8 ms·

> As AI edges humans out of the business of thinking, I think we need to be wary of losing something essential about being human If AI edges humans out of the

by arkensaw 10mo ago

> As AI edges humans out of the business of thinking, I think we need to be wary of losing something essential about being human If AI edges humans out of the business of thinking, then we're all in deep shit, because it doesn't think, it just regurgitates previous human thinking. With no humans thinking, no advances in code will be possible. It will only be possible to write things which are derivatives of prior work (cue someone arguing with me that everything humans do is a derivative of prior work)

adlpz 10mo ago
Agreed, conceptually. BUT. For 99% of tasks I'm totally certain there's people out there that are orders of magnitude better at them than me. If the AI can regurgitate their thinking, my output is better. Humans may need to think to advance the state of the art. Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff.
- latexr 10mo ago
  > For 99% of tasks I'm totally certain there's people out there that are orders of magnitude better at them than me. And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse, and you have no way of forcing it to be the good one every time. > If the AI can regurgitate their thinking, my output is better. But it can’t. Not definitively and consistently, so that hypothetical is about as meaningful as “if I had a magic wand to end world hunger, I’d use it”. > Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff. If you don’t think to do regular things, you won’t be able to think to do advanced things. It’s akin to any muscle; you don’t use it, it atrophies.
  - acoard 10mo ago
    > And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse, and you have no way of forcing it to be the good one every time. That's solvable though, whether through changing training data or RL.
  - adlpz 10mo ago
    > And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse Theoretically fixable, then. > But it can’t. Not definitively and consistently Again, it can't, yet, but with better training data I don't see a fundamental impossibility here. The comparison with any magic wand is, in my opinion, disingenuous. > If you don’t think to do regular things, you won’t be able to think to do advanced things Humans already don't think for a myriad of critical jobs. Once expertise is achieved on a particular task, it becomes mostly mechanical. - Again, I agree with the original comment I was answering to in essence. I do think AI will make us dumber overall, and I sort of wish it was never invented. But it was. And, being realistic, I will try to extract as much positive value from it as possible instead of discounting it wholly.
- djaouen 10mo ago
  > Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff. God forbid we should ever have to think lol
  - alchemism 10mo ago
    Very Zen of you to say
  - gedy 10mo ago
    It is concerning how some people really don't want to think about some things, and just "do".
- toobulkeh 10mo ago
  Imagine if everyone got the opportunity to work on SOTA. What a world we would be. Unfortunately that’s not where we’re headed.
  - adlpz 10mo ago
    We've never been there. With AI and robotics there may be the slim chance we get closer to that. But we won't. Not because AI, but because humans, of course.
- y0eswddl 10mo ago
  Only if you're less intelligent than the average. The problem with LLMs is that they will always fall to the average/mean/median of information. And if the average person is orders of magnitude better than you at thinking, you're right... you should let the AI do it lol
  - woopwoop 10mo ago
    Do you think that the average person can get a gold on the IMO?
  - adlpz 10mo ago
    Your comment is nonsensical. Have you ever used any LLM? Ask the LLM to... I don't know, to explain to you the chemistry of aluminium oxides. Do you really think the average human will even get remotely close to the knowledge an LLM will return to such a simple question? Ask an LLM to amend a commit. Ask it to initialize a rails project. Have it look at a piece of C code and figure out if there are any off-by-one errors. Then try the same to a few random people on the street. If you think the knowledge stored in the LLM weights for any of these questions is that of the average person I don't even know what to say. You must live in some secluded community of savant polymaths.
    - y0eswddl 10mo ago
      "they will always fall to the average/mean/median of *information."*
spicyusername 10mo ago
If AI edges humans out of the business of thinking This will never happen because the business of thinking is enjoyable and the humans whose thinking matters most will continue to be intrinsically motivated to do it.
- immibis 10mo ago
  Humans draw, but humans have been edged out of the business of drawing long ago.
- palmotea 10mo ago
  > This will never happen because the business of thinking is enjoyable and the humans whose thinking matters most will continue to be intrinsically motivated to do it. What world do you live in, where you get paid doing the things that are enjoyable to you, because they're enjoyable?
xtiansimon 10mo ago
> “…regurgitates previous human thinking.” I was thinking about this after watching YouTube short verticals for about 2 hours last night: ~2min clips from different TV series, movies, SNL skits, music insider clips (Robert Trujillo auditions for Metallica, 2003. LOL). My friends and I often relate in regurgitated human sound bites. Which is fine when I’m sitting with friends driving to a concert. Just wasting time. I’m thinking about this time suck, and my continual return/revisiting to my favorite hard topics in philosophy over and over. It’s certainly what we humans do. If I think deeply and critically about something, it’s from the perspective of a foundation I made for myself from reading and writing, or it was initialized by a professor and coursework. Isn’t it all regurgitated thinking all the way down?
- metadope 10mo ago
  > a foundation I made for myself Creative thinking requires an intent to be creative. Yes, it may be a delusion to imagine oneself as creative, one's thoughts to be original, but you have to begin with that idea if you're going to have any chance of actually advancing human knowledge. And the stronger wider higher you build your foundation-- your knowledge and familiarity with the works of humans before your time-- the better your chance of successful creativity, true originality, immortality. Einstein thinks nothing of import without first consuming Newton and Galileo. While standing on their shoulders, he could begin to imagine another perspective, a creative reimaging of our physical universe. I'm fairly sure that for him, like for so many others, it began as a playful, creative thought stream, a What If juxtoposition between what was known and the mystery of unexplored ideas. Your intent to create will make you creative. Entertain yourself and your thoughts, and share when you dare, and maybe we'll know if you're regurgitating or creating. But remember that you're the first judge and gatekeeper, and the first question is always, are you creative?
- arkensaw 10mo ago
  > Isn’t it all regurgitated thinking all the way down? there it is
jagoff 10mo ago
>With no humans thinking, no advances in code will be possible. What? Coding is like the one thing that RL can do without any further human input because there is a testable provable ground truth; run the code.
palmotea 10mo ago
> If AI edges humans out of the business of thinking, then we're all in deep shit Also because we live under capitalism, and you need something people need you to do to be allowed to live. For a century+, "thinking" was the task that was supposed to be left to humans, as physical labor was automated. If "AI edges humans out of the business of thinking" what's left for humans, especially those who still need to work for a living because they don't have massive piles of money.

