9 ms·

Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

326 points by freddier 2y ago

byyoung3 2y ago
its increasing my curiosity because it allows me to run more experiments
- sitkack 2y ago
  The paper says that LLM usage doesn't appear to move baseline curiosity. Thanks aithrowawaycomm for https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 Ridiculous that academic work on the technology of education is behind a paywall and not open access. Stinks.
- thecupisblue 2y ago
  Exactly this. While I might scratch the surface of some topics, it helps me cast a wider net of cognitive exploration in the free time I have. This in turn leads me into deeper rabbit holes for things that pique my interest, leading to faster iteration of the knowledge tree, while also providing me with a way to estimate my understanding of the topic.
diggan 2y ago
> What is particularly noteworthy is that AI technologies such as ChatGPT may promote learners' dependence on technology and potentially trigger “metacognitive laziness”. In conclusion, understanding and leveraging the respective strengths and weaknesses of different agents in learning is critical in the field of future hybrid intelligence. Maybe I'm trying to read and understand it too quickly, but I don't see anything in the abstract that supports that strong conclusion. > The results revealed that: (1) learners who received different learning support showed no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; (2) there were significant differences in the frequency and sequences of the self-regulated learning processes among groups; (3) ChatGPT group outperformed in the essay score improvement but their knowledge gain and transfer were not significantly different. Our research found that in the absence of differences in motivation, learners with different supports still exhibited different self-regulated learning processes, ultimately leading to differentiated performance. The ChatGPT group performed better on essay scores, they showed no deficit in knowledge gain or transfer, but they showed different self-regulated learning processes (not worse or better, just different?). If anything, my own conclusion from the abstract would be that ChatGPT is helpful as a learning tool as it helped them improve essay scores without compromising knowledge learning. But again, I only read the abstract, maybe they go into more details in the paper that make the abstract make more sense.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- izend 2y ago
  I have found ChatGPT is pretty good at explaining topics when the source documentation is poorly written or lacks examples. Obviously it does make mistakes so skepticism in the output is a good idea.
- jmann99999 2y ago
  I drew a similar conclusion from the abstract as you. The only negative I could think out of that is with higher essay scores, one might expect higher knowledge gain, and that wasn’t present. However, I agree that that doesn’t really seem to be a negative over other methods.
- sitkack 2y ago
  I have been using LLMs for my own education since they came out and have watched my kid use it. Some kids might pickup a calculator and then use it to see geometric growth, or look for interesting repeating patterns of numbers. Another kid might just use it to get their homework done faster and then run outside and play. The second kid isn't learning more via the use of the tool. So the paper warns that the use of LLMs doesn't necessarily change what the student is interested in and how they are motivated. That we might need to put in checks for how the tool is being used into the tool to reduce the impact of scenario 2.
- apercu 2y ago
  I don't really know what "metacongnitive laziness" is even after they explain it in the paper, but I use LLMs to filter noise and help automate the drudgery of certain tasks, allowing me to use my energy and peak focus time on the more complicated tasks. Anecdotal, obviously. But I don't see how this hinders me in my ability to "self-regulate". It's just a tool, like a hammer. From a learning perspective, it can also be a short cut to getting something explained in several different ways until the concept "clicks".
  - danielbln 2y ago
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09315
- sitkack 2y ago
  Thanks for the link, but clearly no one is reading it. Which is super ironic, they aren't even summarizing it with AI and using that information. Most folks are projecting what the title says into their own emotion space and then riffing on that. The authors even went so far as to boil the entire paper down into bullet points, you don't even need the pdf.
  - felideon 2y ago
    > Most folks are projecting what the title says into their own emotion space and then riffing on that. Yeah, or the abstract which is a bit vague.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      The bullet points below the abstract is basically the paper w/o reading it.
spatalo 2y ago
same is true for google, gps, etc.
lr4444lr 2y ago
The abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means. Personally speaking, I find being able to ask ChatGPT continually more nuanced questions about an initial answer the one clear benefit over a Google search, where I have diminishing marginal returns on my inquisitiveness for the time invested over subsequent searches. The more precisely I am able to formulate my question on a traditional search engine, the harder it is for non-SEO optimized results to appear: it's either meant more for a casual reader with no new information, or is a very specialized resource that requires extensive professional background knowledge. LLMs really build that bridge to precisely the answers I want.
- jcims 2y ago
  This is my take as well. There was a story a couple days ago about a neural network built on a single photonic chip. I fed the paper to ChatGPT and was able to use it to develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of what the chip actually delivered, how it operated, the fundamental operating principles of core components and how it could be integrated into a system. The fact that I now have a tireless elucidator on tap to help explore a topic (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) actually increases my motivation to explore dense technical information and understanding of new concepts. The one area where I do think it is detrimental is my willingness to start writing content on a provebial blank sheet of paper. I explore the topic with ChatGPT to get a rough outline, maybe some basic content and then take it from there.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) This is a pretty big caveat to the goal of > develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding Which is still my biggest issue with LLMs. The little I use of them, the answers are still confidently wrong a lot of the time. Has this changed?
    - tyzoid 2y ago
      I've found them to be quite accurate when given enough context data. For ex, feeding it an article into it's context window and asking questions about it. Relying on the LLM's internal trained knowledge state seems to be less reliable.
iambateman 2y ago
“The kids these days are too lazy to be bothered to learn” is a psychological trap that people often fall into. It’s not to say we shouldn’t do our best to understand and provide guardrails, but the kids will be fine.
- jerf 2y ago
  Can you point me to the generation that had ready access to AI on their hands, answering all their questions? "People have been complaining about this for thousands of years" is a potent counterargument to a lot of things, but it can't be applied to things that really didn't exist even a decade ago. Moreover, the thing that people miss about "people have been complaining about this for thousands of years" is that the complaints have often been valid, too. Cultures have fallen. Civilizations have collapsed. Empires have disintegrated. The complaints were not all wrong! And that's on a civilization-scale. On a more mundane day-to-day scale, people have been individually failing for precisely the same reasons people were complaining about for a long time. There have been lazy people who have done poorly or died because of it. There have been people who refused to learn who have done poorly or died because of it. This really isn't an all-purpose "just shrug about it and move on, everything's been fine before and it'll be fine again". It hasn't always been fine before, at any scale, and we don't know what impact unknown things will have. To give a historical example... nay, a class of historical examples... there are several instances of a new drug being introduced to a society, and it ripping through that society that had no defenses against it. Even when the society survived it, it did so at great individual costs, and "eh, we've had drugs before" would not have been a good heuristic to understand the results with. I do not know that AIs just answering everything is similar, but at the moment I certainly can't prove it isn't either.
- helboi4 2y ago
