4 ms·

Delegation of intelligence? So one party gets more stupid for the other to be smart?

• benterix 1y ago
  Except that (1) the other party doesn't become smart, (2) the one who delegates doesn't become stupid, it just loses the opportunity to become smarter when compared to a human who'd actually do the work.
  • lazystar 1y ago
    well, then it comes down to which skillset is more marketable - the delegator, or the codong language expert. customers dont care about the syntactic sugar/advanced reflection in the codebase of the product that theyre buying. if the end product of the delegator and the expert is the same, employers will go with the faster one every time.
    • ModernMech 1y ago
      That's how you end up in the Idiocracy world, where things still happen, but they are driven by ads rather than actual need, no one really understands how anything works, somehow society plods along due to momentum, but it's all shit from top to bottom and nothing is getting better. "Brawndo: it's got what plants crave!" is the end result of being lead around by marketers.
      • lazystar 1y ago
        isnt this what assembly devs would have said about c devs, and c devs abput python devs?
  • soraminazuki 1y ago
    You're in denial. (1) The other party keeps learning, (2) the article cites evidence showing that heavy AI use causes cognitive decline.
    • casey2 1y ago
      The evidence it cites is that paper from 3 months ago claiming your brain activates less while prompting than actually writing an essay. No duh, the point is that you flex your mental muscles on the tasks AI can't do, like effective organization. I don't need to make a pencil to write. The most harmful myth in all of education is the idea that you need to master some basic building blocks in order to move on to a higher level. That really is just a noticeable exception. At best you can claim that it's difficult for other people to realize that your new way solves the problem, or that people should really learn X because it's generally useful. I don't see the need for this kind of compulsory education, and it's doing much more harm than good. Bodybuilding doesn't even appear as a codified sport until well after the industrial revolution, it's not until we are free of sustenance labor that human intelligence will peak. Who would be happy with a crummy essay if humans could learn telekinesis?
      • soraminazuki 1y ago
        That's a lot of words filled with straw man analogies. Essentially, you're claiming that you can strengthen your cognitive skills by having LLMs do all the thinking for you, which is absurd. And the fact that the study is 3 months old doesn't invalidate the work. > Who would be happy with a crummy essay if humans could learn telekinesis? I'm glad that's not the professional consensus on education, at least for now. And "telekinesis," really?
      • bigbadfeline 1y ago
        > No duh, the point is that you flex your mental muscles on the tasks AI can't do, like effective organization. AI can do better organization than you, it's only inertia and legalities that prevent it from happening. See, without good education, you aren't even able to find a place for yourself. > The most harmful myth in all of education is the idea that you need to master some basic building blocks in order to move on to a higher level. That "myth" is supported by abundant empirical evidence, people have tried education without it and it didn't work. My lying eyes kind of confirm it too, I had one hell of time trying to use LLM without getting dumber... it comes so natural to them, skipping steps is seductive but blinding. > I don't see the need for this kind of compulsory education, and it's doing much more harm than good. Again, long standing empirical evidence tells as the opposite. I support optional education but we can't even have a double blind study for it - I'm pretty sure those who don't go to school would be home-schooled, too few are dumb enough to let their uneducated children chose their manner and level of education.
• charcircuit 1y ago
  It's not 0 sum. All parties can become more intelligent over time.
  • matt_kantor 1y ago
    They could, but you're commenting on a study whose results indicate that this isn't what happens.
    • charcircuit 1y ago
      And you are in a comment chain discussing how there is a subset of people where the study is not true.
      • beeflet 1y ago
        There is? You haven't proven anything
        • rstuart4133 1y ago
          Haven't you been paying attention? He probably heard it from an AI. That's the only proof needed. Why he put in any more effort? /s
      • dvfjsdhgfv 1y ago
        Rather a subset of people who would like to believe the results don't apply to them. Frankly, I'm sure there will be much more studies in this direction. Now this is a university, an independent organization. But, given the amount of money involved, some of future studies will come from the camp vitally interested in people believing that by outsourcing their work to coding agents they are becoming smarter instead of losing achieved skills. Looking forward to reading the first of these.
        • charcircuit 1y ago
          Outsourcing work doesn't make you smarter. It makes you more productive. It gives you extra time that you can dedicate towards becoming smarter at something else.
• arduanika 1y ago
  Yes, just like moving into management. So we'll get a generation of programmers who get to turn prematurely into the Pointy-Haired Boss.
  • ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    I like that. To paraphrase the Steinbeck (mis)quote: "Hacker culture never took root in the AI gold rush because the LLM 'coders' saw themselves not as hackers and explorers, but as temporarily understaffed middle-managers."
    • rewgs 1y ago
      This is fantastic, stealing this.