Comment by lanstin
7 hours ago
I think we'll find that the people doing that, like the people spending all their time and energy reading slasher pulp fiction in the 1950s, won't be doing as well as the people learning to enhance the power of their education and their expertise via LLMs and strategic alternating between GenAI and thinking about problems. And eventually, if society ever steadies up a bit, people will learn the useful ways of using technology in school and youth; and we'll be glad to be alive to see such marvels.
Assuming we can re-establish the will for democracy and taking care of the whole group.
I don't think it's quite as bad, but I'm imagining someone in the 1950s going: "People just have to use methamphetamines responsibly in their work, and then we'll see the massive benefits as widespread adoption unlocks the potential of the human mind."
In other words, a positive outcome with thing X is possible but there are also big behavioral and cybernetic pitfalls, ones which are suspiciously persistent.
I mean I use coffee quite a lot to prop up my software career. I don’t really find purity to be useful for anything except to answer questions like “should I steal this money now that I am alone” or “should I backstab this friend who pissed me off today.”
> questions like “should I steal this money now that I am alone” or “should I backstab this friend who pissed me off today.”
Ah, yes, a very BOFH approach [0] to workplace quandaries.
> I mean I use coffee quite a lot
Perhaps, but I don't think either of us would agree with the claim: "The way we integrated caffeine for productivity offers a useful and practical model for integrating meth for productivity."
There's an extremely detectable difference in the feedback loops that form between the tool and the people using it. There's something which remains unsolved ~90 years on. If we assume for the sake of argument that coffee is "good" and "productive", then that leads us to the question:
Are these LLM systems going to be more like coffee, or more like meth?
[0] https://www.theregister.com/bofh
Those are some big ifs and assumptions unfortunately, and the use of AI unfortunately has an isolating effect that is only likely to move the needle in the wrong direction.