  I mean sometimes it's true. Like even in the past. I could very clearly see amongst my generation (older gen z) that there were plenty of people literally at university who were barely willing or able to learn. Comparing that to the generation of my much older half siblings (genx, older millennial), they don't even seem to grasp the concept of not being quite involved in your university degree. Most people my age will tell you that they stopped reading as a teenager because of the effect of smartphones. I was a veracious reader and only relearnt to read last year after 10 years since I got my first smartphone as an older teenager. These things are impactful and have affected a lot of people's potential. And also made our generation very prone to mental health issues - something that is really incredibly palpable if you are within gen z social circles like I am. It's disastrous and cannot be overstated. I can be very sure I would be smarter and happier if technology had stagnated at the level it was at when I was a younger child/teen. The old internet and personal computers, for example, only helped me explore my curiosity. Social media and smartphones have only destroyed it. There are qualitative differences between some technological advancements. Not to mention the fact that gen alpha are shown to have terrible computer literacy because of the ease of use, discouragement of customisation and corporate monopoly over smartphones. This bucks the trend that happened from gen x to gen z of generations become more and more computer native. Clearly, upwards trends in learning due to advancements in technology can be reversed. They do not always go up. If kids do not learn independent reasoning because of reliance on LLMs, yes, that will make people stupider. Not all technology improves things. I watched a really great video recently where someone explained the change in the nature of presidential debates through the ages. In the Victorian times, they consisted of hours-long oratory on each side, with listeners following attentively. In the 20th century the speeches gradually became a little shorter and more questions were added to break things up. In most recent times, every question has started to come with a less than a minute answer, simpler vocabulary, little hard facts or statistics etc. These changes map very well to changes in the depth at which people were able to think due to the primary information source they were using. There is a good reason why reading is still seen as the most effective form of deep learning despite technological advancement. Because it is.
agentultra 2y ago
So humans are supposed to review all of the code that GenAI creates. We’re supposed to ensure that it doesn’t generate (obvious?) errors and that it’s building the “right thing” in a manner prescribed by our requirements. The anecdotes from practitioners using GenAI in this way suggest it’s a good tool for experienced developers because they know what to look out for. Now we admit folks who don’t know what they’re doing and are in the process of learning. They don’t know what to look out for. How does this tech help them? Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? Studies such as this are hard but important. Interesting one here even though the sample is small. I wonder if anyone can repeat it.
- diggan 2y ago
  > Now we admit folks who don’t know what they’re doing and are in the process of learning. They don’t know what to look out for. How does this tech help them? Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? You can know enough in X to allow you to do Y together with X, which you might not have been able to before. For example, I'm a programmer, but horrible at math. I want to develop games, and I technically could, but all the math stuff makes it a lot harder sometimes to make progress. I've still managed to make and release games, but math always gets in the way. I know exactly how I want it to behave and work, but I cannot always figure out how to get there. LLMs help me a lot with this, where I can isolate those parts into small black boxes that I know they give me the right thing, but not 100% sure about how. I know when the LLM gives me the incorrect code, because I know what I'm looking for and why, only missing the "how" part. Basically like having 3rd party libraries you don't fully understand the internals of, but can still use granted you understand the public API, except you keep in your code base and pepper it with unit tests.
- squigz 2y ago
  > Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? No, which is why people who don't pick up on the nuances of programming - no matter how often they use LLMs - will never be capable programmers.
MomsAVoxell 2y ago
I feel this, because it’s like I don’t need to know about something, I just need to know how to know about something. Like, the initial contact with a mystery subject is overcome by knowing how to describe the mystery in a way that AI understands what I don’t understand, and seeks to fill in the understanding. An example, I have no clue about React. I do know why I don’t like to use React and why I have avoided it over the years. I describe to some ML tool the difficulties I’ve had learning React and using it productively .. and voila, it plots a chart through the knowledge that, kinda, makes me want to learn React and use it. It’s like, the human ability to form an ontology in the face of mystery even if it is in accurate or faulty, allows the AI to take over and plot an ontological route through the mystery into understanding. Another thing I realized lately, as ML has taken over my critical faculties, is that it’s really only useful for things that are already known by others. I can’t ask ML to give me some new, groundbreaking idea about something - everything it suggests has already been thought, somewhere, by a real human - and this its not new or groundbreaking. It’s just contextually - in my own local ontological universe - filling in a mystery gap. Pretty fun times we’re having, but I do fear for the generations that will know and understand no other way than to have ML explain things for them. I don’t think we have the ethics tools, as cultures and societies, to prevent this from becoming a catastrophe of glib, knowledge-less folks, collapsing all knowledge into a raging dumpster fire of collective reactivity, but I hope someone is training a model, somewhere, to rescue us from this, somehow ..
- llm_trw 2y ago
  > But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so. --Socrates on writing
giancarlostoro 2y ago
How's this any different than someone 5+ years ago blindly going by whatever a Google result said about anything? I've run into conflicting answers to things off Google's first page of results, some things aren't 100% certain and require more research. I'm not surprised if this will make some lazier since you don't need to do the legwork of reading, but how many don't read only the headlines of articles before they share articles?
- diggan 2y ago
  > How's this any different than someone 5+ years ago blindly going by whatever a Google result said about anything You can interrogate it at least. "Are you sure that's the correct answer? Re-think from the beginning without any assumptions" and you'll get a checklist you can mentally/practically go through yourself to validate.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    True, so I guess what needs to happen is people using AI need to be informed on how to use it more accurately so they're actually learning source material and not just taking garbage / cheating on coursework.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      So we need to train inquisitive curious thinkers that look at things from all angles and understand why they know something.
      - giancarlostoro 2y ago
        A friend and myself were talking not too long ago that people these days don't practice critical thinking. It might be worthwhile for not just schools but parents everywhere to teach their kids to think more critically, ask the right questions when presented with new information.
- lm28469 2y ago
readyplayernull 2y ago
> Our research found that in the absence of differences in motivation, learners with different supports still exhibited different self-regulated learning processes, ultimately leading to differentiated performance. That's the most convoluted conclusion I've ever seen. > What is particularly noteworthy is that AI technologies such as ChatGPT may promote learners' dependence on technology and potentially trigger “metacognitive laziness”. Calculator laziness is long known. It doesn't cause meta- but specific- laziness.
empathy_m 2y ago
Cell phones and laptops in general have changed a couple of things for me, as someone who grew up without them: - I realized about 20y-25y ago that I could run a Web search and find out nearly any fact, probably one-shot but maybe with 2-3 searches' worth of research - About 10-15y ago I began to have a connected device in my pocket that could do this on request at any time - About 5y ago I explicitly *stopped* doing it, most of the time, socially. If I'm in the middle of a conversation and a question comes up about a minor fact, I'm not gonna break the flow to pull out my screen and stare at it and answer the question, I'm gonna keep hanging out with the person. There was this "pub trivia" thing that used to happen in the 80s and 90s where you would see a spirited discussion between people arguing about a small fact which neither of them immediately had at hand. We don't get that much anymore because it's so easy to answer the question -- we've just totally lost it. I don't miss it, but I have become keenly aware of how tethered my consciousness is to facts available via Web search, and I don't know that I love outsourcing that much of my brain to places beyond my control.
- jprete 2y ago
  A long time ago I had the idea that maybe Guinness started a "book of world records" precisely because it answers exactly the kind of question that will routinely pop up at the pub.
  - dwater 2y ago
    Yes. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story
    - chrisco255 2y ago
