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Note that we are the first-wave of AI users. We are already well-equiped to ask the LLM the right questions. We already have experience with old-fashioned self-

• raincole 1y ago
  Lying is pretty amazingly useful. How are you going to teach your kid to not use that magical thing that solves every possible problem? - C.K. Louis Replace lying with LLM and all I see is a losing battle.
  • gchamonlive 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • gilbetron 1y ago
    This is a great quote, but for the opposite reason. Lying has been an option forever - people learn how to use it and how not to use, as befits their situation and agenda. The same will happen with AI. Society will adapt, us first-AI-users will use it far differently than people in 10, 20, 30+ years. Things will change, bad things will happen, good things will happen, maybe it will be Terminator, maybe it will be Star Trek, maybe it will be Star Wars or Mad Max or the Culture. Current parents, though, aren't going to teach kids how to use it, kids will figure that out and it will take a while.
    • AlwaysRock 1y ago
      Remember that even the Star Trek utopia only happened after a nuclear WW3 that started in 2026 and lasted for 30+ years.
      • mdaniel 1y ago
        > WW3 that started in 2026 I thought it was cute when we had the "anniversary" for Back to the Future's timestamp, but for that one ... "too soon, man"
• gchamonlive 1y ago
  We also grew with internet and the newer generation is having a hard time following it. However we were born post invention of photography and look at the havoc it's wreaking with post-truth. The answer to that lies in reforming the education system so that we teach kids digital hygiene. How on earth we still teach kids Latin in some places but not python? It's just an example, extrapolate python to everything tech that is needed for us to have a healthy relationship with tech.
  • sjamaan 1y ago
    > It's just an example, extrapolate python to everything tech that is needed for us to have a healthy relationship with tech. Perhaps that's also a reason why - tech is so large, there's no time in a traditional curriculum to teach all of it. And only teaching what's essential is going to be tricky because who gets to decide what's essential? And won't this change over time?
    • airstrike 1y ago
      I don't think that argument holds. If you're going to pick anything in Tech to teach the masses, Python is a pretty good candidate. There is no perfect solution, but most imperfect attempts are superior to doing nothing.
      • whywhywhywhy 1y ago
        I'd argue it's a bad candidate because it doesn't run in a normal person computing environment. I can't write a Python application and give it to another normie and have them able to run it, it doesn't run on a Phone, it doesn't run on a web browser. So it's teaching them a language they can't use to augment their work between or pass their work to other non-techies.
        • anonym29 1y ago
          Yes, you can, actually. Pyinstaller will produce PE, ELF, and Mach-O executables, and Py2wasm will produce wasm modules that will run in just about any modern browser.
• dsign 1y ago
  I have this idea that a lot of issues we are having today are not with concrete thing X, but with concrete thing X running amok in this big, big world of ours. Take AI for example: give a self-aware, slightly evil AI to physically and news-isolated medieval villagers somewhere. If they survive the AI's initial havoc, they will apply their lesson right way. Maybe they will isolate the AI in a cave with a big boulder on the door, to be removed only when the village needs advice regarding the crops or some disease. Kids getting near that thing? No way. It was decided in a town hall that that was a very bad idea. Now, compare that with our world: even if thing X is obviously harming the kids, there is nothing we can do.
• ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  This is the worst form of AI there will ever be, it will only get better. So traditional self-learning might be completely useless if it really gets much better
  • blibble 1y ago
    people say this but the models seem to be getting worse over time
    • esafak 1y ago
      Are you saying the best models are not the ones out today, but those of the past? I don't see that happening with the increased competition, nobody can afford it, and it disagrees with my experience. Plateauing, maybe, but that's only as far as my ability to discern.
    • GaggiX 1y ago
      Models are getting better, like Gemini 2.5 Pro is incredible, compare to what we had a year ago it's on a completely different level.
  • VyseofArcadia 1y ago
    That's optimistic. Sci-fi has taught us that way worse forms of AI are possible.
    • esafak 1y ago
      Worse in the sense of capability, not alignment.
