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> Shlegeris said he uses his AI agent all the time for basic system administration tasks that he doesn't remember how to do on his own, such as installing certa

by imron 2y ago

> Shlegeris said he uses his AI agent all the time for basic system administration tasks that he doesn't remember how to do on his own, such as installing certain bits of software and configuring security settings. Back in the day, I knew the phone numbers of all my friends and family off the top of my head. After the advent of mobile phones, I’ve outsourced that part of my memory to my phone and now the only phone numbers I know are my wife’s and my own. There is a real cost to outsourcing certain knowledge from your brain, but also a cost to putting it there in the first place. One of the challenges of an AI future is going to be finding the balance between what to outsource and what to keep in your mind - otherwise knowledge of complex systems and how best to use and interact with them will atrophy.

ajdude 2y ago
I have also outsourced many of those Basic system administrative tasks, except instead of using an AI, I outsourced it to a bunch of .sh files.
jeffbee 2y ago
I can still remember all my high school friends' phone numbers though. Just not the numbers of anyone I met in the 30 years since.
- QuercusMax 2y ago
  I can remember the phone number for the local Best Buy which I called a lot as a teenager to find out when new games came in stock.
courseofaction 2y ago
There is also a cost to future encoding of relevant information - I (roughly) recall an experiment with multiple rounds of lectures where participants took notes in a text document, and some were allowed to save the document while others weren't. Those who could save had worse recall of the information, however they had better recall of information given in the next round without note taking. Suggests to me there are limits to retention/encoding in a given period, and offloading retention frees resources for future encoding in that period. Also that study breaks are important :) Anecdotally, I often feel that learning thing 'pushes another out', especially if the things are learnt closely together. Similarly, I'm less likely to retain something if I know someone I'm with has that information - essentially indexing that information in social knowledge graphs. Pros and cons.
moribvndvs 2y ago
I think it ironic that visionaries and optimists see AI as freeing humanity, where our reliance on it will make us subordinate to it and its owners.
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago
  "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hopes that this would set them free. But this just allowed other men with machines to control them."
  - GeoAtreides 2y ago
    "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
- ethbr1 2y ago
  100% this. When we outsource something to the extent that we're incapable of doing it ourselves, we place ourselves at the mercy of those who control it.
userbinator 2y ago
I suspect that outsourcing as much of our lives to others (i.e. the corporations and the governments they control) is exactly what they want. AI is just the next thing that happens to be extremely useful for that plan.
- FuckButtons 2y ago
  Who is they? there is no plan here, it’s just everyone making similar decisions when faced with a similar set of incentives and tools, the reason those corporations can make money, is because they add value to the people who use them, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a business.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    They've stopped adding value and started milking for $$$ long ago.
  - tivert 2y ago
    >> I suspect that outsourcing as much of our lives to others (i.e. the corporations and the governments they control) is exactly what they want. AI is just the next thing that happens to be extremely useful for that plan. > Who is they? The decentralized collective of corporations and governments that understand they can take advantage of us outsourcing our lives. > there is no plan here, it’s just everyone making similar decisions when faced with a similar set of incentives and tools There doesn't need to be a master plan here, just a decentralize set of smaller plans the align with the same incentive to use technology to create dependency. > the reason those corporations can make money, is because they add value to the people who use them, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a business. No. For instance, lots of hard drugs destroy their users, rather than "add[ing] value to the people who use them." The businesses that provide them still make money. It's a myth that the market is a machine that just provides value to consumers. It's really a machine that maximizes value extraction by the most powerful participants. Modern technological innovations have allowed for a greater amount of value extraction from the consumers at the bottom.
dylan604 2y ago
We've already seen part of this with turn-by-turn GPS navigation. People enable it to go to the stores they've been to so many times already. I understand going some place for the first time, but every. single. time. just shows the vast majority of people are quite happy outsourcing the most basic skills. After all, if it means they can keep up with the Ks easier, then it's a great invention
- sokoloff 2y ago
  I’ve lived in the same house for 17 years. I will still often use a map app to navigate home as it can know more about the traffic backups/delays than I can. It’s not just for getting home, but for getting home as efficiently as possible without added stress.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    It's helpful to gauge your arrival time as well.
  - cj 2y ago
    True, although "back in the day" people used to memorize at what times during the day certain routes were busy, and they took alternative routes ("the back roads" in my area) to get around traffic that could be predicted. We've outsourced that to an app, too.
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      In a big enough city that information is too dynamic to memorize. Car crashes, road work, sports events, presidential visits all caused their own microclimate that was not part of the everyday rush hour.
    - medvezhenok 2y ago
      It also has information on store closing times/dates (some stores are closed on random days of the week, or close early on others), unexpected detours (construction, previously announced road work), speed traps (crowdsourced), and more. Some of it simply wasn't possible before the technology came along.
zzyzxd 2y ago
This was one of the points Neil Postman made in "Technopoly", 30 years ago. Every new technology introduced to the society is a negotiation with the culture. It may bring some benefits, but will also re-define or even takes something away. It's nice that these days I can talk to my father in some fancy messaging/video call apps. But the other day I had to give him a phone call, as I was dialing the number I noticed some melody echoed in my mind. Then I remembered when I was little, in order to memorize his number(so that I could call him from the landline), I made a song out of it.

by imron 2y ago

ajdude 2y ago

I have also outsourced many of those Basic system administrative tasks, except instead of using an AI, I outsourced it to a bunch of .sh files.

jeffbee 2y ago

I can still remember all my high school friends' phone numbers though. Just not the numbers of anyone I met in the 30 years since.