      Wow I had no idea the name literally came from Guinness beer. Brilliant!
- indoordin0saur 2y ago
  I'm just old enough to remember pub trivia before it was possible to look things up with a phone. I firmly maintain that phones ruined pub trivia.
roydivision 2y ago
This stands to reason. If you need the answer to a question, and you can either get it directly, or spend time researching the answer, you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former. You may be disciplined enough to do more research if the answer is directly presented to you, but most people will not do that, and most companies are not interested in that, they want quick 'efficient', 'competitive' solutions. They aren't considering the long term downside to this.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  What is the long term downside in your opinion?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - metalliqaz 2y ago
    I believe he implied by saying: > you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former that the downside is a lack of deep knowledge that would enable better solutions in the long term
    - roydivision 2y ago
      Yes, the downside is that we aren't really learning anything, just solving problems supported by machines that tell us the solutions. Any schmuck can do that.
      - reginald78 2y ago
        I think it is worse. Information will dry up (in a variety of ways) making it much harder to even learn the traditional way as we could in the past.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  that's why I mostly use chatgpt with platonic questions like - given context c, i tried idea a, b and c. where there other options that I miss ? - based on this plan, do you see missing efficiency ? etc etc i'm not seeking answers, i'm trying to avoid costly dead ends
ankit219 2y ago
There are two aspects to this from my pov. And I think it might be controversial. When i have a question about any topic, and I ask Chatgpt, i usually chat about more things, coming up with questions based on the answer, and mostly stupid questions. I feel like I am taking in the information, analyzing, and then diving deeper because I am curious. This is based on how I learn about stuff. I know i need to check a few things, and that it's not fully accurate, but the conversation flows in a direction I like. compared this to researching on the internet, there are some good aspects, but more often than not, I end up reading an opinionated post by someone (no matter the topic, if you go deep enough, you will land on an opinionated factual telling). That feels like someone decided what questions are important, what angles we need to look at, and what the conclusion should be. Yes, it is educational, but I am always left with lingering questions. The difference is curiosity. If people are curious about a topic, they will learn. If not, they are happy with the answer. And that is not laziness. You cannot be curious about everything.
- engineer_22 2y ago
  Like an indefatigable, kindly professor.
- regentbowerbird 2y ago
  > compared this to researching on the internet, there are some good aspects, but more often than not, I end up reading an opinionated post by someone (no matter the topic, if you go deep enough, you will land on an opinionated factual telling). ChatGPT is in fact opinionated, it has numerous political positions ("biases") and holds some subjects taboo. The difference is that a single actor chooses the political opinions of the model that goes on to interact with many more people than a single opinion piece might.
  - immibis 2y ago
    An example (over 1 year old): https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/17dmevt/chatgpt_justice_is_a_fundamental_principle_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/17dmev...
  - 2y ago
_aavaa_ 2y ago
A preprint is available on arxiv [0], see the top of page 18 for what metacognitive laziness is: "In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks." And they seem to define, implicitly, “metacognitive load” as the cognitive and metacognitive effort required for learners to regulate their learning processes effectively, particularly when engaging in tasks that demand active self-monitoring, planning, and evaluation. The analogize metacognitive laziness to cognitive offloading, where we have our tools do the difficult congnitive tasks for us, which robs us of opportunities to develop and ultimately dependent on those tools. [0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  > In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks. This sounds like parents complaining when we use Google Maps instead of a folding map. Am I worse at reading a regular map? Possibly. Am I better off overall? Yes. Describing it as "laziness" is reductive. "Dependence on [_____] assistance" is the point of all technology.
  - amrocha 2y ago
    When you’re using a map you’re still navigating, even if you’re just following directions. The act of navigating teaches you spatial awareness regardless of how you got there. AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. You’re actively getting stupider every time you take an LLMs answer for granted, and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted.
    - diggan 2y ago
      > AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. LLMs (try to) give you what you're asking for. If you ask for directions, you'll get something that resembles that, if you ask it to 100% navigate, that's what you get. > and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted. Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people who used ChatGPT for the studying did better than the ones that didn't, with no different in knowledge retention.
enjoyitasus 2y ago
I think this holds water. Metacognition is really how the best of the best can continue to be at their best. And if you don't use it, you lose it. https://x.com/redshirtet/status/1879922330983358941 https://x.com/redshirtet/status/1879922330983358941
ziddoap 2y ago
I'm certainly of two minds on this. On one hand, this reminds me of how all of the kids were going to be completely helpless in the real world because "no one carries a calculator in their pocket". Then calculators became something ~everyone has in their pocket (and the kids ended up just fine). On the other hand, I believe in the value of "learning to learn", developing media literacy, and all of the other positives gained when you research and form conclusions on things independently. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle: leveraging LLMs as a learning aid, rather than LLMs being the final stop.
- parsimo2010 2y ago
  tl;dr: I agree. We don't teach slide rules and log tables in school anymore. Calculators and computers have created a huge metacognitive laziness for me, and I teach calculus and have a PhD in statistics. I barely remember the unit circle except for multiples of pi/4 radians. I can do it in multiples of pi/6 but I'm slower. But guess what? I don't think I'm a worse mathematician because I don't remember these things reflexively. I might be a little slower getting the answer to a trivial problem, but I can still find a solution to a complex problem. I look up integral forms in my pocket book of integrals or on Wolfram Alpha, because even if I could derive the answer myself I don't think I'd be right 100% of the time. So metacognitive laziness has set in for me already. But I think as long as we can figure out how to stop metacognitive laziness before it turns into full-fledged brain-rot, then we'll be okay. We'll survive as long as we can still teach students how to think critically, and figure out how to let AI assist us rather than turn us into the humans on the ship from Wall-E. I'm a little worried that we'll make some short term mistakes (like not adapting our cirriculum fast enough), but it will work out.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    I am not sure calculators have hurt us much on the high end of mathematical ability. But man I cringe when I see 18 year old students reach for a calculator to multiply something by .1.
  - largbae 2y ago
    I think you're right at the edge of explaining why this "laziness" is a good thing. Everything that we have made is built on what we had before, and abstracts away what we had before. 99% of us don't remember how to make even the simplest Assembly program, and yet we unleash billions of instructions per second on the world. Even outside of math and computers, when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away, freeing us to focus on ever-more-specialized pursuits. Those that are useful will too be abstracted away, and for the better.
robviren 2y ago
This technology is arguably as ubiquitous as a calculator. So long as I can understand that generative AI is a tool and not a solution is it bad to treat it like a bit of a calculator? Does this metacognitive laziness apply to those who depend on calculators? I understand it is a bit apples to oranges, but I'm curious peoples take.
- alternatex 2y ago
  I am definitely lazier today in regards to doing math in my head compared to when I was young. I think a comparison with calculators is possible, but the degree to which calculators are capable of assisting us is so incomparably smaller that the comparison would be meaningless. Smart phones changed society a lot more than calculators did and now AI is starting to do the same, albeit in a more subtle manner. Treating AI like it's just a calulator seems naïve/optimistic. We're still reeling from the smart phone revolution and have not solved many of the issues it brought upon its arrival. I have a feeling the world has become a bit cynical and less motivated to debate how to approach these major technological changes. It's been too many of them in too short of a time and now everyone has a whatever attitude towards the problems these adcancements introduce.
