity is. But maybe it's just that: a feeling.

LLMs/AI could very well be the worst case scenario we are imagining/discussing here. I just don't think we know enough to say that's how it will definitely play out.

You are less of a human for not starting all of your fires using friction from rubbing two sticks together. People who use lighters are destroying their ability to start fires without lighters and that is a very serious problem!

No technology has attempted to supplant human cognition on this scale before. Pretending its the same thing as going from sticks to a lighter is just silly.

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