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Maybe if we keep the AI but loss the Oligarchy...
We would still have to deal with the skill atrophy of AI use.
Even if AI is entirely green, publicly owned and widely accessible, it will negatively affect us.
Did calculators or abacuses do the same thing? This argument has no merit.
Tools allow you to do you work better and be able to focus on doing other parts better. It’s not like people can’t do basic math, yet people want to say AI means we will go back to banging rocks? Yeah that makes sense…
Scroll the comments, we've had this exact argument.
People literally do struggle with basic maths also
Yes? Of course some people are gonna struggle with stuff. Some people are illiterate as well, and have had zero access to technology. What do you think that supports or proves? There’s also people who have every limited mental functions, through no fault of their own.
Skill atrophy is an issue with nearly every technology though. Unless you want to go back to knapping your own hand axes and starting fires with sticks you will be dependent on some technology to cover the skills you don't have.
There's a fairly hard limit in the kind of paywall that can be put in front of lighters, axes and pencils.
Not all technology is bad, not all exchanges are detrimental.
People keep doing this - arguing that if you're against AI you must not want to use any technology.
There's a hard limit on the kind of paywall you can put on LLMs as well. Open source models exist and companies / people are increasingly turning to them instead of shelling out millions to the frontier labs. Even the frontier models are becoming increasingly commoditized as it's relatively easy to swap out which model a given application is using. If anthropic starts charging exorbitant rates per token you can switch to a gpt or Gemini model relatively easily.
Because that's what happens if you take this argument and apply it to almost any other technology. If you are truly worried about skill atrophy you shouldn't use calculators to preserve your math skills, you shouldn't use gps to keep navigation skills, you shouldn't use the Internet for research to keep library skills, and there were people at the time when these were introduced making those exact arguments that we now regard as irrelevant. Why this time the argument will be relevant has not been shown to me.
all the previous examples of technology improving has a greater benefit to offset the detriment.
Books, for example, did decrease our skill to just retain information; however, the benefit of sharing, storing, and propagating information long after you're gone has proven WAY more useful.
a GPS might have decreased your skill in navigation (although reading abstractised maps of where you are is a trade-off), but it allowed for improvements in travel, a harder time getting lost, enabling rescue operations etc.
genAI so far does have it's uses in fields like medicine, chemistry, any domain where generating by hand is unfeasible. But for the general population, it has been proven to impact cognitive skills, it eroded trust across the board:
For all of this to be offset, there'd need to be a phenomenal benefit to come out of genAI the way it's used today. I don't think the advent of books, libraries, calculators and GPS have had a combined net loss for everyone, more than AI has.
And for the record, I do believe AI is an useful technology. But that remaining usefulness will only show itself from the shockwave, after the bubble bursts.
Some fair points, I agree AI definitely has its harms, I was just arguing against the skill atrophy argument that I see some people arguing for without examining the many other skills they have atrophied.
You don't have to do this, you choose to do this because you think art produced with AI is inherently bad / souless etc. An analogy for this could be drum machines, in most modern music it is very hard to tell whether music is using an actual drummer vs a looped drum sample. This takes away jobs from actual drummers and devalues the skill they worked hard to perfect, and it could be argued that it takes away the soul of the beat.
You could live your life trying to listen only to music that uses an actual drummer and constantly analyze and look for cues in the music to let you know if it's an actual drummer. Or you could just enjoy the art for what it is and move on, the only thing stopping you from enjoying it is your own objections to the production method. It's fine to have those objections, but you can't say that everyone else has to have the same standard as that's just taking away the enjoyment of others.
Why would you take that argument and apply it elsewhere? Not every argument applies to every single thing.
Again, rather than just "maybe we should hold onto the skills we have", the AI brain solution is "let's just build our own infrastructure for doing the thinking for us".
Ask Immanuel Kant . If you inconsistently apply an argument then that is a sign of hypocriticality, ie. Lack of criticality. The hypocrite inconsistently applies criticisms to support an already held belief that is independent of that argument.
For example if I said immigration should be banned but carved out an exception for European countries, then that means I don't actually believe that immigration should be banned, it probably means I don't like brown people and am using this argument in bad faith to justify that belief.
The sign of a good argument is consistency, and any inconsistent application of it requires an explanation.
If calculators, gps, and the internet are exceptions to the rule of avoiding skill atrophy, explain why. Otherwise you are being a hypocrite.
I love the appropriate application of Kant!
But I think the point about bad faith misses the mark. For one to conduct themselves or argue for a position in bad faith (even against only themselves), they must first hold a true, hidden belief. I don't think that's typically the case here.
You could argue that there is a hidden belief and that it is something like "AI is bad" or "I don't like AI." However, the people arguing this position are often quick to point out themselves that AI has legitimate value, even if they then go on to narrowly define the character and application of that value.
I would argue instead that what is actually being hidden here isn't a belief, but is instead a sentiment something like, "I'm scared." Which, while being completely understandable, is an emotive state or pseudo-belief, not a truly-held but hidden belief. Because of that, they (in the general sense) aren't calculating hypocrites; they're are just panicking.