teekert 2y ago
Idk, the "explain {X} to me like I'm 12" has certainly helped my delve into new topics, Nix with Flakes comes to mind as one of my latest ventures.
charlie0 2y ago
I mean this is the same exact thing that happened when calculators where invented. The amount of people who can count in their heads drastically dropped because why waste your time? Ditto for when maps app came out. No more need to memorize a bunch of locations because you can just use maps to take you there.
- hb-robo 2y ago
  It's funny, the calculators were incredibly politicized when I was growing up (TI84 generation, so kids were getting caught programming functions to solve exam questions) but GPS was just taken as a given.
floppiplopp 2y ago
I'm at this very moment testing deepseek-r1, a so called "reasoning" llm, on the excellent "rustlings" tutorial. It is well documented and its solutions are readily available online. It is my lazy go-to-testing for coding tasks to assess for me if and when I have to start looking for a new job and take up software engineering as a hobby. The reason I test with rustlings is to also assess the value as a learning tool for students and future colleagues. Maybe these things have use as a teacher? Also, the rust compiler is really good in offering advice, so there's an excellent baseline to compare the llm-output. And well, let me put it this way: deepseek-r1 won't be replacing anyone anytime soon. It generates a massive amount of texts, mostly nonsensical and almost always terribly, horribly wrong. But inexperienced devs or beginners, especially beginners, will be confused and will be led down the wrong path, potentially outsourcing rational thought to something that just sounds good, but actually isn't. Currently, over-reliance on the ramblings of a statistical model seems detrimental to education and ultimately the performance of future devs. As the probably last generation of old school software engineers, who were trained on coffee and tears of frustration, who had to really work code and architecture themselves, golden times might lie ahead, because someone will have to fix the garbage produced en masse by llms.
- diggan 2y ago
  > And well, let me put it this way: deepseek-r1 won't be replacing anyone anytime soon. It generates a massive amount of texts, mostly nonsensical and almost always terribly, horribly wrong. But inexperienced devs or beginners, especially beginners, will be confused and will be led down the wrong path, potentially outsourcing rational thought to something that just sounds good, but actually isn't. Are you considering the full "reasoning" it does when you're saying this? AFAIK, they're meant to be "rambling" like that, exploring all sorts of avenues and paths before reaching a final conclusive answer that is still "ramble-like". I think the purpose seems to be to layer something on top that can finalize the answer, rather than just taking whatever you get from that and use it as-is. > Currently, over-reliance on the ramblings of a statistical model seems detrimental to education and ultimately the performance of future devs. As the probably last generation of old school software engineers, who were trained on coffee and tears of frustration, who had to really work code and architecture themselves, golden times might lie ahead, because someone will have to fix the garbage produced en masse by llms. I started coding just before Stack Overflow got popular, and remember the craze when it did get popular. Blogposts about how Stack Overflow will create lazy devs was all over the place, people saying it was the end of the real developer. Not arguing against you or anything, I just find it interesting how sentiments like these keeps repeating over time, just minor details that change.
_the_inflator 2y ago
What did the researchers expect? Humans are lazy by nature, they seek shortcuts. So given the chance to go rote learning for years for an education which in most cases is simply a soon to be forgotten certification vs watching TikTok while letting ChatGPT do the lifting - this is all predictable, even without Behavioral Design, Hooked etc. And that usually the benefits rise with IQ level - nothing new here, that’s the very definition of IQ. Learning and academia is hard, and even harder for those with lower IQ scores. A fool with a tool is still a fool and vice versa. Motivation seems also at an all time low. Why put in hours when a prompt can works wonders? Reading a book is a badge of honor nowadays more than ever.
- diggan 2y ago
  > So given the chance to go rote learning for years for an education which in most cases is simply a soon to be forgotten certification vs watching TikTok while letting ChatGPT do the lifting - this is all predictable, even without Behavioral Design, Hooked etc. Would you argue that having books/written words also made people more lazy and be able to remember less? Because some people argued (at the time) that having written words would make humanity less intellectual as a whole, but I think consensus is that it led to the opposite.
- n4r9 2y ago
  > the benefits rise with IQ level - nothing new here, that’s the very definition of IQ This is not obvious to me, and certainly is not the "definition" of IQ. There are tools that become less useful the more intelligent you are, such as multiplication tables. IQ is defined by a set of standardized tests that attempt to quantify human intelligence, and has some correlations with social, educational and professional performance, but it's not clear why it would help with use of AI tools.
nottorp 2y ago
Funny, I passed the link to a whatsapp group with some friends and the preview loaded with the title "error: cookies turned off". I'm sure my friends will RUSH to read the article now...
submeta 2y ago
My observation is that I learn more than ever using LLMs. I tend to learn asking questions, I did this using Anki cards for years (What is this or that?) and find the answer on the back of the index card. Questions activate my thinking more than anything, and of course my attempt at answering the question in my own terms. My motto is: Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Covey). And I do this in engaging with people or a topic—-by asking questions. Now I do this with LLMs. I have been exploring ideas I would never have explored hadn’t there been LLMs, because I would not have had the to research material for learning, read it, create material in a Q&A session for me. I even use LLMs to convert an article into Anki cards using Obsidian, Python, LLMs, and the Anki app. Crazy times we are in.
- boromi 2y ago
  What does your workflow look like?
  - submeta 2y ago
    I use functions in openai and a template that forces the LLM to generate questions and answers from a text in a format that can be synced into the Anki app. Very straightforward workflow.
    - boromi 2y ago
      Very interesting, would love a more detailed tutorial on setting something similar up
- polishdude20 2y ago
  Yeah I've found the same. I might have some surface understanding of some topic and I like just asking "am I right in thinking this and this about this?" Or "Tell me why I'm wrong about this".
- david_allison 2y ago
  > Questions activate my thinking more than anything, and of course my attempt at answering the question in my own terms. This is very well-studied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect [not a high-quality article, but should give an overview]
bradarner 2y ago
Any time an empirical research project has to add QUOTES around a common term, it sets off the non-sense radar: ..."laziness"... In the battle cry of the philosopher: DEFINE YOUR TERMS!! What they really mean: new and different. Outside-the-box. "Oh no, how will we grade this?!?" a threat to our definition and control of knowledge.
vunderba 2y ago
I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of manipulating the problem in your head—critical thinking—is ultimately a craft. And the only way to become better at it is by practicing it in a deliberate, disciplined fashion.
- motorest 2y ago
  > The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. I get the point you're trying to make. However, quietly pondering the problem is only fruitful if you have the right information. If you don't, best case scenario you risk wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason. In this application, a LLM is just the same type of tool as Google: a way to query and retrieve information cor you to ingest. Like Google, the info you get from queries is not the end but the means. As the saying goes, a month in the lab saves you a week in the library. I would say it can also save you 10 minutes with Claude/ChatGPT/Copilot. Is hiring a private tutor also laziness?
  - abathur 2y ago
    I'll stop short of asserting you don't, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself your reply does reflect that you get GP's point. If I were to reframe GP's point, it would be: having to figure out how to answer a question changes you a little. Over time, it changes you a lot. Yes, of course, there is a perspective from which a month spent in the lab to answer a question that's well-settled in the literature is ~wasted. But the GP is arguing for a utility function that optimizes for improving the questioner. Quietly pondering the problem with the wrong information can be fruitful in this context. (To be pragmatic, we need both of these. We'd get nowhere if we had to solve every problem and learn every lesson from first principles. But we'd also get nowhere if no one were well-prepared and motivated to solve novel problems without prior art.)
