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- Hacker News
- LLMs are both a blessing and a curse, they magnificent tools for those who know how to employ them , but a crutch for those who rely on them.by Suhinnall27
- And a scourge for those against whom these bots are deployed.by chrisjj
- And like a cult to those of us preferring not to engage, for whatever reason, with everyone and their dog telling us that we should (and sometimes getting quite offended, like our refusal to play that game is a personal attack on them for choosing to).by dspillett
- On your latter point, it's the education sector that I truly fear for.by trainingonme
- I have the $8/month ChatGPT 'GO' plan. I generally use it in the traditional 'text query'/'text response' type format, but yesterday I was driving back on the freeway from another state and decided to use the Android app's voice feature and was kind of shocked. I had to look up this morning what I was using (the latest 'Live 1 Instant' mode) but it's surprisingly natural. It's convivial, and responsive in the manner of an interested, enthusiastic sparing partner who never gets offended, in pretty much whatever wild thing you want to discuss, from a moment to moment basis if that's what you want. It's eerie in the way that you can interrupt it and re-point the direction of the discussion, and it just instantly jumps on-board.
re: 'but a crutch for those who rely on them.' - I was telling a friend about yesterday's experience this morning and was saying that I could easily see populations of people who might become overly reliant on (or completely subsumed by) these new classes of tools being released. They are compelling in a way that they weren't 18 months ago.
by bayouborne - IIRC Nietzsche's writing style changed because of the advent of typewriters. He didn't need his pen and so wrote more freely (at the apeed of thought).
I think the general concepts are cognitive offloading and second order consequences; changes in human behavior due to the technology. Or just: use it or lose it.
And maybe Jevons Paradox is relevant? E.g., when compact fluorescent light bulbs were introduced people got cheaper lights so people installed more sich that a net energy consumption was increased per person. But then applied to LLMs: generating text/information becomes increasingly easier and instead of less text we produce more and thus more llms are used to consume that information overload to summarize, making us spend more time on text.
- > He didn't need his pen and so wrote more freely (at the apeed of thought).
Probably surprising for some, but it's possible (and pretty usual) to write at the speed of thought with a pen.
by zx8080 - > The viral analogy does not imply that LLM-human interactions are intrinsically parasitic.
The analogy doesn't, but LLMs are trained on text, or content, generated by humans, with the aim of their output being acceptable to human interlocutors. That's one parasitic aspect. A second one is the nature and behavior of the organizational entities providing and promoting the popular LLM services: Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic etc - their influence on the economy, e.g. in energy and water use and the drawing of capital/human efforts - also has a somewhat parasitic aspect.
by einpoklum - > with the aim of their output being acceptable to human interlocutors.
The more I use LLMs I find that their output drifts toward being acceptable to other LLMs. I find myself quite often telling the model: "this is not human readable.". Especially Opus and Fable write in such a way that it is difficult to follow. The often put sentences out of context, the context itself is fragmented. Often start with what you would think is end of a story so when you start reading you are like wtf it is about.
If think the issue might be that LLMs read text all at once whereas humans are somewhat linear. So when LLM puts out text it understands, to human it is close to random gibberish that looks like English.
by varispeed - I just don't see that the main thrust of their argument, (oversimplified) "humans will become so dependent on AI, they'll become dumb," holds any water. I mean even from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence is (by far) our most valuable competitive advantage. Arguing that "cognitive offloading" (their term) will have runaway effects is reaching to say the least.
It's like saying that moving from manual-labor-intensive agrarian societies to industrial ones will make us weak and meek. In fact, it's had the opposite effect: humans, on average, are healthier and live longer than ever in human history.
by dvt - > humans, on average, are healthier and live longer than ever in human history.
Kinda. We also have incredible rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.
While I do mostly buy that the mind and the body are connected, I don't think being able to bench press 250lbs is a necessary, fundamentally human capability. I do think being able to think is. Literally Rene Descartes cogito ergo sum. If we lose cognition, executive function, analysis, skepticism, etc., I don't think we're human anymore.
by camgunz - Haven't read the article but I think in some limited timeframes it's true. I'm already turning over a lot of my thinking to LLMs. Not so much of a problem if I own the LLM but when big tech can just turn off the tap when they want or skew the results it seems a bit dangerous. It's possibly less dangerous for me, being old already, but seems quite risky for younger folk.by 01100011
- I think there's aspects of this viewpoint that are true. I'm sure I'm less skilled at programming now in some ways than when I started using LLMs, but I'm a lot more productive and I can work on a broader variety of software than I could before. Writing probably weakened people's auditory memory, and calculators probably reduced people's mental math skills, but I don't think either are a net negative. It just requires some adjustment to get used to the new way things are. I also think my programming skills would come back pretty quick if I started programming without LLMs again, just as my leetcode skills come back pretty quick when I prepare for interviews.
- I feel like LLMs have been nothing but a boon for me. I have learned so much programming from them. I have over a decade of experience, but honestly, I have always been a below-average programmer. Good enough for boring CRUD work, but not much more. Forget Leetcode, I'd probably get murdered on the easy questions.
