Discussion
Serious question: If you willingly use generative "AI", do you believe you're immune to or sufficiently protected from de-skilling, cognitive decline, and what's commonly known as "AI psychosis"?
If yes: What makes you believe that? How are you special?
If no: Why do you still use it, given that you're aware of the risks to your cognition? Do you just accept it?
@pandora_parrot hence the "willingly" in my post
@aesthr yeah. I forgot to mention that I’m specifically referring to my software work outside of my job. That’s closer to “willingly,” but in part I use my personal projects to build experience with this stuff so I can work more effectively, so it’s borderline.
@aesthr
I hadn’t really thought about it before. I’ll admit that I delegate quite a few things and have been using AI daily for about four years. But, thinking it over, I realized that this fits what I want: I like orchestrating the process, and there are some things I’m simply not interested in learning how to make. I’m happy with the final result.
@willianf are you not concerned about your very thinking becoming dependent on a service you have to pay for?
@aesthr my answer is "no" to all.
But I'm an unwilling user, working for cultists
@aesthr I have a disability that prevents me from doing heavy research. I will *occasionally* use an LLM to get a gist of something whose understanding is not critical and would be dangerous for me to reach on my own. (Once a week, max) E.G. I recently asked ChatGPT why asbestos is dangerous but fiberglass and carbon fiber are less so. I don't work with any of them, it was just a nagging curiosity.
As for skill loss.... You shouldn't be using it in areas where your skills matter.
@aesthr I think nobody is immune, and I'd be more worried about someone who says they are.
tl;dr to why: I still use it because it's fun, I get things done, and the trade-off is worth it for me personally. Same reasons I eat meat or do similar things: I like it.
I use it for fun of it and because I run a company and have far more to do than there are hours in a day. I've always automated everything I can, and this is the most powerful automation I've ever had. It also lets me try things I would never have had time for otherwise.
I still do all my writing and music myself and probably won't ever automate either. Automating art (I count writing as art) just feels wrong. For UI design, I draw on inspiration but do the design myself. This is a contradiction, and I get that too.
I keep my skills sharp by spending my time where I'm needed most: selling, specs, architecture, leading, the big picture, and running the business. I hand off the hands-on coding to my employees anyway. And AI. I'm rustier at it than I used to be, and I accepted that even before AI.
I've been doing this for almost 30 years. That foundation doesn't disappear overnight. In fact, I use AI to learn new things. It's debatable, but for me, it often works better than reading the manual. I don't read every node_modules package either.
I'm a bit bummed that the discussion in the fediverse leans too far toward one extreme (AI: the worst), while LinkedIn leans too far toward the other (AI: the best).
@aesthr Lol, someone actually reported this post as "disgusting". Well... 
Just noting here that if answering a question leads to any more hate, I'll delete the post later...
If we learned anything from the ongoing COVID pandemic, it's that people are singularly incapable of assessing risk, and extremely skilled at rationalizing and minimizing injury post-hoc.
@aesthr In the months when I started using LLMs on the daily I went through periods of psychosis where things felt one or more of the following: (a) what I'm doing is meaningless, (b) high's like you can approach any problem and solve it quickly (reality check, of course you can't, bit this is what power or empowerment feels like, (c) depression like perhaps I'm not really that good or good enough anymore, (d) elevated anxiety due to constant context switching.
I am concerned about what you mention, and I do wonder how best it should be approached without losing the the technology. One thing I'm exploring is developing and learning more problem solving thinking tools, but right now I'm more focussed on the tool than using it, so that's a bit of a moot point right noe, but perhaps not in the future when I start using it.
I think we will remain able to construct challenges in the small that translate to changes in the large, like if you play with lego blocks it might translate to other things in life. I expect a lot more higher level programming languages to be developed if we care about understanding. And I'm quite sure that many folks still want to understand things, I know I still do despite it being hard and not always possible. I'm humbled by the issues and bugs I've created that an LLM picked up and pointed out. I believe there are enough folks out there that still want understanding.