wsintra2022 2y ago
Inevitably the advancement of knowledgeable information generation will have same mental effect as having a contact list on your phone. When I was a kid I knew at least 5 peoples phone numbers maybe more. Even now I can recall 2 of them. How many can you recall from your actual contact list?
golly_ned 2y ago
I don’t see how the “metacognitive laziness” (a term used by the abstract, but not defined) follows from what they describe in the abstract as the outcomes they observed. They specifically called out no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; doesn’t that imply that the ChatGPT users were no lazier after using ChatGPT than they were before? I’m also a skeptic of students using and relying on ChatGPT, but I’m cautious about using this abstract to come to any conclusions without seeing the full paper especially given that they’re apparently using “metacognitive laziness” in a specific technical way we don’t know about if we haven’t read the paper.
tippytippytango 2y ago
This is not a concern when you are responsible for real results. If you aren’t responsible for real results you can pass off the good rhetoric of these models as an “answer”. But when you need results you realize most answers they give are just rhetoric. They are still extremely valuable, but they can only help you when you have done the work to get deep understanding of the problem, incentivized by actually solving it.
jmmcd 2y ago
In my recent programming exam (in an MSc in AI), I asked students to reflect on how generative AI has changed their coding. Almost all remarked that it's a great time-saver, but it makes them lazy and worse at coding. And yes indeed, their ability to answer basic questions about coding on the same exam has drastically dropped versus last year.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Is the problem the use of AI in coding, or using AI in coding in a curriculum designed without that assumption? Because if AI is an effort-saver, than a curriculum that isn't designed with its use in mind will just result in the students doing less work, in which case learning less is unsurprising but not really an "AI makes you less knowledgeable" problem but an "insufficiently challenging curriculum for the actual context" problem.
lxe 2y ago
Before pervasive GPS, it took me very little time to actually learn and internalize a route. Now it takes a lot longer to remember it when you're constantly guided. Same exact thing is happening with guided reasoning we get with LLMs
- numba888 2y ago
  I have different experience. It took me some time to make a rote and write down all turns. Now getting from location A to B is a lot easier. Take a look at proposed rote and make some corrections. Meanwhile I spend time thinking about something else. So, GPS doesn't make me stupid or forgetful. It's just a tool which makes me more productive. The same almost true for LLM, except getting the right answer isn't always easy or possible. But overall on coding small utilities it's very helpful. For reasoning models I still need to find the right tasks. May be more complex utilities. Or the one I can't get from 4o yet: red-black tree with custom memory management and custom 'pointers' in data objects (small integers). While custom allocators are supported by std, the implementation still keeps native pointers, which locks it in memory.
SpaceManNabs 2y ago
As technology gets more impressive, we internalize less knowledge ourselves. There is a "plato" story on how he laments the invention of writing because now people don't need to memorize speeches and stuff. I think there is a level of balance. Writing gave us enough efficiencies that the learned laziness made us overall more effective. The internet in 2011 made us a bit less effective. I am not gonna lie; I spent a lot more time being able to get resources, whereas I would have to struggle on my own to solve a problem. You internalize one more than the other, but is it worth the additional time every time? I worry about current students learning through LLMs just like I would worry about a student in 2012 graduating in physics when such a student had constant access to wolfram alpha.
wisty 2y ago
This is the old "siiiiiir why do we need to do this if we have calculators"? It matters - https://www.edweek.org/education/little-numbers-add-up-to-big-differences-in-high-school-math-tests/2013/01 https://www.edweek.org/education/little-numbers-add-up-to-bi... Students who know the facts will be better at math. Even if the computer is doing all the thinking, it's still a tool. Do you know what to ask it? Can you spot a mistake when it messes up (or you messed up the input)? Can you simplify the problem and figure out what the important parts of the problem are? Do you even know to do any of that? Sure, thinking machines will sometimes be autonomous and not need you to touch them. But when that's the case, your job won't be to just nod along to everything the computer says, you won't have a job anymore and you will need to find a new job (probably one where you need to prompt and interpret what the AI is doing). And yes, there will be jobs where you just act as an actuator for the thinking machine. Ask an Amazon warehouse worker how great a job that is :/ Everything is the same as with calculators.
xenadu02 2y ago
I wonder how will LLMs learn anything new when no one does original research and just asks the LLM? Will LLMs just feed back on each other, effectively hallucinating false "learning"? Maybe we'll end up as a society of a few elites who still know how to research, think, and/or write with LLMs digesting that and regurgitating it for the masses.
0n0n0m0uz 2y ago
That just demonstrates the difference between idiots and intelligent people. I use AI and chatgpt to learn about a zillion topics I am interested about more efficiently.
gcanyon 2y ago
1. Socrates criticized writing itself: in Plato's Phaedrus he said it would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories" (274e-275b) 2. Leonard Euler criticized the use of logarithm tables in calculating: in his 1748 "Introductio in analysin infinitorum" he insisted on deriving logarithms from first principles 3. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) initially dismissed mechanical calculators, stating in an 1878 lecture at Glasgow University that they would make students "neglect the cultivation of their reasoning powers" 4. Henry Ford in his autobiography "My Life and Work" (1922) quoted a farmer who told him in 1907 that gasoline tractors would "make boys lazy and good for nothing" and they'd "never learn to farm" 5. In 1877, the New York Times published concerns from teachers about students using pencils with attached erasers, claiming it would make them "careless" because they wouldn't have to think before writing. The editorial warned it would "destroy the discipline of learning" 6. In "Elements of Arithmetic," (1846) Augustus De Morgan criticized the use of pre-printed multiplication tables, saying students who relied on them would become "mere calculative mechanism" instead of understanding numbers 7. In his 1906 paper "The Menace of Mechanical Music," John Philip Sousa attacked the phonograph writing that it would make people stop learning instruments because "the infant will be taught by machinery" and musical education would become "unnecessary" 8. In his 1985 autobiography "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Richard Feynman expressed concern about pocket calculators and students losing the ability to estimate and understand mathematical relationships I could go on (Claude wrote 15 of them!). Twenty years from now (assuming AI hasn't killed us all) we'll look back and think that working with an LLM isn't the crutch people think it is now.
- bibelo 2y ago
  what was your prompt?
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    The initial prompt was: Write a out a list of statements about how each generation thinks the next is lazy because they have it easy. For example, people who had to memorize trig or log tables would think those who had books to refer to were lazy. Those who used slide rules thought calculator-users were lazy. People who plowed with a horse thought early tractors were cheating. etc. etc. List as many examples as you can up to 50, leaning toward the mental rather than physical, but including both, and give specifics rather than generalities. My examples above are at the edge of what's acceptable; try to do better than I did. That got me a bunch of abstractions like: "Librarians who memorized the Dewey Decimal System dismissed those who used card catalogs" So I replied: Sorry, I should have been clearer: this should be real-world examples, with cites if possible. As one example, your point about photographers is no good unless some specific manual photographer actually said something about light meter users -- e.g. "Ansel Adams once said that..." and it needs to be not-made-up. That got me the first three. After I confirmed that those were good I got 4-8. I followed that with: more please. it's okay to add in a few "XYZ is supposed to have said that..." as long as they aren't completely made up, and they are in the minority. That got me the rest.
ashoeafoot 2y ago
We destroyed our artists for a mash up and then wondered why there was nothing new under the sun.