So, if anything, I feel like my learning pace has been greatly accelerated. Your point about working on a broader variety of software is really true for me too. I am working on a game that I likely would have never even started had it not been for LLMs. Mind you, I am still doing the vast majority by hand. However, LLMs have been great for little tutorials, setting out a good game plan, etc. It's like having my own little private tutor.
I know enough to not let the LLMs do everything for me. If they do, then I know I will fall into the trap of something breaking, and then I lack the understanding to fix it. I think they should be used to make life easier, but not easy.
by hirvi74 - Not sure why this is interesting; it seems like anything that becomes "popular" could be cast as a "virus", including things like "having a fridge". Why does this give particular insight?by Upvoter33
- "We invented a new term to express how much we dislike LLMs! Look at us, we certainly deserve your attention!."by raincole
- Smart fridges are a pathological virus, yes /jkby E-Reverance
- Leads me to think of a related topic, the Cost of Cognitive Debt. I think it is about time that we start to quantify what it means that we no longer grasp major parts of our systems and infrastructure. Once we quantify it, we can start to reason about how to address it.
I explored this concept in this post:
https://ljtn.github.io/epiq/blog/cost-of-cognitive-debt.html
by ionetan - The wording alone is just so Idiocracy.
What our descendants will think when they look back on this time period.
They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living, they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others.
They wondered whether or not a word calculator was the antichrist. They assembled in the highest courts of the day and involved the most brilliant minds to discuss whether or not linear algebra will bring about Armageddon.
They shunned any creative or productive endeavor which dared to automate tedium or build on the works of the public domain (lowercase)…
for any such indulgence had become a great sin in Eden, a forbidden fruit that must never be obtained by the Adam, so that he may not become as we are!
by SoStupid - > They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living,
There are still people working on medicine, social issues, biology and so on and so forth. People are trying to do these, despite concerted efforts from the ai companies and from the right wings ideologues trying to stop them.
> they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others.
Then again, people who claimed to be connecting world intentionally harmed real people and even made themselves complicit in genocide. Yes, I am talking about Facebook. And the ones framing themselves as wanna by exploratory are sociopath billionaires who don't care about damage to real people they cause, even glee it it.
> They assembled in the highest courts of the day and involved the most brilliant minds to discuss whether or not linear algebra will bring about Armageddon.
Citation needed. Most brilliant minds do not discuss that. Minds drunk on hype do.
> They shunned any creative or productive endeavor which dared to automate tedium or build on the works of the public domain (lowercase)
Again, I do not know what you are talking about here. We have both visual artists and musical artists. People create and share their creations. Again, despite ai-boosters trying to demotivate them and convince them it is pointless, people are still creative.
by watwut - > They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living
The latter is a matter of policy and AI is not needed for that.
I hate this framing. Nickname checks out.
by wolvesechoes - I sort of agree with you... The trouble is your logic is trivially obviously nonsense.
"Word calculator", "linear algebra"... This is just a variation on it's just a stochastic parrot / it's just a next token predictor.
The implication is that because it is "just" this simple-sounding thing, it can't be a complex thing! Except we know empirically that that doesn't hold. What are humans if not "just" next action predictors, "just" a collection of simple atoms, "just" electrical impulses? Yet clearly we are more than the sum of our parts. There no reason to believe dirty water can be more than the sum of its parts but weird sand can't.
by IshKebab - > They weren’t trying to solve aging or bring everyone to the highest standard of living, they didn’t care to connect the world, explore it, and find others.
What are you talking about? Those are absolutely issues that are being worked on right here, right now. This framing is obviously false.
by dented42 - If any alien is picking up the text we are generating they must conclude that people in 2026 spend most of their time at the library reading philosophy and having these salons of enlightened reasoned debate if they are so worried about the atrophy of their thinking by LLMs. They don't send electronic communication at the salons or library and are really concerned when they get out with the loss of the culture and thinking they currently have. That is how they are explaining the hysteria they see in the text.
They certainly would never guess that the text is being generated by people who mostly spend their time sending and receiving text/video of unthinking, brain rotting, bullshit all day and night.
by satrerer - > whether or not linear algebra will bring about Armageddon
Shockingly little linear algebra is required to manufacture the weapons that will probably bring about Armageddon. We've had them for damn near a century. It would be hilarious if these latest games with linear algebra were the impetus to make us actually use them at scale.
by 27183 - >whether or not linear algebra will bring about Armageddon.
It's important to make sure it in fact doesn't, otherwise there is nobody to throw a shade on our time capsule having the benefit of hindsight
by Muromec - Simon Wardley:
> “GPTs are a non kinetic form of warfare designed to embed the values of a small number of people into much wider communities by capturing the process of decision making. The delivery mechanism is the appearance of helpfulness i.e. coherent and authoritative arguments. The payload is helplessness and the creation of a new theocracy.”
by beaker52 - Interesting that he has this view.
I would have taken him for mostly pro LLM.
by k__ - I didn’t realize until now that the “me, an intellectual:” meme format was parodying something that some people did earnestly.by j4yav
- Speaking as someone raised in an evangelical household and indoctrinated into thinking the world is only thousands of years old, this tracks. The most technologically advanced version of Chick tracts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_tract) to date.by thirdtruck