6 ms·

" will AI be a bicycle that we control, or an unstoppable train to destinations unknown? To put it in the same terms as the ad, will human will and initiative b

" will AI be a bicycle that we control, or an unstoppable train to destinations unknown? To put it in the same terms as the ad, will human will and initiative be flattened, or expanded?" Interesting line of thinking here. I've never considered this but an observation from my usage of chat AIs at least is an increased willingness to defer my thought-organising process to the AI by just jotting down some random ideas and asking it to make it coherent. I guess on a personal level I'm flattening my own mind?

stiiv 2y ago
> an increased willingness to defer my thought-organising process to the AI by just jotting down some random ideas and asking it to make it coherent ...and then accepting that outcoming as sufficient, and moving on, right? Is the alternative that without the AI, you would spend more time researching and thinking about your ideas, pursuing (or stumbling upon) related ideas, and maybe ending up with a more broad understanding at the end of the endeavor? If so, working with a chatbot is good to extent that you value economy. That is a worthy outcome in many circumstances. But the "inflated" alternative sounds valuable in its way too. From a broad social/behavioral perspective, I wonder the extent to which the "inflated" way will die off (or perhaps adapt and become something new?) given these new tools.
- sbarre 2y ago
  > > jotting down some random ideas and asking it to make it coherent Isn't this is more or less the same thing as spending a bunch of time going to a bunch of webpages from Google search, except it takes way less time, arguably leaving _more_ time for the critical thinking and subsequent research you espouse? > ...and then accepting that outcoming as sufficient, and moving on, right? Much like you can either immediately trust what you read on the Internet, or apply some critical thinking and dig into it more, you can do the same with whatever an AI returns to you. AI can be an accelerator for mundane tasks and help you get to the high-value work quicker, or it can be a lazy shortcut that lets you do less. The same can be said for almost any tool.
btbuildem 2y ago
I find that terrifying -- when I do this, I feel I am willingly giving up hard-earned abilities, atrophying my ability to reason.
- danielheath 2y ago
  I'm in two minds about it - in the strictest literal sense, it's true - but it also rhymes with Plato complaining about writing degrading the ability of scholars to memorize things.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    Actually, Plato is not wrong. I'm a big pen and paper user, and write everything down. While it allows me to turn back six months, I can't turn two weeks back without my notebook in some cases. Brain has a strange ability to understand that information is stored elsewhere. Write it, and you forget it. Take photos in a concert, and memories become fainter. Talk about something important, you start to forget it part by part. AI is something way bigger. It's a dumb system which mimics us without the essence of the human or personal style, yet does mundane tasks without questioning. So you trade your own fine tuned, honed, polished ability to some GPUs which runs a software which is tuned for the masses. Like trading your beaten tungsten tool with a shiny iron one. Looks nice but way inferior. The ability to do these mundane tasks is the foundation for not doing the same tasks in a mundane way, or doing more complex tasks built on these mundane tasks. You rig your own foundations with explosives. Not wise. I'd not do that. I don't use any AI systems in any of my tools.
    - williamcotton 2y ago
      Can you critique my usage of ChatGPT? How exactly is this rigging my "own foundations with explosives"? https://chat.openai.com/share/927ac3b7-2b3c-46ea-a74b-d0dec5afa97f https://chat.openai.com/share/927ac3b7-2b3c-46ea-a74b-d0dec5...
      - bayindirh 2y ago
vasco 2y ago
Depends what the alternative is. If on average people would lose that fleeting thought and never dig into it or research it more it can be a huge net positive to write them down, even disorganized and having a history of what you thought about. And actually debate the thought with the AI and get an outside perspective. On the other hand if on average people would in fact dig into them, you might lose the ability to organize your thoughts yourself over time, but I always think that sort of fear is overblown.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  I have found that writing everything down eroded my ability to remember a couple of important tasks for the day, so I started to exercise that part of the brain to get the ability back. Any capability of the brain not exercised will certainly wither. While brain consumes the most energy, it tries to minimize it at the same time. Using AI extensively to accomplish mundane tasks will rob you of the ability in the long run. This is the law of the body. Use it or lose it.
unraveller 2y ago
You can't separate Will from attention, attention spans or human initiative was already shattered way before AI, which is now the best hope for more people to leverage time and control to expand their minds. I'm sure that centaur-mind will be the norm soon, if it really is as good as it promises to be it won't be needed for long.
nunez 2y ago
This goes beyond flattening. Given that only a handful of companies have the financial means to do AI at scale, and that those financial means are provided mostly by ads, I think that allowing these systems to essentially "think" for people like this will be unbelievably destructive for society long-term.

