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?
@aesthr Does using it to generate job interview questions to help you prepare count? I've had a really hard time lately finding relevant questions the traditional way and you can prompt a chatbot to be as punishingly challenging as real interviewers. Besides - they're probably getting those questions from a chatbot as well.
@aesthr I personally am not too concerned about using AI because i don't use it to solve the problems of the world but like any other tool i'd use to solve an issue i have. I'm more concerned about AI usage in the news and the fact that felt 90% of Youtube videos are AI generated now and nobody made even an effort to make them interesting, just hourlong text fillers to tell a 10 minute story. Saying AI steals our time mostly.
@aesthr no, on the contrary, I learn new things. It is a tool. I think people said the same when other technologies were invented (eg. internet, smartphone).
@Thales_Curiosities except it's not "just a tool" https://estherweidauer.com/articles/why-resist-generative-ai.html#its-just-a-tool
@aesthr 1)So by asking you actually want to impose your opinions on others.2) the text you linked has grammar issues ("it's" instead of "its"). Thanks anyway.
@aesthr No, I don't believe I'm immune, and I've seen people I used to respect fall for it. I use it very sparingly, mostly to check what my students who use it are exposed to, and it's very scary. The other thing is I am very exposed to second-hand LLMing (reading my colleagues' slides or my students' work), and this is also affecting me because of the energy it takes to push back.
@aesthr just about the only thing I use is the YouTube AI summary on videos which are too fucking long and could have been a text document, and even then it’s just to get timestamps for salient moments. And that’s just a shitty fix for a different shitty problem (the proliferation of podcast-style “edutainment” as the only source of information about a bunch of things). And I hate using it even for that.
@aesthr the other thing is if I’m super desperate to learn or find an API that has shitty documentation, sometimes Gemini at least points me in the right direction. And I hate that too. I wish people were better at writing docs, or making APIs that actually make sense.
@aesthr I was a CTO 25 years ago, Been an architect since. I have trained dozens of young programmers. Handing work off has caused me no issues that I am aware of. I don't write bash scripts, have no interest in learning, and Deepseek is pretty good at it.
I am quite sure that using LLMs in every part of my life would do me real damage. So I don't.
Driving a car will reduce your ability to walk long distances. I'm not giving up my car, but I do go to the gym every morning.
@fatsam so, what's the gym equivalent for your brain?
@aesthr If yes that's already an early symptom of being susceptible to it
@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.
@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
Your question made me reflect. I’ll be more mindful from now on. The idea is to use AI as a reference or supplement, while building the habit of thinking things through and trying to solve them myself before asking AI. Thank you.
@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.
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.
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@aesthr willingly? Sort of. We are forced to use Copilot at work, and I do find it useful for data entry type tasks, pulling information from Acrobat files into spreadsheets. Never ever let it write my emails or anything like that. Loss of skill? Maybe? I used to get more creative trying to work around the insufficient reporting we get from various sources but on the other hand, now I have time to review the content of those files so I'm not sure. I try to do the work humans are better at.