adlpz 10mo ago

Agreed, conceptually. BUT. For 99% of tasks I'm totally certain there's people out there that are orders of magnitude better at them than me. If the AI can regurgitate their thinking, my output is better. Humans may need to think to advance the state of the art. Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff.

latexr 10mo ago
> For 99% of tasks I'm totally certain there's people out there that are orders of magnitude better at them than me. And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse, and you have no way of forcing it to be the good one every time. > If the AI can regurgitate their thinking, my output is better. But it can’t. Not definitively and consistently, so that hypothetical is about as meaningful as “if I had a magic wand to end world hunger, I’d use it”. > Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff. If you don’t think to do regular things, you won’t be able to think to do advanced things. It’s akin to any muscle; you don’t use it, it atrophies.
- acoard 10mo ago
  > And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse, and you have no way of forcing it to be the good one every time. That's solvable though, whether through changing training data or RL.
- adlpz 10mo ago
  > And LLMs slurped some of those together with the output of thousands of people who’d do the task worse Theoretically fixable, then. > But it can’t. Not definitively and consistently Again, it can't, yet, but with better training data I don't see a fundamental impossibility here. The comparison with any magic wand is, in my opinion, disingenuous. > If you don’t think to do regular things, you won’t be able to think to do advanced things Humans already don't think for a myriad of critical jobs. Once expertise is achieved on a particular task, it becomes mostly mechanical. - Again, I agree with the original comment I was answering to in essence. I do think AI will make us dumber overall, and I sort of wish it was never invented. But it was. And, being realistic, I will try to extract as much positive value from it as possible instead of discounting it wholly.
djaouen 10mo ago
> Humans may not need to think to just... do stuff. God forbid we should ever have to think lol
- alchemism 10mo ago
  Very Zen of you to say
- gedy 10mo ago
  It is concerning how some people really don't want to think about some things, and just "do".
toobulkeh 10mo ago
Imagine if everyone got the opportunity to work on SOTA. What a world we would be. Unfortunately that’s not where we’re headed.
- adlpz 10mo ago
  We've never been there. With AI and robotics there may be the slim chance we get closer to that. But we won't. Not because AI, but because humans, of course.
y0eswddl 10mo ago
Only if you're less intelligent than the average. The problem with LLMs is that they will always fall to the average/mean/median of information. And if the average person is orders of magnitude better than you at thinking, you're right... you should let the AI do it lol
- woopwoop 10mo ago
  Do you think that the average person can get a gold on the IMO?
- adlpz 10mo ago
  Your comment is nonsensical. Have you ever used any LLM? Ask the LLM to... I don't know, to explain to you the chemistry of aluminium oxides. Do you really think the average human will even get remotely close to the knowledge an LLM will return to such a simple question? Ask an LLM to amend a commit. Ask it to initialize a rails project. Have it look at a piece of C code and figure out if there are any off-by-one errors. Then try the same to a few random people on the street. If you think the knowledge stored in the LLM weights for any of these questions is that of the average person I don't even know what to say. You must live in some secluded community of savant polymaths.
  - y0eswddl 10mo ago
    "they will always fall to the average/mean/median of *information."*

