I cannot do math faster in my head, calculators killed the faster mental math, but if I have to calculate on my own, it's not fundamentally impossible. I still can do it, because it's just computation.

But, LLMs help us think, which is much more than just computing, that's more dependency.

I suppose that depends what you do with them. I spent some time this weekend using Grok to work on a business plan and some other projects. I find myself using it for research, quickly winnowing information down to what's relevant to my needs, and sort of bouncing ideas off it the way I would with another person. I always have to keep in mind that it could get something wrong, but then again, so could a person.

I don't think it's helping me think; more like it's helping me organize my thoughts and find inspiration. I suppose others might use it in a more dependent way.

My calculator doesn't hallucinate (said another way- pending no input error, I can blindly trust it...which is something that would get me in trouble with a LLM)