Although, I prefer the admittedly archaic flatus vocis for describing this particular brand of cognitive dissonance because it translates basically to "mouth farts," and that makes me chuckle.
Maybe the pace of development would've been slower, giving us more time to react to it. Or it wouldn't get shoved down our throats every second, or it'd be renoved from the places it's more harmful, if making money wasn't the only concern
I don't think you need to worry about skill atrophy if you recognize the skills as necessary and useful.
We still teach basic arithmetic in elementary school, even though we have calculators.
Tools to rapidly parse, sort, aggregate, and distribute information aren't going to affect us any more negatively today than they did 40 years ago or 400 years ago.
A large question is if the "skill atrophy" is more than just having to lean on AI and if it contributes to broader mental decline over time. Years down the line we might have a huge bump in dementia. People aren't using it to manage information that was merely beyond their reach like tools to date, they are offloading writing communication. Saw someone proudly proclaim the use LLMs to write all their comments in online discussions, which seems absurd.
I will say that at least some folks I know personally that went all in on conversational AI use now seem... Off compared to before when talking to them face to face.
How is that any different than the million bot farms that already exist?
Like, shit posting isn't a critical value added skill.
Note that the discussions were at least intended to be an earnest debate. However, since one was using LLM he was skipping the critical thought portion and just trying to use an LLM to fake engagement but to try to just re-emphasize their perspective.
While flooding the field with bullshit low quality content isn't new, this is a whole new level of disengagement.
This presupposes sincere engagement prior to LLMs. You're assuming this guy wasn't just regurgitating talking points cobbled up the old fashioned was, as though repeating lines you heard from Jordan Peterson or JD Vance on a Joe Rogan podcast.
Alternatively, that this person remains totally sincerely in their beliefs and simply leverage the LLM to recall obscure, vaguely remembered historical details. Or to clean up their poor grammar or clumsy prose.
LLMs have no impact on critical thinking in either case. At least, no more than spell check or a Wikipedia fact lookup or a brain saturated by other people's professed views.
The argument that someone is "using LLMs" becomes a superficial excuse to disengage.
And hey, maybe that's good. Maybe less people treating the Internet as a real place with sincere people will convince folks to engage more in MeatSpace.
But "technology is making us dumber" is a line I see floated endlessly. It reads more as misanthropy and elitism than any real critique of the new technology
We’re going to end up with civil engineers who don’t know how to calculate dynamic weight ratings, because they used Claude to get through their physics classes.
Skill atrophy is absolutely a concern, even if we continue teaching the fundamentals. Because without that higher level knowledge, there is nobody to check for hallucinations.
The desktop calculator is an amazing tool for people who do a lot of math, but those people still know how to do the math. AI is fundamentally changing that, because it is directing users on how to do the work, not simply taking in
{a}+{b}and returning{c}. It is a user going “hey chatbot how do I find the difference between {a} and {b}?” Then the AI confidently (and incorrectly) goes “Oh all we need to do is{a}+{b}to give us the result{c}.” But if the user already doesn’t know how to find a difference, they won’t notice that the AI is incorrect.And that is obviously a small example, but apply it to larger problems like calculating thermal expansion requirements for a suspended walkway. Calculating maximum wattage ratings for a circuit. Calculating maximum weight ratings for a highway overpass or bridge. Calculating medicine dosage based on a patient’s body weight and an interactive drug.
Any one of these could lead to disaster if done incorrectly. And the issue with AI is that it will happily hold your hand through the entire process, while confidently being incorrect the whole time.
We teach arithmetic, but are people better or worse at it than before calculators were widely available?
I'm not sure what you mean by "if you recognise the skill as necessary or useful" - but taking a leap, I don't see how that matters.
If I allow a machine to code for me, and don't regularly use my own skills, when that machine becomes financially inaccessible, or just breaks down, it doesn't matter how important I think the skill is - I've given it away.
No question the average person is worse at arithmetic since the invention of the calculators. But we probably wouldn't have our current standard of living if we hadn't invented the calculator either. And calculators wre so ubiquitous and basic...
So... On balance it was a net benefit. On the other hand AI affects more than a single skill. Will the QoL improvements outweigh the negative behavioural effects? I think the jury is still out on that one.
What if AI was only used for skill building?
what if twinkies were only used for critical nutrition? then they would be healthy!
It has potential, though I wonder if that's genuinely better than studying the old fashioned way.
It can definitely feel more dynamic, I'm not convinced the outcomes are provably better.
I imagine something like a tutor. You have an interactive system for 1 on 1 attention that teachers and parents can't always provide.
Nothing I've seen is nearly ready for this, but at the same time, its not completely useless.
This seems like a particularly expensive and resource hungry solution when we could just train more teachers and tutors.
and create better educational resources
Exactly! Like individualized and infinitely patient always available personal tutors. Oh, wait...
What is even the benefit