| ▲ | tines 11 hours ago |
| The problem is that you're likening fundamentally unlike things. AI isn't like a microwave or an automatic car or a power tool. It does not augment you. As I said elsewhere: AI is not a bicycle for the mind, it's an easy chair. You will lose more than you ever gain. |
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| ▲ | legitster 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| This is purely a matter of perception. Cooking a meal is a deeply intellectual process. If I buy a meal from a restaurant, yes I am losing a skill. But if making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life, it's not really a practical loss. AI is taking problems and putting them in a drawer so we never have to think about it again. Matches de-intellectualized making a fire. A washing machine de-intellectualized doing laundry. These are now solved problems. Our brainpower spent on them is effectively worth nothing. The only reason we need to learn to make a fire from scratch is for the intellectual satisfaction or for emergency situations. The same reason we would choose to work on the problems that AI can now solve. It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable, and the only thing you are going to replace it with is leisure. |
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| ▲ | ThrowawayR2 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > "It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable..." I'm fascinated by the AI bros putting hollandaise sauce and making fires on the same level as creating production software. One hopes that it is because they create only very simple software, making the analogy less invalid than it would be for more complex software. If not, the implication is that loss of the reasoning and cognitive ability needed to build foundational software like libraries and frameworks is not important to them. The only thing that separates homo sapiens from other species is the sapience. Diminishing or atrophying one's own cognitive abilities is the same as climbing down the evolutionary ladder. | | |
| ▲ | legitster 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean, doesn't the fact that people rely on these libraries and frameworks without thinking it itself prove the value of intentionally compartmentalizing off skills? No one is arguing that everyone needs to build programs ground up from assembly. So what's the magic difference between using a framework and asking a computer to write out the for-loops for me? | | |
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| ▲ | cush 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life I know you just wanted to poke at the analogy, but if you like hollandaise, it's one of the easiest and most rewarding sauces to make at home! Restaurant hollaindaise is usually terrible | | |
| ▲ | legitster 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Agreed. (Though it's not as easy as a béchamel, and yet I still see people buy jarred alfredo sauces. You can literally make an amazing alfredo sauce with pantry ingredients in less time than it takes to boil the noodles! Why would anyone buy an alfredo sauce!?) Although this more or less is my point. If people are willing to give up these incredibly high reward, low effort skills - how much more uphill is the battle to make people code and process data? | | |
| ▲ | ValentineC 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Why would anyone buy an alfredo sauce!? Ignorance aside, jarred sauces are sorta shelf stable, and I have occasionally run out of butter and milk. |
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| ▲ | jplusequalt 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable What about the skill of learning itself? I would suggest that's one of the most important skills humans have evolved. The more integrated AI becomes in our societies, the more it will automate away potential opportunities for learning. I can forsee a world tightly integrated with AI where people are not only physically sedentary, but mentally as well. As we progress further into the future, we need more educated people than ever to tackle the exponentially increasing complexities of our society. But AI presents an obstacle that many will never cross due to how to convenient it is to skip the messy work of understanding. Also, this problem is not unique to AI. It existed before the GPTs and Claude's of the world. But it's a problem of scale, and every company on the Earth right now is trying to scale AI up as fast as possible. | | |
| ▲ | legitster 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Here's a practical example: I am using AI to help me with my garden. It's been amazing - it helps me identify plants, identify soil issues, what fertilizer to use and what days to apply it, etc. What exactly did AI take from me? Spending hours of research on Google and Youtube to glean little incomplete bits and pieces? Calling a yard service? It's also clearly obvious when AI gives bad or incorrect advice - I am still trying different things and watching for the results. Coding is a outlier example where AI can just do the work semi-competently without anyone checking it. But I think it speaks more to the nature of coding itself - coding is a means to an end and for most people not an actual pursuit in itself. | | |
| ▲ | jplusequalt 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | >What exactly did AI take from me? Spending hours of research on Google and Youtube to glean little incomplete bits and pieces? Calling a yard service? An opportunity for a deeper understanding of gardening? If you spend hours researching on gardening and come away with an incomplete understanding of what you were attempting to do, I'm not sure that's immediately the fault of the research available. It could be that you just didn't do a good job searching for the necessary information. In this way, AI can be a boon. It helps figure out what you actually want to know in the moment. But I think it would be a step to far to say that a smattering of specific questions can replace the sturdy foundation povided by a typical education--e.g. through apprenticeship, books, etc. >It's also clearly obvious when AI gives bad or incorrect advice Is it? Isn't this a __core__ problem that researchers around the world are trying to solve? Also, __how__ could you make such a statement unless you already possessed the knowledge ahead of time to make such a judgment? I think it's hard to know if something is bad advice by looking at just cause and effect. It could be that you just lack the understanding to put the advice into practice. | | |
| ▲ | legitster 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It could be that you just didn't do a good job searching for the necessary information. How can you? The existing resources are terrible. > But I think it would be a step to far to say that a smattering of specific questions can replace the sturdy foundation povided by a typical education--e.g. through apprenticeship, books, etc. I am not going to go through a college program for my own garden. And I have books! But unless you can read a tiny and perform a small research project, you are not going to know how all of the plants in your specific garden in your specific region in your specific weather are going to behave. The best I could do is hire an expert - but again I am learning less by hiring it out. > Also, __how__ could you make such a statement unless you already possessed the knowledge ahead of time to make such a judgment? "Use X to kill the moss". It didn't kill the moss. I will now use AI to find a list of alternative things to try to kill the moss, and learn what works in my garden. The idea that AI is going to make people stop learning I don't think is born out in practice. It might make some people stop researching as an activity though. |
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| ▲ | tines 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Now you're getting it! The modern way of life which prioritizes convenience and production destroys human connection. Making sauce is pointless; let's go one step further and make every other thing you might do equally pointless. Welcome to the hellscape! It's surprisingly comfortable. | | |
| ▲ | legitster 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | The other extreme is also a hellscape. Work and suffering is the only thing of value. Let's make pyramids to bring people together and show off our collective wealth. |
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| ▲ | mhluongo 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If I'm not mistaken, this was Socrates' exact perspective on writing. |
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| ▲ | jplusequalt 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Socrates' exact perspective on writing Again, writing replacing memorization is not a good 1:1 comparison to AI replacing technical understanding. Someone still needs to understand what is written and act upon that knowledge. That requires skill and experience in the domain they're working within. However, a person using an AI does not need to understand the underlying problem to get results. A person can ask Claude Code to write them a web app dashboard without having ever learned JS/CSS/HTML. It does not require them to have skills within a domain. Also, we need to be honest with ourselves. Human brains did not evolve for the instant gratification of modern technology. We've already seen what technology has done to our attention spans. I am concerned over what further reliance on technology, particularly AI, will do to our brains. | | |
| ▲ | legitster 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | > However, a person using an AI does not need to understand the underlying problem to get results. A person can ask Claude Code to write them a web app dashboard without having ever learned JS/CSS/HTML. It does not require them to have skills within a domain. This perspective is funny to me because of how much the modern web is already built around web developers refusing to use CSS and PHP. The giving up of the skills happened before the automation. |
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| ▲ | sunir 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Dubious. Ai psychosis is the opposite. It’s about being empowered to explore ideas much further but with a maladaptive tool designed to be an appeaser by reinforcement learning. |
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| ▲ | TechSquidTV 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Im hearing a lot of opinion, but nothing convincing. |
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| ▲ | bicepjai 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | All knowledge started as someone's opinion. The goal isn't to avoid opinions, it's to stress-test them. That's exactly what HN is for. |
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