>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.

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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.

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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.