@aesthr The number of people who seem otherwise sensible who are saying “I was talking about this with Chat GPT and it said…” blows my mind. They are using it as a sounding board on personal issues or to ask if there’s scientific literature to support something they were thinking about. 🤦🏻♀️
It’s like those creepy toys in the 80’s and 90’s (maybe they’re still around) that you could push a button or speak a phrase and it would tell you that it loves you. But these are *adults*. 🙃
@aesthr I try to avoid deskilling by not using AI to generate anything that I actually end up using as-is. Meaning:
1) I mostly use it to review/search things that I then analyse myself
2) In the rare cases I do ask it for some reference code (e.g. something I don't want to necessarily be proficient in but need to use that one time, etc) I always re-type and reorganize the code myself and search the documentation of every construct used that I'm not familiar with to see if it fits, and learn
@aesthr yes, because I think those risks are overstated. 🙂
I organically time-limit my use and have reconfigured the personality because I don't want to be friends with a chat bot, for the same reason I don't want to be friends with my electric tea kettle. My smart home assistant is called "Computer" for similar reasons.
As for atrophying skills, I feel that's like saying that using a microwave for a few meals a week means that I'll forget how to cook. My lived reality is that I don't need to cook a roast dinner every day to remember how to cook a roast dinner. 🤔
Finally re: cognitive decline, I guess that depends on what people do with the time they're saving over a sustained period of time. Some people will use it to improve their mind and body. Others will indulge in vices and pleasures of the flesh. Whatever they were doing before AI is what they'll probably continue doing unless they decide otherwise. 🤷🏻♂️
> because I think those risks are overstated
these effects are pretty well studied by now. You might be seriously underestimating the risk there
@aesthr possibly. I tend to be sceptical about people taking hard-line positions for or against AI because I've seen people do this with several technological revolutions. I also grew up during peak hysteria about kids playing video games, so my instinctual reaction is to eye-roll until I see the evidence and verify the source.
Another thing to perhaps point out is that I don't live in the US, so I'm not living with the constant butt-clenching anxiety of what my country's government is doing. So maybe I'd be more sceptical of AI under those circumstances? 😅
@trechnex the evidence is there though, I linked a whole bunch of studies (even from places like Microsoft themselves) here:
https://estherweidauer.com/articles/why-resist-generative-ai.html#psychological
I also don't live in the US, and have been around for the rise of the Internet in the 90s and the moral panic about video games. This is very different.
@aesthr de-skilling no, It's probably just a matter of lazyness and speed.
I also know that I should spend less time on social media and more reading books or exercising against cognitive decline, but that too is hard.
AI psychosis: not really worried. I am fully aware that LLMs do not think in a traditional sense of the word. It's a powerful, though potentially harmful to society, tool, nothing more.
@aesthr The risks to my employment rank higher.
@aesthr (I guess that's not really "willingly". But I do employ cognitive prophylaxis at work to avoid skill rot and psychosis.)
@afeinman if you want to share, what are those prophylactic things you do specifically?
@aesthr I could write a book.
(Actually, I did, but we're waiting on the cover art, and it's a novel, not a list of prescriptions.)
Tl;dr: agency, locus of control, and consent. Will think about how to extricate the intertwingling of the actual presentation I have made on this from $work.
@aesthr I think I'm safe(ish) from AI psychosis, but definitely suffer from de-skilling and cognitive decline and general I-hate-my-job-now-ness. I use it exclusively at work because I'm forced to do it. I don't think I'm special, but I hope that knowing the basics of how AI works, and using it exclusively on my job and completely avoiding it elsewhere helps me not to suffer from that specific problem.
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@aesthr no because I effectively have a gun to my head in my career. If I don’t embrace AI and figure out how to work with it, I will be fired.
It’s like being demanded to use cocaine or something. It’s awful. I know it’s bad but I don’t know what else to do right now except keep my eyes open for an opportunity to leave software engineering.