326 points by freddier 2y ago

byyoung3 2y ago

its increasing my curiosity because it allows me to run more experiments

sitkack 2y ago
The paper says that LLM usage doesn't appear to move baseline curiosity. Thanks aithrowawaycomm for https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 Ridiculous that academic work on the technology of education is behind a paywall and not open access. Stinks.
thecupisblue 2y ago
Exactly this. While I might scratch the surface of some topics, it helps me cast a wider net of cognitive exploration in the free time I have. This in turn leads me into deeper rabbit holes for things that pique my interest, leading to faster iteration of the knowledge tree, while also providing me with a way to estimate my understanding of the topic.

diggan 2y ago

> What is particularly noteworthy is that AI technologies such as ChatGPT may promote learners' dependence on technology and potentially trigger “metacognitive laziness”. In conclusion, understanding and leveraging the respective strengths and weaknesses of different agents in learning is critical in the field of future hybrid intelligence. Maybe I'm trying to read and understand it too quickly, but I don't see anything in the abstract that supports that strong conclusion. > The results revealed that: (1) learners who received different learning support showed no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; (2) there were significant differences in the frequency and sequences of the self-regulated learning processes among groups; (3) ChatGPT group outperformed in the essay score improvement but their knowledge gain and transfer were not significantly different. Our research found that in the absence of differences in motivation, learners with different supports still exhibited different self-regulated learning processes, ultimately leading to differentiated performance. The ChatGPT group performed better on essay scores, they showed no deficit in knowledge gain or transfer, but they showed different self-regulated learning processes (not worse or better, just different?). If anything, my own conclusion from the abstract would be that ChatGPT is helpful as a learning tool as it helped them improve essay scores without compromising knowledge learning. But again, I only read the abstract, maybe they go into more details in the paper that make the abstract make more sense.

deleted 2y ago
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izend 2y ago
I have found ChatGPT is pretty good at explaining topics when the source documentation is poorly written or lacks examples. Obviously it does make mistakes so skepticism in the output is a good idea.
jmann99999 2y ago
I drew a similar conclusion from the abstract as you. The only negative I could think out of that is with higher essay scores, one might expect higher knowledge gain, and that wasn’t present. However, I agree that that doesn’t really seem to be a negative over other methods.
sitkack 2y ago
I have been using LLMs for my own education since they came out and have watched my kid use it. Some kids might pickup a calculator and then use it to see geometric growth, or look for interesting repeating patterns of numbers. Another kid might just use it to get their homework done faster and then run outside and play. The second kid isn't learning more via the use of the tool. So the paper warns that the use of LLMs doesn't necessarily change what the student is interested in and how they are motivated. That we might need to put in checks for how the tool is being used into the tool to reduce the impact of scenario 2.
apercu 2y ago
I don't really know what "metacongnitive laziness" is even after they explain it in the paper, but I use LLMs to filter noise and help automate the drudgery of certain tasks, allowing me to use my energy and peak focus time on the more complicated tasks. Anecdotal, obviously. But I don't see how this hinders me in my ability to "self-regulate". It's just a tool, like a hammer. From a learning perspective, it can also be a short cut to getting something explained in several different ways until the concept "clicks".
- danielbln 2y ago

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09315

sitkack 2y ago
Thanks for the link, but clearly no one is reading it. Which is super ironic, they aren't even summarizing it with AI and using that information. Most folks are projecting what the title says into their own emotion space and then riffing on that. The authors even went so far as to boil the entire paper down into bullet points, you don't even need the pdf.
- felideon 2y ago
  > Most folks are projecting what the title says into their own emotion space and then riffing on that. Yeah, or the abstract which is a bit vague.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    The bullet points below the abstract is basically the paper w/o reading it.

spatalo 2y ago

same is true for google, gps, etc.

lr4444lr 2y ago

The abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means. Personally speaking, I find being able to ask ChatGPT continually more nuanced questions about an initial answer the one clear benefit over a Google search, where I have diminishing marginal returns on my inquisitiveness for the time invested over subsequent searches. The more precisely I am able to formulate my question on a traditional search engine, the harder it is for non-SEO optimized results to appear: it's either meant more for a casual reader with no new information, or is a very specialized resource that requires extensive professional background knowledge. LLMs really build that bridge to precisely the answers I want.

jcims 2y ago
This is my take as well. There was a story a couple days ago about a neural network built on a single photonic chip. I fed the paper to ChatGPT and was able to use it to develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of what the chip actually delivered, how it operated, the fundamental operating principles of core components and how it could be integrated into a system. The fact that I now have a tireless elucidator on tap to help explore a topic (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) actually increases my motivation to explore dense technical information and understanding of new concepts. The one area where I do think it is detrimental is my willingness to start writing content on a provebial blank sheet of paper. I explore the topic with ChatGPT to get a rough outline, maybe some basic content and then take it from there.
- squigz 2y ago
  > (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) This is a pretty big caveat to the goal of > develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding Which is still my biggest issue with LLMs. The little I use of them, the answers are still confidently wrong a lot of the time. Has this changed?
  - tyzoid 2y ago
    I've found them to be quite accurate when given enough context data. For ex, feeding it an article into it's context window and asking questions about it. Relying on the LLM's internal trained knowledge state seems to be less reliable.

iambateman 2y ago

“The kids these days are too lazy to be bothered to learn” is a psychological trap that people often fall into. It’s not to say we shouldn’t do our best to understand and provide guardrails, but the kids will be fine.

jerf 2y ago
Can you point me to the generation that had ready access to AI on their hands, answering all their questions? "People have been complaining about this for thousands of years" is a potent counterargument to a lot of things, but it can't be applied to things that really didn't exist even a decade ago. Moreover, the thing that people miss about "people have been complaining about this for thousands of years" is that the complaints have often been valid, too. Cultures have fallen. Civilizations have collapsed. Empires have disintegrated. The complaints were not all wrong! And that's on a civilization-scale. On a more mundane day-to-day scale, people have been individually failing for precisely the same reasons people were complaining about for a long time. There have been lazy people who have done poorly or died because of it. There have been people who refused to learn who have done poorly or died because of it. This really isn't an all-purpose "just shrug about it and move on, everything's been fine before and it'll be fine again". It hasn't always been fine before, at any scale, and we don't know what impact unknown things will have. To give a historical example... nay, a class of historical examples... there are several instances of a new drug being introduced to a society, and it ripping through that society that had no defenses against it. Even when the society survived it, it did so at great individual costs, and "eh, we've had drugs before" would not have been a good heuristic to understand the results with. I do not know that AIs just answering everything is similar, but at the moment I certainly can't prove it isn't either.
helboi4 2y ago
I mean sometimes it's true. Like even in the past. I could very clearly see amongst my generation (older gen z) that there were plenty of people literally at university who were barely willing or able to learn. Comparing that to the generation of my much older half siblings (genx, older millennial), they don't even seem to grasp the concept of not being quite involved in your university degree. Most people my age will tell you that they stopped reading as a teenager because of the effect of smartphones. I was a veracious reader and only relearnt to read last year after 10 years since I got my first smartphone as an older teenager. These things are impactful and have affected a lot of people's potential. And also made our generation very prone to mental health issues - something that is really incredibly palpable if you are within gen z social circles like I am. It's disastrous and cannot be overstated. I can be very sure I would be smarter and happier if technology had stagnated at the level it was at when I was a younger child/teen. The old internet and personal computers, for example, only helped me explore my curiosity. Social media and smartphones have only destroyed it. There are qualitative differences between some technological advancements. Not to mention the fact that gen alpha are shown to have terrible computer literacy because of the ease of use, discouragement of customisation and corporate monopoly over smartphones. This bucks the trend that happened from gen x to gen z of generations become more and more computer native. Clearly, upwards trends in learning due to advancements in technology can be reversed. They do not always go up. If kids do not learn independent reasoning because of reliance on LLMs, yes, that will make people stupider. Not all technology improves things. I watched a really great video recently where someone explained the change in the nature of presidential debates through the ages. In the Victorian times, they consisted of hours-long oratory on each side, with listeners following attentively. In the 20th century the speeches gradually became a little shorter and more questions were added to break things up. In most recent times, every question has started to come with a less than a minute answer, simpler vocabulary, little hard facts or statistics etc. These changes map very well to changes in the depth at which people were able to think due to the primary information source they were using. There is a good reason why reading is still seen as the most effective form of deep learning despite technological advancement. Because it is.

