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The average person has no idea this is true. And the average person cannot tell when this is the case. So we have a bunch of people, going their way through sch

The average person has no idea this is true. And the average person cannot tell when this is the case. So we have a bunch of people, going their way through school, and then when they get stuck relying on AI. The future is gonna be wild.

lordleft 6mo ago
Yep. And it doesn't help that the people selling AI products act as if they're going to build God. Going, "well AI can't do that" isn't going to fly when you are lax about communicating its limitations!
- 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  It also doesn't help when the messaging is linked to how "there will be no jobs where you use your brain anymore everything will be automated". What motivation does the average 16 year old have to try hard and learn anything beyond what they immediately need. No jobs, ai Jesus is coming, and if you use ai it will use all of the worlds compute power to try to convince you it's correct even when it's not.
engineer_22 6mo ago
I am asking a lot here, but school needs to be training people what AI is and what it's weaknesses are and how to use it... My school taught me to use a calculator. It also taught me how to check my work when I relied on the calculator. AI is a very complicated calculator - you give it an input, magic happens, it gives you an output. Really no different, to a layman.
- jaccola 6mo ago
  To be fair, this should probably be covered by basic physics/maybe cooking classes. “You can’t determine the calories in food by looking at it” isn’t really ML specific.
  - 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
    Won't help much if kids are ai'ing their way through physics then ten years later need to go on a diet having not applied the knowledge possibly ever or exercised their critical thinking skills
    - engineer_22 6mo ago
      Yes, the documentary movie 'Idiocracy' comes to mind
- 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  It's more complicated than a calculator. Even researchers who have dedicated their lives to the field don't know all of the limitations of any given model. That fact alone isn't helpful when a model is 80% correct in one area but 2% in another.
  - pirates 6mo ago
    If even experts in the field don’t know all of the limitations then it’s even more important to stress that relying on the output of an LLM is a poor choice without additional checking and verification. Even with calculators, I was taught that you should double check by hand sometimes to make sure you got it right.
  - engineer_22 6mo ago
    Yes OP is making a similar point, limitations need to be better communicated.
- garciasn 6mo ago
  Considering the lack of basic math skills I encounter each and every day, I don't think schools did enough; they certainly aren't going to do enough w/LLMs.
  - Ekaros 6mo ago
    Knowing the lack of understanding of basic chemistry and physics like fundamental thermodynamics... I have little hope any population can be trained to understand LLMs sufficiently...
    - engineer_22 6mo ago
      My HVAC guy doesn't understand thermodynamics, he can't even spell it. He's just trained to follow a flow chart. LLM will be the same.
renticulous 6mo ago
Here's technical literacy of population on display. I love these prank examples which show the true education of populace. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7c9qJcRnVk https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7c9qJcRnVk
- fcarraldo 6mo ago
  True education? What idiot would say yes to this? Even if you _know_ the debit card transaction is safe, there’s no reason to risk it when a weirdo is filming you with some wild contraption.
- rcxdude 6mo ago
  Anything like this is going to have a very heavy selection bias, don't take any of this kind of content as a reflection of the average person.
- WarmWash 6mo ago
  Many of of witnessed the technical literacy of the general population when we ran to show them ChatGPT 3.5, and they just kind of shrugged like "So? What are you showing me?"
- dredmorbius 6mo ago
  A more robust measurement might be the (former) US Department of Education's "Adult Literacy in the United States" survey, most recently conducted in 2019. The results of this are sobering enough: <https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp>. There's a related study of adult technical literacy conducted in 33 OECD nations: <https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...>. Both show that only a small fraction (5--10%) of adults operate at high levels of literacy (whether of text, numeracy, or technology), and that a large fraction (roughly 50%) operate at a minimal or below-minimal rate.
lesuorac 6mo ago
If you're looking for a citation about this, the 1999 Dunning-Kurger paper "Unskilled and unaware" [1] is about this. People who are unskilled at a task are unaware of what that task performed correctly is. So, somebody who can't count calories is unable to tell that the AI can't perform the task correctly either. [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10626367/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10626367/
- hombre_fatal 6mo ago
  Fwiw invoking Dunning-Kruger is beyond trite at this point. Which is a good thing because it means we can talk like normal humans ("people don't know that it's unreliable") instead of acting like we're making such a profound claim that it needs a citation and psychological dissection.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

lordleft 6mo ago

Yep. And it doesn't help that the people selling AI products act as if they're going to build God. Going, "well AI can't do that" isn't going to fly when you are lax about communicating its limitations!

