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 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
@mudasobwa that's just not true
@aesthr because you say so without any evidence? Indeed.
@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.
Install Fedizen
Get the full app experience
@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*. 🙃