I like how the least optimistic scenario is simply LLMs not making a difference, instead of the very real possibility of them damaging education, destroying people’s attention spans and their ability to learn, eroding trust within societies, increasing the wealth inequality and leading to class wars.

I believe the net effect of LLMs is, at this point, firmly negative, and it’s going to take years until they start making up for the mess they’ve created.

Exactly. Bloomberg reports students who use AI perform worse

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-08/school-st...

Long term I worry what happens when you absolutely gut out the mental capabilities of a generation or two.

We are only just now seeing the first stages of this, we are at the Facebook in 2008 stage trying to warn people about the societal fluctuations coming but many aren't listening because it is too useful.

Same net negative with smartphones and social media.

Altman, Amodei, Pinchai etc can get together and just put a self imposed ban on themselves and ask the us government to sanction any entity/state attempting to use/release a Recursive Self improving model until the risks are well understood.

This does not mean they can't keep developing it. But it would mean they do not release them to the general public or the public domain. The US government can continue to use and fund these models that are more powerful and use them in situations they understand and a restricted setting. The pentagon has a larger budget than any VC.

Remove the profit motive on self improving recursive models gained from retail/commercial use!

I can't imagine trying to be a teacher in 2026. I would have never written a single paper or problem set myself in HS and college.

have one coworker whose clearly lost some ability to think critically because of their overreliance, near obsession, with llm chats. slightly worried they might lose their job

another coworker seems to be early on a similar path but has made some comments about the former coworkers ability that makes me hopeful they dont end up the same way

feels like im talking about old high school friends on a drug path or something. its only anecdotes and i imagine the "perceived damage" is reversible. point is: i think youre onto something about the net effect and were going to have popular definitions for the negative encounters were anecdotally sharing

im a "user" but make Claude interact in an educational format and require sources on assertions. looking back, ive unintentionally cast it as The Librarian from Snow Crash, except if Hiro challenged it frequently. must have been natural after reading Snow Crash a few times. maybe im kidding myself but it feels like i havent lost a step. if im not deluding myself then i could see a world where elementary schools teach responsible llm use of to preserve cognition the same way we had to learn Google boolean search

How?

Whatever an LLM can do today, will not come back as is tomorrow.

The biggest issue the LLM today: It kills all the small and niche things. The things were we fit all the other people is getting destroyed. You know the guy who makes websites, the fiverr blender person provoding some basic modelling tasks.

You will just ask AI or AI will use your tool or AI will just produce it for you.

There's not nearly enough mention in these discussions of the real villain behind most of the negative cultural, social, and cognitive effects of things like social media: addiction engineering.

AI will be a net positive unless companies start optimizing it for "time in app" or "time on site" or other "engagement" (addiction) metrics.

Every time that's been done, the result has been a nightmare for everything but those KPIs (of course). Service degrades, discourse degrades, everything becomes toxic and addictive and destructive.

I noticed that LLMs prevent you from thinking on your own, or at least try to, by injecting their "helpful" suggestions when you need some idle time to think. On Amazon, for example, I was about to find something when their chatbot distracted me with its suggestions I didn't ask for.

I don't think they can make up for any mess. Because even if LLMs bring about a lack of scarcity across all domains, human beings will be alienated because indvidual differences and skills won't matter any more so we'll have to be genetically engineered to like that sort of future. I don't think a stable and healthy society can coexist with LLMs at all.

LLMs themselves most definitely will not do that. You can still learn how to make a barrel, but not many people do.. The real fear is the destruction/hiding of public data/resources (which has already been happening for years)

> and leading to class wars.

Aren’t we overdue for one anyway.

Do a few bad grades really harm economic outcomes, though? Educators took a hard stance against AI rather quickly.

Outside of delusional grifty startups, the broader corporate world is only using copilot for taking meeting notes and (sort of) entertaining the notion of non-devs writing (and not maintaining) their own experimental janky apps where impact is low.

Outside of all the shit-stirrers on HN and clueless bubble social media, I don't see LLMs making a difference. In fact, the fearmongering is at this point insulting to the intelligence of the people who are supposedly helpless against big bad AI.

Um. Damaging education, destroying people’s attention spans and their ability to learn, eroding trust within societies, increasing the wealth inequality, - all of that has already been done. Long before LLMs. And the only reason there is no class war is... exactly that. Uneducated people with short attention spans and no means beyond basic level are exemplary bad at modern warfare.