spicyusername 10mo ago

If AI edges humans out of the business of thinking This will never happen because the business of thinking is enjoyable and the humans whose thinking matters most will continue to be intrinsically motivated to do it.

immibis 10mo ago
Humans draw, but humans have been edged out of the business of drawing long ago.
palmotea 10mo ago
> This will never happen because the business of thinking is enjoyable and the humans whose thinking matters most will continue to be intrinsically motivated to do it. What world do you live in, where you get paid doing the things that are enjoyable to you, because they're enjoyable?

xtiansimon 10mo ago

> “…regurgitates previous human thinking.” I was thinking about this after watching YouTube short verticals for about 2 hours last night: ~2min clips from different TV series, movies, SNL skits, music insider clips (Robert Trujillo auditions for Metallica, 2003. LOL). My friends and I often relate in regurgitated human sound bites. Which is fine when I’m sitting with friends driving to a concert. Just wasting time. I’m thinking about this time suck, and my continual return/revisiting to my favorite hard topics in philosophy over and over. It’s certainly what we humans do. If I think deeply and critically about something, it’s from the perspective of a foundation I made for myself from reading and writing, or it was initialized by a professor and coursework. Isn’t it all regurgitated thinking all the way down?

metadope 10mo ago
> a foundation I made for myself Creative thinking requires an intent to be creative. Yes, it may be a delusion to imagine oneself as creative, one's thoughts to be original, but you have to begin with that idea if you're going to have any chance of actually advancing human knowledge. And the stronger wider higher you build your foundation-- your knowledge and familiarity with the works of humans before your time-- the better your chance of successful creativity, true originality, immortality. Einstein thinks nothing of import without first consuming Newton and Galileo. While standing on their shoulders, he could begin to imagine another perspective, a creative reimaging of our physical universe. I'm fairly sure that for him, like for so many others, it began as a playful, creative thought stream, a What If juxtoposition between what was known and the mystery of unexplored ideas. Your intent to create will make you creative. Entertain yourself and your thoughts, and share when you dare, and maybe we'll know if you're regurgitating or creating. But remember that you're the first judge and gatekeeper, and the first question is always, are you creative?
arkensaw 10mo ago
> Isn’t it all regurgitated thinking all the way down? there it is

jagoff 10mo ago

>With no humans thinking, no advances in code will be possible. What? Coding is like the one thing that RL can do without any further human input because there is a testable provable ground truth; run the code.

palmotea 10mo ago

> If AI edges humans out of the business of thinking, then we're all in deep shit Also because we live under capitalism, and you need something people need you to do to be allowed to live. For a century+, "thinking" was the task that was supposed to be left to humans, as physical labor was automated. If "AI edges humans out of the business of thinking" what's left for humans, especially those who still need to work for a living because they don't have massive piles of money.