  • DanHulton 1y ago
    > it will only get better I wanted to highlight this assumption, because that's what it is, not a statement of truth. For one, it doesn't really look like the current techniques we have for AI will scale to the "much better" you're talking about -- we're hitting a lot of limits where just throwing more money at the same algorithms isn't producing the giant leaps we've seen in the past. But also, it may just end up that AI provider companies aren't infinite growth companies, and once companies aren't able to print their own free money (stock) based on the idea of future growth, and they have to tighten their purse strings and start charging what it actually costs them, the models we'll have realistic, affordable access to will actually DECREASE. I'm pretty sure the old fashioned, meat-based learning model is going to remain price competitive for a good long while.
• bitexploder 1y ago
  It likely no longer matters. Not in the sense that AI replaces programmers and engineers, but it is a fact of life. Like GPS replacing paper navigation skills.
  • mschild 1y ago
    I grew up never needing paper maps. Once I got my license, GPS was ubiquitous. Most modern paper maps are quite the same as Google Maps or equivalents would be though. The underlying core material is the same so I don't think most people would struggle to read it. I think learning and critical thinking are skills in and of themselves and if you have a magic answering machine that does not require these skills to get an answer (even an incorrect one), it's gonna be a problem. There are already plenty of people that will repeat whatever made up story they hear on social media. With the way LLMs hallucinate and even when corrected double down, it's not going to make it better.
    • GeoAtreides 1y ago
      >Most modern paper maps are quite the same as Google Maps or equivalents would be though. The underlying core material is the same so I don't think most people would struggle to read it. That's absolutely not the case, paper maps don't have a blue dot showing your current location. Paper maps are full of symbols, conventions, they have a fixed scale... Last year I bought a couple of paper maps and went hiking. And although I am trained in reading paper maps and orientating myself, and the area itself was not that wild and was full of features, still I had moments when I got lost, when I had to backtrack and when I had to make a real effort to translate the map. Great fun, though.
      • mdaniel 1y ago
        Relevant game that was posted recently: 3D Army Land Navigation Courses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43624799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43624799 - April 2025 (46 comments)
• arkh 1y ago
  I'm far from an AI enthusiast but concerning: > There is a good chance that there will be a generational skill atrophy in the future, as less people will be inclined to develop the experience required to use AI as a helper, but not depend on it. I don't how to care for livestock or what to do to prepare and can a pig or a cow. I could learn it. But I'll keep using the way of least resistance and get it from my butcher. Or to be more technological: I'd have to learn how to make a bare OS capable of starting from a motherboard, it still does not prevent me from deploying k8s clusters and coding apps to run on it.
  • trefoiled 1y ago
    If your butcher felt the same way you did, he wouldn't exist
  • skydhash 1y ago
    > I don't how to care for livestock or what to do to prepare and can a pig or a cow. I could learn it. But I'll keep using the way of least resistance and get it from my butcher You'd sing a different tune if there was a good chance from being poisoned by your butcher. The two examples you chose are obvious choices because the dependencies you have are reliable. You trust their output and methodologies. Now think about current LLMs-based agents running your bank account, deciding on loans,...
  • kevinsync 1y ago
    Sure, but we still will need future generation people to want to learn how to butcher and then actually follow through on being butchers. I guess the implied fear is that people who lack fundamentals and are reliant on AI become subordinate to the machine's whimsy, rather than the other way around.
  • jofla_net 1y ago
    Maybe its not so much that it prevents anything, rather it will hedge toward a future where all we get is a jpeg of a jpeg of a jpeg. ie. everything will be an electron app or some other generational derivative not yet envisioned yet, many steps removed from competent engineering.
• dlisboa 1y ago
  > There is a good chance that there will be a generational skill atrophy in the future We already see this today: a lot of young people do not know how to type in keyboards, how to write in word processors, how to save files, etc. A significant part of a new generation is having to be trained on basic computer things same as our grandparents did. It's very intersting how "tech savvy" and "tech compentent" are two different things.
  • bitwize 1y ago
    Jaron Lanier was a critic of the view that files were somehow an essential part of computing: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/01/08/jaron-lanier/gory-antigora-illusions-capitalism-computers/ https://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/01/08/jaron-lanier/gory-an... Typing on a keyboard, using files and writing on a word processor, etc. are accidental skills, not really essential skills. They're like writing cursive: we learned them, so we think naturally everybody must and lament how much it sucks that kids these days do not. But they don't because they don't need to: we now have very capable computing systems that don't need files at all, or at least don't need to surface them at the user level. It could be that writing or understanding code without AI help turns out to be another accidental skill, like writing or understanding assembly code today. It just won't be needed in the future.