stiiv 2y ago

> an increased willingness to defer my thought-organising process to the AI by just jotting down some random ideas and asking it to make it coherent ...and then accepting that outcoming as sufficient, and moving on, right? Is the alternative that without the AI, you would spend more time researching and thinking about your ideas, pursuing (or stumbling upon) related ideas, and maybe ending up with a more broad understanding at the end of the endeavor? If so, working with a chatbot is good to extent that you value economy. That is a worthy outcome in many circumstances. But the "inflated" alternative sounds valuable in its way too. From a broad social/behavioral perspective, I wonder the extent to which the "inflated" way will die off (or perhaps adapt and become something new?) given these new tools.

sbarre 2y ago
> > jotting down some random ideas and asking it to make it coherent Isn't this is more or less the same thing as spending a bunch of time going to a bunch of webpages from Google search, except it takes way less time, arguably leaving _more_ time for the critical thinking and subsequent research you espouse? > ...and then accepting that outcoming as sufficient, and moving on, right? Much like you can either immediately trust what you read on the Internet, or apply some critical thinking and dig into it more, you can do the same with whatever an AI returns to you. AI can be an accelerator for mundane tasks and help you get to the high-value work quicker, or it can be a lazy shortcut that lets you do less. The same can be said for almost any tool.

btbuildem 2y ago

I find that terrifying -- when I do this, I feel I am willingly giving up hard-earned abilities, atrophying my ability to reason.

danielheath 2y ago
I'm in two minds about it - in the strictest literal sense, it's true - but it also rhymes with Plato complaining about writing degrading the ability of scholars to memorize things.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Actually, Plato is not wrong. I'm a big pen and paper user, and write everything down. While it allows me to turn back six months, I can't turn two weeks back without my notebook in some cases. Brain has a strange ability to understand that information is stored elsewhere. Write it, and you forget it. Take photos in a concert, and memories become fainter. Talk about something important, you start to forget it part by part. AI is something way bigger. It's a dumb system which mimics us without the essence of the human or personal style, yet does mundane tasks without questioning. So you trade your own fine tuned, honed, polished ability to some GPUs which runs a software which is tuned for the masses. Like trading your beaten tungsten tool with a shiny iron one. Looks nice but way inferior. The ability to do these mundane tasks is the foundation for not doing the same tasks in a mundane way, or doing more complex tasks built on these mundane tasks. You rig your own foundations with explosives. Not wise. I'd not do that. I don't use any AI systems in any of my tools.
  - williamcotton 2y ago
    Can you critique my usage of ChatGPT? How exactly is this rigging my "own foundations with explosives"? https://chat.openai.com/share/927ac3b7-2b3c-46ea-a74b-d0dec5afa97f https://chat.openai.com/share/927ac3b7-2b3c-46ea-a74b-d0dec5...
    - bayindirh 2y ago

vasco 2y ago

Depends what the alternative is. If on average people would lose that fleeting thought and never dig into it or research it more it can be a huge net positive to write them down, even disorganized and having a history of what you thought about. And actually debate the thought with the AI and get an outside perspective. On the other hand if on average people would in fact dig into them, you might lose the ability to organize your thoughts yourself over time, but I always think that sort of fear is overblown.

bayindirh 2y ago
I have found that writing everything down eroded my ability to remember a couple of important tasks for the day, so I started to exercise that part of the brain to get the ability back. Any capability of the brain not exercised will certainly wither. While brain consumes the most energy, it tries to minimize it at the same time. Using AI extensively to accomplish mundane tasks will rob you of the ability in the long run. This is the law of the body. Use it or lose it.

unraveller 2y ago

You can't separate Will from attention, attention spans or human initiative was already shattered way before AI, which is now the best hope for more people to leverage time and control to expand their minds. I'm sure that centaur-mind will be the norm soon, if it really is as good as it promises to be it won't be needed for long.

nunez 2y ago

This goes beyond flattening. Given that only a handful of companies have the financial means to do AI at scale, and that those financial means are provided mostly by ads, I think that allowing these systems to essentially "think" for people like this will be unbelievably destructive for society long-term.