2ndorderthought 6mo ago
It also doesn't help when the messaging is linked to how "there will be no jobs where you use your brain anymore everything will be automated". What motivation does the average 16 year old have to try hard and learn anything beyond what they immediately need. No jobs, ai Jesus is coming, and if you use ai it will use all of the worlds compute power to try to convince you it's correct even when it's not.

engineer_22 6mo ago

I am asking a lot here, but school needs to be training people what AI is and what it's weaknesses are and how to use it... My school taught me to use a calculator. It also taught me how to check my work when I relied on the calculator. AI is a very complicated calculator - you give it an input, magic happens, it gives you an output. Really no different, to a layman.

jaccola 6mo ago
To be fair, this should probably be covered by basic physics/maybe cooking classes. “You can’t determine the calories in food by looking at it” isn’t really ML specific.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  Won't help much if kids are ai'ing their way through physics then ten years later need to go on a diet having not applied the knowledge possibly ever or exercised their critical thinking skills
  - engineer_22 6mo ago
    Yes, the documentary movie 'Idiocracy' comes to mind
2ndorderthought 6mo ago
It's more complicated than a calculator. Even researchers who have dedicated their lives to the field don't know all of the limitations of any given model. That fact alone isn't helpful when a model is 80% correct in one area but 2% in another.
- pirates 6mo ago
  If even experts in the field don’t know all of the limitations then it’s even more important to stress that relying on the output of an LLM is a poor choice without additional checking and verification. Even with calculators, I was taught that you should double check by hand sometimes to make sure you got it right.
- engineer_22 6mo ago
  Yes OP is making a similar point, limitations need to be better communicated.
garciasn 6mo ago
Considering the lack of basic math skills I encounter each and every day, I don't think schools did enough; they certainly aren't going to do enough w/LLMs.
- Ekaros 6mo ago
  Knowing the lack of understanding of basic chemistry and physics like fundamental thermodynamics... I have little hope any population can be trained to understand LLMs sufficiently...
  - engineer_22 6mo ago
    My HVAC guy doesn't understand thermodynamics, he can't even spell it. He's just trained to follow a flow chart. LLM will be the same.

renticulous 6mo ago

Here's technical literacy of population on display. I love these prank examples which show the true education of populace. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7c9qJcRnVk https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7c9qJcRnVk

fcarraldo 6mo ago
True education? What idiot would say yes to this? Even if you _know_ the debit card transaction is safe, there’s no reason to risk it when a weirdo is filming you with some wild contraption.
rcxdude 6mo ago
Anything like this is going to have a very heavy selection bias, don't take any of this kind of content as a reflection of the average person.
WarmWash 6mo ago
Many of of witnessed the technical literacy of the general population when we ran to show them ChatGPT 3.5, and they just kind of shrugged like "So? What are you showing me?"
dredmorbius 6mo ago
A more robust measurement might be the (former) US Department of Education's "Adult Literacy in the United States" survey, most recently conducted in 2019. The results of this are sobering enough: <https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp>. There's a related study of adult technical literacy conducted in 33 OECD nations: <https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_978926...>. Both show that only a small fraction (5--10%) of adults operate at high levels of literacy (whether of text, numeracy, or technology), and that a large fraction (roughly 50%) operate at a minimal or below-minimal rate.

lesuorac 6mo ago

If you're looking for a citation about this, the 1999 Dunning-Kurger paper "Unskilled and unaware" [1] is about this. People who are unskilled at a task are unaware of what that task performed correctly is. So, somebody who can't count calories is unable to tell that the AI can't perform the task correctly either. [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10626367/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10626367/

hombre_fatal 6mo ago
Fwiw invoking Dunning-Kruger is beyond trite at this point. Which is a good thing because it means we can talk like normal humans ("people don't know that it's unreliable") instead of acting like we're making such a profound claim that it needs a citation and psychological dissection.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]