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>We may end up with at least one generation of people who are like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in that they are mental weaklings utterly dependen

>We may end up with at least one generation of people who are like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in that they are mental weaklings utterly dependent on technologies that they don’t understand and that they could never rebuild from scratch were they to break down I don't think this can realistically happen unless all of the knowledge that brought us to that point was erased. Humans are also naturally curious and I think it's unlikely that no one tries to figure out how the machines work across an entire population, even if we had to start all the way down from 'what's a bit?' or 'what's a transistor?'. Even today, you can find youtube channels of people still interested in living a primitive life and learning those survival skills even though our modern society makes it useless for the vast majority of us. They don't do it full-time, of course, but they would have a better shot if they had to.

tqi 1y ago
> Humans are also naturally curious and I think it's unlikely that no one tries to figure out how the machines work across an entire population Definitely agree with this. I do wonder if at some point, new technology will become sufficiently complex that the domain knowledge required to actually understand it end to end is too much for a human lifetime?
arscan 1y ago
And for the curious, this current iteration of AI is an amazing teacher, and makes a world-class education much more accessible. I think (hope) this will offset any kind of over-intellectual dependence that others form on this technology.
pixl97 1y ago
>I don't think this can realistically happen I'd be far more worried about things in the biosciences and around antibiotic resistance. At our current usage it wouldn't be hard to develop some disease that requires high technology to produce medicine that keep us alive. Add in a little war taking out the few factories that do that, and increase the amount of injuries sustained things could quickly go sideways. A whole lot of our advanced technology is held in one or two places.
msabalau 1y ago
Stephenson is using a evocative metaphor and a bit of hyperbole to make a point. To take him as meaning that literally everyone entire population is like the Eloi is to misread.
acbart 1y ago
The research that is coming out is very clear that the best students are benefitting, but the bad students are getting worse than if they had never seen the LLM. And the divide is growing, with fewer good students. LLMs are a disaster in education.

tqi 1y ago

> Humans are also naturally curious and I think it's unlikely that no one tries to figure out how the machines work across an entire population Definitely agree with this. I do wonder if at some point, new technology will become sufficiently complex that the domain knowledge required to actually understand it end to end is too much for a human lifetime?

arscan 1y ago

And for the curious, this current iteration of AI is an amazing teacher, and makes a world-class education much more accessible. I think (hope) this will offset any kind of over-intellectual dependence that others form on this technology.

pixl97 1y ago

>I don't think this can realistically happen I'd be far more worried about things in the biosciences and around antibiotic resistance. At our current usage it wouldn't be hard to develop some disease that requires high technology to produce medicine that keep us alive. Add in a little war taking out the few factories that do that, and increase the amount of injuries sustained things could quickly go sideways. A whole lot of our advanced technology is held in one or two places.

msabalau 1y ago

Stephenson is using a evocative metaphor and a bit of hyperbole to make a point. To take him as meaning that literally everyone entire population is like the Eloi is to misread.

acbart 1y ago

The research that is coming out is very clear that the best students are benefitting, but the bad students are getting worse than if they had never seen the LLM. And the divide is growing, with fewer good students. LLMs are a disaster in education.