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I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, is

I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of manipulating the problem in your head—critical thinking—is ultimately a craft. And the only way to become better at it is by practicing it in a deliberate, disciplined fashion.

motorest 2y ago
> The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. I get the point you're trying to make. However, quietly pondering the problem is only fruitful if you have the right information. If you don't, best case scenario you risk wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason. In this application, a LLM is just the same type of tool as Google: a way to query and retrieve information cor you to ingest. Like Google, the info you get from queries is not the end but the means. As the saying goes, a month in the lab saves you a week in the library. I would say it can also save you 10 minutes with Claude/ChatGPT/Copilot. Is hiring a private tutor also laziness?
- abathur 2y ago
  I'll stop short of asserting you don't, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself your reply does reflect that you get GP's point. If I were to reframe GP's point, it would be: having to figure out how to answer a question changes you a little. Over time, it changes you a lot. Yes, of course, there is a perspective from which a month spent in the lab to answer a question that's well-settled in the literature is ~wasted. But the GP is arguing for a utility function that optimizes for improving the questioner. Quietly pondering the problem with the wrong information can be fruitful in this context. (To be pragmatic, we need both of these. We'd get nowhere if we had to solve every problem and learn every lesson from first principles. But we'd also get nowhere if no one were well-prepared and motivated to solve novel problems without prior art.)
- Arainach 2y ago
  >wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason Nearly all of learning relies on reinventing the wheel. Most personal projects involve reinventing wheels, but improving yourself by doing so.
  - aylmao 2y ago
    Very much this. Some of the most memorable moments I had in my learning were when I "reinvented" something. In high-school, our math teacher had us reinvent the derivative rules, and later had us derive Euler's identity through Taylor Series. They were big eureka moments. Going through all the work someone else did hundreds of years ago is very inspiring, and IMO gets you in the right mindset for discovery. I can't imagine where the joy of learning comes for someone who sees learning as a test —a question, an answer, nothing in between. In uni we built a CPU from scratch over the course of a few weeks. First building an small ALU, widening its bus, adding memory operations, etc. Beyond learning how things work, it makes you wonder how inventing this without a teacher to guide you must've been, and gives you an appreciation for it. It also makes you extrapolate and think about the things that haven't been invented or discovered yet. In theory LLMs could serve as a teacher guiding you as you reinvent things. In practice, people just get the answer and move on. A person with experience teaching, who sees how you're walking the path and compares it to how they walked theirs, will know when to give you an answer and when to have you find it yourself. One doesn't learn how to do lab-work in the library.
EthanHeilman 2y ago
I recognize this problem, but I find in my own uses of ChatGPT it actually allows me to overcome my laziness rather than making it worse. I'll have a problem that I want to work on but getting started is difficult. Asking ChatGPT is almost frictionless, the next thing I know I'm working on the project, 8 hours go by and I'm done. When I get stuck on some annoying library installation, ChatGPT solves if for me so I don't get frustrated. It allows me to enter and maintain flow states better than anything else. ChatGPT is a really good way of avoiding procrastination.
- sebmellen 2y ago
  I’ve found the same. Claude outputs are usually not good enough for what I’m looking for but the conversation is enough to get me engaged and started on a project.
- mwpmaybe 2y ago
  There's something magical about ChatGPT giving you a mostly-wrong answer.
  - EthanHeilman 2y ago
    AI Boosting productivity by building an artificial general intelligence that is wrong on the internet (AGITIWOTI)
LeafItAlone 2y ago
I think this is where my physical laziness benefits me. I’m often too lazy to spend the time to fully describe the problem to the LLMs and wrap it in a prompt that will produce something, in written text, so I think through it first. Usually I solve it myself or think of a better primary source.
- danielbln 2y ago
  I'll say that there is value in the rubber duck process, and LLMs make wonderful rubber ducks.
chrisco255 2y ago
LLMs have taught me something that I sort of already knew from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: the key to problem solving is asking the right question in the first place. It's not dangerous that answers can be retrieved quickly. Indeed, people had the same things to say about Google in the 90s or pocket calculators in the 70s. To me LLMs just speed up the process by which I would have manually searched the internet for in the first place. The only way to get good at critical thinking is to ask more questions.