QuercusMax 2y ago
I can remember the phone number for the local Best Buy which I called a lot as a teenager to find out when new games came in stock.

courseofaction 2y ago

There is also a cost to future encoding of relevant information - I (roughly) recall an experiment with multiple rounds of lectures where participants took notes in a text document, and some were allowed to save the document while others weren't. Those who could save had worse recall of the information, however they had better recall of information given in the next round without note taking. Suggests to me there are limits to retention/encoding in a given period, and offloading retention frees resources for future encoding in that period. Also that study breaks are important :) Anecdotally, I often feel that learning thing 'pushes another out', especially if the things are learnt closely together. Similarly, I'm less likely to retain something if I know someone I'm with has that information - essentially indexing that information in social knowledge graphs. Pros and cons.

moribvndvs 2y ago

I think it ironic that visionaries and optimists see AI as freeing humanity, where our reliance on it will make us subordinate to it and its owners.

CatWChainsaw 2y ago
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hopes that this would set them free. But this just allowed other men with machines to control them."
- GeoAtreides 2y ago
  "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
ethbr1 2y ago
100% this. When we outsource something to the extent that we're incapable of doing it ourselves, we place ourselves at the mercy of those who control it.

userbinator 2y ago

I suspect that outsourcing as much of our lives to others (i.e. the corporations and the governments they control) is exactly what they want. AI is just the next thing that happens to be extremely useful for that plan.

FuckButtons 2y ago
Who is they? there is no plan here, it’s just everyone making similar decisions when faced with a similar set of incentives and tools, the reason those corporations can make money, is because they add value to the people who use them, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a business.
- userbinator 2y ago
  They've stopped adding value and started milking for $$$ long ago.
- tivert 2y ago
  >> I suspect that outsourcing as much of our lives to others (i.e. the corporations and the governments they control) is exactly what they want. AI is just the next thing that happens to be extremely useful for that plan. > Who is they? The decentralized collective of corporations and governments that understand they can take advantage of us outsourcing our lives. > there is no plan here, it’s just everyone making similar decisions when faced with a similar set of incentives and tools There doesn't need to be a master plan here, just a decentralize set of smaller plans the align with the same incentive to use technology to create dependency. > the reason those corporations can make money, is because they add value to the people who use them, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a business. No. For instance, lots of hard drugs destroy their users, rather than "add[ing] value to the people who use them." The businesses that provide them still make money. It's a myth that the market is a machine that just provides value to consumers. It's really a machine that maximizes value extraction by the most powerful participants. Modern technological innovations have allowed for a greater amount of value extraction from the consumers at the bottom.

dylan604 2y ago

We've already seen part of this with turn-by-turn GPS navigation. People enable it to go to the stores they've been to so many times already. I understand going some place for the first time, but every. single. time. just shows the vast majority of people are quite happy outsourcing the most basic skills. After all, if it means they can keep up with the Ks easier, then it's a great invention

sokoloff 2y ago
I’ve lived in the same house for 17 years. I will still often use a map app to navigate home as it can know more about the traffic backups/delays than I can. It’s not just for getting home, but for getting home as efficiently as possible without added stress.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  It's helpful to gauge your arrival time as well.
- cj 2y ago
  True, although "back in the day" people used to memorize at what times during the day certain routes were busy, and they took alternative routes ("the back roads" in my area) to get around traffic that could be predicted. We've outsourced that to an app, too.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    In a big enough city that information is too dynamic to memorize. Car crashes, road work, sports events, presidential visits all caused their own microclimate that was not part of the everyday rush hour.
  - medvezhenok 2y ago
    It also has information on store closing times/dates (some stores are closed on random days of the week, or close early on others), unexpected detours (construction, previously announced road work), speed traps (crowdsourced), and more. Some of it simply wasn't possible before the technology came along.

zzyzxd 2y ago

This was one of the points Neil Postman made in "Technopoly", 30 years ago. Every new technology introduced to the society is a negotiation with the culture. It may bring some benefits, but will also re-define or even takes something away. It's nice that these days I can talk to my father in some fancy messaging/video call apps. But the other day I had to give him a phone call, as I was dialing the number I noticed some melody echoed in my mind. Then I remembered when I was little, in order to memorize his number(so that I could call him from the landline), I made a song out of it.