    • dingdongbong 1y ago
      [dead]
    • dogleash 1y ago
      Waxing philosophical about accidental/essential kinda sweeps under the rug that it's an orthogonal dimension to practical for a given status quo. And that's what a lot of people care about even if it's possible to win a conversation by deploying boomer ad hominem. I will lament that professionals with desk jobs can't touch-type. But not out of some "back in my day" bullshit. I didn't learn until my 20s. I eventually had an "oh no" realization that it would probably pay major dividends on the learning investment. It did. And then I knew. I was real good at making excuses to never learn too. Much more resistant than the student/fresh grads I've since convinced to learn.
• mondrian 1y ago
  It’s still unconvincing that the shift to AI is fundamentally different than the shift to compiled languages, the shift to high level languages, the shift to IDEs, etc. In each of those stages something important was presumably lost.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • 68463645 1y ago
    The shift to compiled languages and from compiled languages to high level languages brought us Wirth's law.
• htrp 1y ago
  > But what happens with generations that will grow up with AI readily available? There is a good chance that there will be a generational skill atrophy in the future, as less people will be inclined to develop the experience required to use AI as a helper, but not depend on it. Just like there is already generational gap with developers who don't understand how to use a terminal (or CS students who don't understand what file systems are). AI will ensure there are people who don't think and just outsource all of their thinking to their llm of choice.
• doright 1y ago
  I was learning a new cloud framework for a side project recently and wanted to ask my dad about it since it's the exact same framework he's used for his job for many years, so he'd know all sorts of things about it. I was expecting him to give me a few ideas or have a chat about a mutual interest since this wasn't for income or anything. Instead all he said was "DeepSeek's pretty good, have you tried it yet?" So I just went to DeepSeek instead and finished like 25% of my project in a day. It was the first time in my whole life that programming was not fun at all. I was just accomplishing work - for a side project at that. And it seems the LLMs are already more interested in talking to me about code than my dad who's a staff engineer. I am going to use the time saved to practice an instrument and abandon the "programming as a hobby" thing unless there's a specific app I have a need for.
  • xemdetia 1y ago
    I find this to be an interesting anecdote because at a certain level for a long time the most helpful advice you could give is what would be the best reference for the problem at hand which might have been a book or website or wiki or Google for stack overflow and now a particular AI model might be the most efficient way to give someone a 'good reference.' I could certainly see someone recommending a model the same way they may have recommended a book or tutorial. On point of discussing code.. a lot of cloud frameworks are boring but good. It usually isn't the interesting bit and it is a relatively recent quirk that everyone seems to care more about the framework compared to the thing you actually wanted to achieve. It's not a fun algorithm optimization, it's not a fun object modeling exercise, it's not some nichey math thing of note or whatever got them into coding in the first place. While I can't speak for your father I haven't met a programmer who doesn't get excited to talk about at least one coding topic this cloud framework just might not have been it.
    • lelanthran 1y ago
      > It usually isn't the interesting bit and it is a relatively recent quirk that everyone seems to care more about the framework compared to the thing you actually wanted to achieve. It's not a fun algorithm optimization, it's not a fun object modeling exercise, it's not some nichey math thing of note or whatever got them into coding in the first place. I only read your comment after I posted mine, but my take is basically the same as yours: the GP thinks the IT learning-treadmill is fun and his dad doesn't. It's not hard to see the real problem here.
• corobo 1y ago
  This is going to be like that thing where we have to fix printers for the generation above and below us isn't it, haha Damn kids, you were supposed to be teasing me for not knowing how the new tech works by now.
• jimbob45 1y ago
  Is AI going to be meaningfully different from vanilla Google searching though? The difference is a free extra clicks to yield mostly the same level of results.
• noboostforyou 1y ago
  > But what happens with generations that will grow up with AI readily available? There is a good chance that there will be a generational skill atrophy in the future Spot on. Look at the stark difference in basic tech troubleshooting abilities between millennials and gen z/alpha. Both groups have had computers most of their lives but the way that the computers have been "dumbed down" for lack of a better term has definitely accelerated that skill atrophy.