Good potential for discussion here. I full agree with the underlying premise: This technology CANNOT be allowed to just give us more of the same, but lazily. It HAS TO be an empowering tool. It has to unlock NEW discoveries.

For the purpose of discussion though, this also undersells AIs:

1. They CAN be great tools for novelty + discovery! You just need to ask and explore and put in work. Its not "easy", but it does help.

2. Sometimes "the mean" is what you want. Sometimes I'm not after art. I'm after something efficient and recognizable and easy to maintain.

How this oversells AIs:

1. We are losing the muscle of forced creativity and problem solving. There is a certain kind of learned privilege that comes from facing a problem and having your instinctive reaction be to ask for and expect help from something else rather than to roll up your sleeves or sit back and have a think. If the system incentivizes loss of muscle en-masse, we're gonna lose something beautiful and powerful.

I agree with this sentiment.

Many folks have touted the "calculator" similarities as an argument, saying it's more of an efficiency gain / productivity enhancer. To me, LLMs are far more involved than this. Now, unknowingly (or knowingly), people are offloading the problem solving portion of small tasks.

- Creative Writing (Claude, make this email sound more professional)

- Coding (Handle this small logic bug for me)

- Note Taking (Generate a summary of this meeting recording)

- Strategy (Set up a roadmap for X project) and many other areas

- Design (Give me a powerpoint for a stakeholder meeting)

- Personal Life (Find a restaurant I can take my wife to for our anniversary)

Many people underestimate how many "simple" tasks required creative problem solving abilities, and we're actively handing more and more of that over to the thinking machine.

Perhaps it's human nature to give this up, and maybe it's in our best interests - but this is the first time I've ever seen people stop thinking for themselves en masse. Interesting times ahead, IMO.