agentultra 2y ago

So humans are supposed to review all of the code that GenAI creates. We’re supposed to ensure that it doesn’t generate (obvious?) errors and that it’s building the “right thing” in a manner prescribed by our requirements. The anecdotes from practitioners using GenAI in this way suggest it’s a good tool for experienced developers because they know what to look out for. Now we admit folks who don’t know what they’re doing and are in the process of learning. They don’t know what to look out for. How does this tech help them? Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? Studies such as this are hard but important. Interesting one here even though the sample is small. I wonder if anyone can repeat it.

diggan 2y ago
> Now we admit folks who don’t know what they’re doing and are in the process of learning. They don’t know what to look out for. How does this tech help them? Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? You can know enough in X to allow you to do Y together with X, which you might not have been able to before. For example, I'm a programmer, but horrible at math. I want to develop games, and I technically could, but all the math stuff makes it a lot harder sometimes to make progress. I've still managed to make and release games, but math always gets in the way. I know exactly how I want it to behave and work, but I cannot always figure out how to get there. LLMs help me a lot with this, where I can isolate those parts into small black boxes that I know they give me the right thing, but not 100% sure about how. I know when the LLM gives me the incorrect code, because I know what I'm looking for and why, only missing the "how" part. Basically like having 3rd party libraries you don't fully understand the internals of, but can still use granted you understand the public API, except you keep in your code base and pepper it with unit tests.
squigz 2y ago
> Do they know to ask what a use-after-free is or how cache memory works? Do they know the names of the algorithms and data structures? Do they know when the GenAI is bullshitting them? No, which is why people who don't pick up on the nuances of programming - no matter how often they use LLMs - will never be capable programmers.

MomsAVoxell 2y ago

I feel this, because it’s like I don’t need to know about something, I just need to know how to know about something. Like, the initial contact with a mystery subject is overcome by knowing how to describe the mystery in a way that AI understands what I don’t understand, and seeks to fill in the understanding. An example, I have no clue about React. I do know why I don’t like to use React and why I have avoided it over the years. I describe to some ML tool the difficulties I’ve had learning React and using it productively .. and voila, it plots a chart through the knowledge that, kinda, makes me want to learn React and use it. It’s like, the human ability to form an ontology in the face of mystery even if it is in accurate or faulty, allows the AI to take over and plot an ontological route through the mystery into understanding. Another thing I realized lately, as ML has taken over my critical faculties, is that it’s really only useful for things that are already known by others. I can’t ask ML to give me some new, groundbreaking idea about something - everything it suggests has already been thought, somewhere, by a real human - and this its not new or groundbreaking. It’s just contextually - in my own local ontological universe - filling in a mystery gap. Pretty fun times we’re having, but I do fear for the generations that will know and understand no other way than to have ML explain things for them. I don’t think we have the ethics tools, as cultures and societies, to prevent this from becoming a catastrophe of glib, knowledge-less folks, collapsing all knowledge into a raging dumpster fire of collective reactivity, but I hope someone is training a model, somewhere, to rescue us from this, somehow ..

llm_trw 2y ago
> But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so. --Socrates on writing

giancarlostoro 2y ago

How's this any different than someone 5+ years ago blindly going by whatever a Google result said about anything? I've run into conflicting answers to things off Google's first page of results, some things aren't 100% certain and require more research. I'm not surprised if this will make some lazier since you don't need to do the legwork of reading, but how many don't read only the headlines of articles before they share articles?

diggan 2y ago
> How's this any different than someone 5+ years ago blindly going by whatever a Google result said about anything You can interrogate it at least. "Are you sure that's the correct answer? Re-think from the beginning without any assumptions" and you'll get a checklist you can mentally/practically go through yourself to validate.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  True, so I guess what needs to happen is people using AI need to be informed on how to use it more accurately so they're actually learning source material and not just taking garbage / cheating on coursework.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    So we need to train inquisitive curious thinkers that look at things from all angles and understand why they know something.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      A friend and myself were talking not too long ago that people these days don't practice critical thinking. It might be worthwhile for not just schools but parents everywhere to teach their kids to think more critically, ask the right questions when presented with new information.
lm28469 2y ago

readyplayernull 2y ago

> Our research found that in the absence of differences in motivation, learners with different supports still exhibited different self-regulated learning processes, ultimately leading to differentiated performance. That's the most convoluted conclusion I've ever seen. > What is particularly noteworthy is that AI technologies such as ChatGPT may promote learners' dependence on technology and potentially trigger “metacognitive laziness”. Calculator laziness is long known. It doesn't cause meta- but specific- laziness.

empathy_m 2y ago

Cell phones and laptops in general have changed a couple of things for me, as someone who grew up without them: - I realized about 20y-25y ago that I could run a Web search and find out nearly any fact, probably one-shot but maybe with 2-3 searches' worth of research - About 10-15y ago I began to have a connected device in my pocket that could do this on request at any time - About 5y ago I explicitly *stopped* doing it, most of the time, socially. If I'm in the middle of a conversation and a question comes up about a minor fact, I'm not gonna break the flow to pull out my screen and stare at it and answer the question, I'm gonna keep hanging out with the person. There was this "pub trivia" thing that used to happen in the 80s and 90s where you would see a spirited discussion between people arguing about a small fact which neither of them immediately had at hand. We don't get that much anymore because it's so easy to answer the question -- we've just totally lost it. I don't miss it, but I have become keenly aware of how tethered my consciousness is to facts available via Web search, and I don't know that I love outsourcing that much of my brain to places beyond my control.

jprete 2y ago
A long time ago I had the idea that maybe Guinness started a "book of world records" precisely because it answers exactly the kind of question that will routinely pop up at the pub.
- dwater 2y ago
  Yes. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    Wow I had no idea the name literally came from Guinness beer. Brilliant!
indoordin0saur 2y ago
I'm just old enough to remember pub trivia before it was possible to look things up with a phone. I firmly maintain that phones ruined pub trivia.

roydivision 2y ago

This stands to reason. If you need the answer to a question, and you can either get it directly, or spend time researching the answer, you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former. You may be disciplined enough to do more research if the answer is directly presented to you, but most people will not do that, and most companies are not interested in that, they want quick 'efficient', 'competitive' solutions. They aren't considering the long term downside to this.

