▲ | owisd 5 days ago | |
I was reading The Shallows recently about how the Internet affects your brain, it's from 2009 so a bit out of date re: smartphones & a lot re: LLMs but makes the case that the Internet and hypertext generally as a tool is 'bad' for you cognitively because it puts additional load on your working memory, but offloads tasks from the parts of your brain that are useful for higher-level tasks and abstract thinking, so those more valuable skills atrophy. It contrasts this with a calculator that makes you "smarter" because it does the opposite - frees up your working memory so you have more time to focus on high-level thought. Found it quite striking because it seemed most likely LLMs and Smartphones would fit in the hypertext category and not the calculator category yet calculators is exactly what Sam Altman likes to use as an analogy to LLMs. |