I would believe you if this were 2024, but Opus 4.7/GPT 5.4 are genuinely impressive in many domains and do perform work one would expect of a college-educated, experienced dev. People don't understand that "AI" is not a static thing, failure modes that make LLM's completely useless one year could be generally solved by the next year (remember the whole thing about image models not being able to do hands? Or LLM's not being able to do math?)

This is not true at all - I have been using the Pro level AIs to automate my 150k a year automation engineer job for over 2 years and have reduced my workload by about 95%, no joke (AI writes great selenium tests). This is a real, measurable amount of work - it used to be that you had to be pretty smart to write code and now anybody can vibe code an automation test framework in literally one afternoon. I know because I did it a few months ago for my new role. It is beyond game changing for the reason - I can only imagine what actually productive people are doing - this is a 100x productivity multiplier.

It doesn't even make mistakes anymore - the biggest issue is making sure it doesn't get lazy with the number of assertions

Everything you think you know about AI was true until about 6 months ago. Now the frontier models and agentic tools are good at programming—better than most professional programmers would be unguided. And even if Claude Mythos isn't half as good as they say it is, it's changed the calculus of security significantly: use AI to vet your code before deployment... or someone else will, right before they 0wn you.

What larger problem can you do in a school setting with a calculator?

When doing algebra you need to be able to effortlessly do sums, multiplications, divisions, factorizations.

Meanwhile if you’re doing a physics or engineering calculation, it’s better to manipulate all the symbols algebraically and only plug in values at the final step.

I don’t see how a calculator is actually useful in driving learning outcomes.

Beware of the false equivalence. AI is not just a calculator that is automating a tedious and repetitive task. It is also automating away things like creativity, research and critical thinking. In addition, we are seeing more and more people use ChatGPT as a source of truth instead of academic literature.

No matter what way you run a math problem, the answer will be the same whether you use a calculator or work it out by hand. This is not the case with AI and the tasks it replaces.

Unfortunately people are inherently lazy. Curious and driven indivdiuals will excel with the availability of LLM's, but the majority will atrophy.

Calculators are cheap commodities. LLMs are owned by rent-seeking Napoleons, with debts bigger than the GDP of Norway. So they won't be cheap for very long.

You are making a grave mistaking here of thinking by analogy. Just because parents said something similar about something else long time ago has no bearing on the current situation.

> if you [...] mentally integrate them properly.

There it is.

I like how people come up with some analogy (and all analogies are wrong by definition) and then attack said analogy and based on that make a declaration on the original statement. But what if we use a different analogy: basically using an LLM is like skipping the whole learning process - not learning how to read, not learning how to write and not learning how to think, then what?

Just so long as we don't get something that is to LLMs as car-centric urban design is to cars.

Someone suggests putting all the stuff the average person needs within 15 minutes of the average person's home, and soon after we got a conspiracy theory about 15 minute cities being soviet control gates you'll need permission to get out of.

LLMs are already capable of inventing their own conspiracy theories, and are already effective persuaders, so if we do get stuck, we're not getting un-stuck.

> Cars will make you “fat and lazy” if you never move your body otherwise, but it’s fairly clear to see that this is avoidable.

why would you choose to compare ai to cars? you seem to be defending ai, but to compare it to cars... cars have been a horrible development.

i don't understand what you're saying about hypertext.

For you, no. For the services you depend on and will continue receiving your data, and may jack up the prices/add limitations knowing that your dependency won't be easily broken, yes.

In hindsight, we could have listened to the people who warned about how the internet would make our lives worse. Can our society withstand another generation of worsening on par with the effects of social media etc?

It's so easy to learn at the same time

You're absolutely right!

The same way using a forklift makes you stronger!

My biggest worry isn't that it will make me dumb (it won't), or that it will make me lazy (it will), but that people raised with it wont learn things in the first place. I'm split on if this is a real issue or an old man rants about slide rules and the decline of mental math kinda situation.

Isn’t there a saying you only truly know something when you're able to explain it to someone else? When I get angry at LLMs proposing stupid solutions, I see it as a positive thing. "damn, this is garbage, here is a much better solution ..." - i know, not really efficient, but enjoyable :)

The Merriam-Webster dictionary claims 'stupider' is a perfectly valid word

The original title is on point, like The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.