4 ms·
AI will be a super-tutor for the curious and a tool to outsource all thinking for the incurious.
by xnx 11mo ago
AI will be a super-tutor for the curious and a tool to outsource all thinking for the incurious.
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo ago[flagged]
- armchairhacker 11mo agoWe need some curious people. Otherwise nothing gets discovered, including solutions to future problems.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agoCuriosity as your only trait makes you jobless. Curiosity enough to learn something new can help you remain employed.
- fn-mote 11mo ago> The job doesn't pay you to be curious. YOUR job doesn’t pay you to be curious. Well, you could say mine doesn’t either, literally, but the only reason I am in this role, and the driving force behind my major accomplishments in the last 10 years, has been my curiosity. It led me to do things nobody in my area had the (ability|foolishness) to do, and then it led me to develop enough improvements that things work really well now.
- wrs 11mo agoI mean, think of all the people getting paid eight-digit compensation right now because they were curious about this dead-end deep learning stuff 15 years ago for no good reason!
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoI couldn't resist... Like the kid at facebook who's buddies with Altman so gets to be a billionare? Like Altman himself (when did he enter the field again? Oh yea he was a crypto huckster). Like everyone I've ever met in the machine learning department? 95% of the people in that field are just following trends and good at winning that game. Call it sour grapes, but I'm just observing reality here. And everyone who thinks following fads = being curious is just doing the larp I described earlier. Moreover, everyone who thinks following fads keeps them safe from AI is deluding themselves. The AI of 2026 can do it better than you can.
- spwa4 11mo agoDidn't Sam Altman write a "friend locator" app that sold for millions after (angrily) refusing to disclose how many users it had? Then it was summarily shut down after acquisition ... and turned out to have never had more than 500 DAU (though appreantly more registrations) "Loopt"
- satvikpendem 11mo ago> 95% of the people in that field are just following trends and good at winning that game. That's the curiosity the parent was talking about. Like it or not, that's what got them to millions.
- satisfice 11mo agoSpeak for yourself. Maybe get a job that involves intellectual achievement. Then you’ll discover the importance of curiosity. You are technically correct that no one is directly paid to be curious. But it is also true that no one is directly paid to sleep. Nevertheless, if you don’t sleep when you are away from work, your mind will not function when you ARE at work. Curiosity is an evolutionary adaptation that enables the discovery of heretofore unknown resources.
- aeon_ai 11mo agoAmen.
- turtletontine 11mo agoI don’t necessarily think you’re wrong, but I’m skeptical that the curious will really meaningfully learn from LLMs. There’s a huge gap between reading something and thinking “gee that’s interesting, I’m glad I know that now,” and really doing the work and deeply understanding things. This is part of what good teaching is about! The most brilliant engaged students will watch a lecture and think “wow nice I understand it now!” and as soon as they try to do the homework they realize there’s all kinds of subtleties they didn’t consider. That’s why pedagogical well crafted assignments are so important, they force students to really learn and guide them along the way. But of course, all this is difficult and time consuming, while having a “conversation” with a language model is quick and easy. It will even write you flowery compliments about how smart you are every time you ask a follow up question!
- tnias23 11mo agoI find LLMs useful for quickly building mental models for unfamiliar topics. This means that instead of beating my head against the wall trying to figure out the mental model, I can beat my head against the wall trying to do next steps, like learning the lower level details or the higher level implications. Whatever is lost not having to struggle through figuring out the mental model is easily outweighed by being able to spend that time applying myself elsewhere.
- wrs 11mo agoI have some success by trying to explain something to an LLM, having it correct me with its own explanation that isn’t quite right either, correcting it with a revised explanation, round and round until I think I get it. Sort of the Feynman method but with an LLM rubber duck.
- nineteen999 11mo agoI mean, its totally possible to be curious about some things and less curious about others. There's few things more annoying than a human that thinks it has the most accurate and up-to-date AI-level knowledge about everything.
- AlexandrB 11mo agoThis is assuming the current AI business model (losing lots of money). As with the internet as a whole, AI companies will probably be incentivized to waste your time and increase "engagement" as they seek revenue. At that point, AI will only be a good tutor if you're extremely diligent at avoiding the engagement bait.
- agumonkey 11mo agoyes and it will mostly depends on the culture / economy. if you create incentives for kids to explore ideas through LLMs they'll become very knowledgeable (and maybe somehow confident). otherwise it will be the tiktok of cognition. 10 bucks there will be a law to enforce exponential backoff so that you need to get good after a few questions before the LLMs delays things by an hour