motorest 2y ago

> The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. I get the point you're trying to make. However, quietly pondering the problem is only fruitful if you have the right information. If you don't, best case scenario you risk wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason. In this application, a LLM is just the same type of tool as Google: a way to query and retrieve information cor you to ingest. Like Google, the info you get from queries is not the end but the means. As the saying goes, a month in the lab saves you a week in the library. I would say it can also save you 10 minutes with Claude/ChatGPT/Copilot. Is hiring a private tutor also laziness?

abathur 2y ago
I'll stop short of asserting you don't, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself your reply does reflect that you get GP's point. If I were to reframe GP's point, it would be: having to figure out how to answer a question changes you a little. Over time, it changes you a lot. Yes, of course, there is a perspective from which a month spent in the lab to answer a question that's well-settled in the literature is ~wasted. But the GP is arguing for a utility function that optimizes for improving the questioner. Quietly pondering the problem with the wrong information can be fruitful in this context. (To be pragmatic, we need both of these. We'd get nowhere if we had to solve every problem and learn every lesson from first principles. But we'd also get nowhere if no one were well-prepared and motivated to solve novel problems without prior art.)
Arainach 2y ago
>wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason Nearly all of learning relies on reinventing the wheel. Most personal projects involve reinventing wheels, but improving yourself by doing so.
- aylmao 2y ago
  Very much this. Some of the most memorable moments I had in my learning were when I "reinvented" something. In high-school, our math teacher had us reinvent the derivative rules, and later had us derive Euler's identity through Taylor Series. They were big eureka moments. Going through all the work someone else did hundreds of years ago is very inspiring, and IMO gets you in the right mindset for discovery. I can't imagine where the joy of learning comes for someone who sees learning as a test —a question, an answer, nothing in between. In uni we built a CPU from scratch over the course of a few weeks. First building an small ALU, widening its bus, adding memory operations, etc. Beyond learning how things work, it makes you wonder how inventing this without a teacher to guide you must've been, and gives you an appreciation for it. It also makes you extrapolate and think about the things that haven't been invented or discovered yet. In theory LLMs could serve as a teacher guiding you as you reinvent things. In practice, people just get the answer and move on. A person with experience teaching, who sees how you're walking the path and compares it to how they walked theirs, will know when to give you an answer and when to have you find it yourself. One doesn't learn how to do lab-work in the library.

EthanHeilman 2y ago

I recognize this problem, but I find in my own uses of ChatGPT it actually allows me to overcome my laziness rather than making it worse. I'll have a problem that I want to work on but getting started is difficult. Asking ChatGPT is almost frictionless, the next thing I know I'm working on the project, 8 hours go by and I'm done. When I get stuck on some annoying library installation, ChatGPT solves if for me so I don't get frustrated. It allows me to enter and maintain flow states better than anything else. ChatGPT is a really good way of avoiding procrastination.

sebmellen 2y ago
I’ve found the same. Claude outputs are usually not good enough for what I’m looking for but the conversation is enough to get me engaged and started on a project.
mwpmaybe 2y ago
There's something magical about ChatGPT giving you a mostly-wrong answer.
- EthanHeilman 2y ago
  AI Boosting productivity by building an artificial general intelligence that is wrong on the internet (AGITIWOTI)

LeafItAlone 2y ago

I think this is where my physical laziness benefits me. I’m often too lazy to spend the time to fully describe the problem to the LLMs and wrap it in a prompt that will produce something, in written text, so I think through it first. Usually I solve it myself or think of a better primary source.

danielbln 2y ago
I'll say that there is value in the rubber duck process, and LLMs make wonderful rubber ducks.

chrisco255 2y ago

LLMs have taught me something that I sort of already knew from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: the key to problem solving is asking the right question in the first place. It's not dangerous that answers can be retrieved quickly. Indeed, people had the same things to say about Google in the 90s or pocket calculators in the 70s. To me LLMs just speed up the process by which I would have manually searched the internet for in the first place. The only way to get good at critical thinking is to ask more questions.