Delegation of intelligence? So one party gets more stupid for the other to be smart?

arduanika 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, just like moving into management. So we'll get a generation of programmers who get to turn prematurely into the Pointy-Haired Boss.

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ThrowawayR2 4 days ago | parent [-]

I like that. To paraphrase the Steinbeck (mis)quote: "Hacker culture never took root in the AI gold rush because the LLM 'coders' saw themselves not as hackers and explorers, but as temporarily understaffed middle-managers."

	▲	rewgs 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		This is fantastic, stealing this.

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benterix 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Except that (1) the other party doesn't become smart, (2) the one who delegates doesn't become stupid, it just loses the opportunity to become smarter when compared to a human who'd actually do the work.

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soraminazuki 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You're in denial. (1) The other party keeps learning, (2) the article cites evidence showing that heavy AI use causes cognitive decline.

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casey2 4 days ago | parent [-]

The evidence it cites is that paper from 3 months ago claiming your brain activates less while prompting than actually writing an essay. No duh, the point is that you flex your mental muscles on the tasks AI can't do, like effective organization. I don't need to make a pencil to write.

The most harmful myth in all of education is the idea that you need to master some basic building blocks in order to move on to a higher level. That really is just a noticeable exception. At best you can claim that it's difficult for other people to realize that your new way solves the problem, or that people should really learn X because it's generally useful.

I don't see the need for this kind of compulsory education, and it's doing much more harm than good. Bodybuilding doesn't even appear as a codified sport until well after the industrial revolution, it's not until we are free of sustenance labor that human intelligence will peak. Who would be happy with a crummy essay if humans could learn telekinesis?

	▲	soraminazuki 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's a lot of words filled with straw man analogies. Essentially, you're claiming that you can strengthen your cognitive skills by having LLMs do all the thinking for you, which is absurd. And the fact that the study is 3 months old doesn't invalidate the work. > Who would be happy with a crummy essay if humans could learn telekinesis? I'm glad that's not the professional consensus on education, at least for now. And "telekinesis," really?
	▲	bigbadfeline 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> No duh, the point is that you flex your mental muscles on the tasks AI can't do, like effective organization. AI can do better organization than you, it's only inertia and legalities that prevent it from happening. See, without good education, you aren't even able to find a place for yourself. > The most harmful myth in all of education is the idea that you need to master some basic building blocks in order to move on to a higher level. That "myth" is supported by abundant empirical evidence, people have tried education without it and it didn't work. My lying eyes kind of confirm it too, I had one hell of time trying to use LLM without getting dumber... it comes so natural to them, skipping steps is seductive but blinding. > I don't see the need for this kind of compulsory education, and it's doing much more harm than good. Again, long standing empirical evidence tells as the opposite. I support optional education but we can't even have a double blind study for it - I'm pretty sure those who don't go to school would be home-schooled, too few are dumb enough to let their uneducated children chose their manner and level of education.

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lazystar 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

well, then it comes down to which skillset is more marketable - the delegator, or the codong language expert.

customers dont care about the syntactic sugar/advanced reflection in the codebase of the product that theyre buying. if the end product of the delegator and the expert is the same, employers will go with the faster one every time.

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ModernMech 5 days ago | parent [-]

That's how you end up in the Idiocracy world, where things still happen, but they are driven by ads rather than actual need, no one really understands how anything works, somehow society plods along due to momentum, but it's all shit from top to bottom and nothing is getting better. "Brawndo: it's got what plants crave!" is the end result of being lead around by marketers.

	▲	lazystar 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		isnt this what assembly devs would have said about c devs, and c devs abput python devs?

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charcircuit 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not 0 sum. All parties can become more intelligent over time.

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matt_kantor 5 days ago | parent [-]

They could, but you're commenting on a study whose results indicate that this isn't what happens.

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charcircuit 5 days ago | parent [-]

And you are in a comment chain discussing how there is a subset of people where the study is not true.

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dvfjsdhgfv 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Rather a subset of people who would like to believe the results don't apply to them.

Frankly, I'm sure there will be much more studies in this direction. Now this is a university, an independent organization. But, given the amount of money involved, some of future studies will come from the camp vitally interested in people believing that by outsourcing their work to coding agents they are becoming smarter instead of losing achieved skills. Looking forward to reading the first of these.

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charcircuit 5 days ago | parent [-]

Outsourcing work doesn't make you smarter. It makes you more productive. It gives you extra time that you can dedicate towards becoming smarter at something else.

	▲	soraminazuki 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Become smarter at what exactly? People reliant on AI aren't going to use AI on just one thing, they're going to use it for everything. Besides, as others have pointed out to you, the study shows evidence that AI reliance causes cognitive decline. It affects your general intelligence, not limited to a single area of expertise. > Students who repeatedly relied on ChatGPT showed weakened neural connectivity, impaired memory recall, and diminished sense of ownership over their own writing So we're going to have more bosses, perhaps not in title, who think they're becoming more knowledgeable about a broad range of topics, but are actually in cognitive decline and out of touch with reality on the ground. Great.

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beeflet 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There is? You haven't proven anything

	▲	rstuart4133 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Haven't you been paying attention? He probably heard it from an AI. That's the only proof needed. Why he put in any more effort? /s