portaouflop 2y ago
What is the long term downside in your opinion?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- metalliqaz 2y ago
  I believe he implied by saying: > you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former that the downside is a lack of deep knowledge that would enable better solutions in the long term
  - roydivision 2y ago
    Yes, the downside is that we aren't really learning anything, just solving problems supported by machines that tell us the solutions. Any schmuck can do that.
    - reginald78 2y ago
      I think it is worse. Information will dry up (in a variety of ways) making it much harder to even learn the traditional way as we could in the past.
agumonkey 2y ago
that's why I mostly use chatgpt with platonic questions like - given context c, i tried idea a, b and c. where there other options that I miss ? - based on this plan, do you see missing efficiency ? etc etc i'm not seeking answers, i'm trying to avoid costly dead ends

ankit219 2y ago

There are two aspects to this from my pov. And I think it might be controversial. When i have a question about any topic, and I ask Chatgpt, i usually chat about more things, coming up with questions based on the answer, and mostly stupid questions. I feel like I am taking in the information, analyzing, and then diving deeper because I am curious. This is based on how I learn about stuff. I know i need to check a few things, and that it's not fully accurate, but the conversation flows in a direction I like. compared this to researching on the internet, there are some good aspects, but more often than not, I end up reading an opinionated post by someone (no matter the topic, if you go deep enough, you will land on an opinionated factual telling). That feels like someone decided what questions are important, what angles we need to look at, and what the conclusion should be. Yes, it is educational, but I am always left with lingering questions. The difference is curiosity. If people are curious about a topic, they will learn. If not, they are happy with the answer. And that is not laziness. You cannot be curious about everything.

engineer_22 2y ago
Like an indefatigable, kindly professor.
regentbowerbird 2y ago
> compared this to researching on the internet, there are some good aspects, but more often than not, I end up reading an opinionated post by someone (no matter the topic, if you go deep enough, you will land on an opinionated factual telling). ChatGPT is in fact opinionated, it has numerous political positions ("biases") and holds some subjects taboo. The difference is that a single actor chooses the political opinions of the model that goes on to interact with many more people than a single opinion piece might.
- immibis 2y ago
  An example (over 1 year old): https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/17dmevt/chatgpt_justice_is_a_fundamental_principle_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/17dmev...
- 2y ago

_aavaa_ 2y ago

A preprint is available on arxiv [0], see the top of page 18 for what metacognitive laziness is: "In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks." And they seem to define, implicitly, “metacognitive load” as the cognitive and metacognitive effort required for learners to regulate their learning processes effectively, particularly when engaging in tasks that demand active self-monitoring, planning, and evaluation. The analogize metacognitive laziness to cognitive offloading, where we have our tools do the difficult congnitive tasks for us, which robs us of opportunities to develop and ultimately dependent on those tools. [0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.09315

MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
> In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks. This sounds like parents complaining when we use Google Maps instead of a folding map. Am I worse at reading a regular map? Possibly. Am I better off overall? Yes. Describing it as "laziness" is reductive. "Dependence on [_____] assistance" is the point of all technology.
- amrocha 2y ago
  When you’re using a map you’re still navigating, even if you’re just following directions. The act of navigating teaches you spatial awareness regardless of how you got there. AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. You’re actively getting stupider every time you take an LLMs answer for granted, and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. LLMs (try to) give you what you're asking for. If you ask for directions, you'll get something that resembles that, if you ask it to 100% navigate, that's what you get. > and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted. Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people who used ChatGPT for the studying did better than the ones that didn't, with no different in knowledge retention.

enjoyitasus 2y ago

I think this holds water. Metacognition is really how the best of the best can continue to be at their best. And if you don't use it, you lose it. https://x.com/redshirtet/status/1879922330983358941 https://x.com/redshirtet/status/1879922330983358941

ziddoap 2y ago

I'm certainly of two minds on this. On one hand, this reminds me of how all of the kids were going to be completely helpless in the real world because "no one carries a calculator in their pocket". Then calculators became something ~everyone has in their pocket (and the kids ended up just fine). On the other hand, I believe in the value of "learning to learn", developing media literacy, and all of the other positives gained when you research and form conclusions on things independently. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle: leveraging LLMs as a learning aid, rather than LLMs being the final stop.

parsimo2010 2y ago
tl;dr: I agree. We don't teach slide rules and log tables in school anymore. Calculators and computers have created a huge metacognitive laziness for me, and I teach calculus and have a PhD in statistics. I barely remember the unit circle except for multiples of pi/4 radians. I can do it in multiples of pi/6 but I'm slower. But guess what? I don't think I'm a worse mathematician because I don't remember these things reflexively. I might be a little slower getting the answer to a trivial problem, but I can still find a solution to a complex problem. I look up integral forms in my pocket book of integrals or on Wolfram Alpha, because even if I could derive the answer myself I don't think I'd be right 100% of the time. So metacognitive laziness has set in for me already. But I think as long as we can figure out how to stop metacognitive laziness before it turns into full-fledged brain-rot, then we'll be okay. We'll survive as long as we can still teach students how to think critically, and figure out how to let AI assist us rather than turn us into the humans on the ship from Wall-E. I'm a little worried that we'll make some short term mistakes (like not adapting our cirriculum fast enough), but it will work out.
- mlyle 2y ago
  I am not sure calculators have hurt us much on the high end of mathematical ability. But man I cringe when I see 18 year old students reach for a calculator to multiply something by .1.
- largbae 2y ago
  I think you're right at the edge of explaining why this "laziness" is a good thing. Everything that we have made is built on what we had before, and abstracts away what we had before. 99% of us don't remember how to make even the simplest Assembly program, and yet we unleash billions of instructions per second on the world. Even outside of math and computers, when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away, freeing us to focus on ever-more-specialized pursuits. Those that are useful will too be abstracted away, and for the better.

robviren 2y ago

This technology is arguably as ubiquitous as a calculator. So long as I can understand that generative AI is a tool and not a solution is it bad to treat it like a bit of a calculator? Does this metacognitive laziness apply to those who depend on calculators? I understand it is a bit apples to oranges, but I'm curious peoples take.

alternatex 2y ago
I am definitely lazier today in regards to doing math in my head compared to when I was young. I think a comparison with calculators is possible, but the degree to which calculators are capable of assisting us is so incomparably smaller that the comparison would be meaningless. Smart phones changed society a lot more than calculators did and now AI is starting to do the same, albeit in a more subtle manner. Treating AI like it's just a calulator seems naïve/optimistic. We're still reeling from the smart phone revolution and have not solved many of the issues it brought upon its arrival. I have a feeling the world has become a bit cynical and less motivated to debate how to approach these major technological changes. It's been too many of them in too short of a time and now everyone has a whatever attitude towards the problems these adcancements introduce.

teekert 2y ago

Idk, the "explain {X} to me like I'm 12" has certainly helped my delve into new topics, Nix with Flakes comes to mind as one of my latest ventures.

charlie0 2y ago

I mean this is the same exact thing that happened when calculators where invented. The amount of people who can count in their heads drastically dropped because why waste your time? Ditto for when maps app came out. No more need to memorize a bunch of locations because you can just use maps to take you there.

hb-robo 2y ago
It's funny, the calculators were incredibly politicized when I was growing up (TI84 generation, so kids were getting caught programming functions to solve exam questions) but GPS was just taken as a given.

floppiplopp 2y ago

I'm at this very moment testing deepseek-r1, a so called "reasoning" llm, on the excellent "rustlings" tutorial. It is well documented and its solutions are readily available online. It is my lazy go-to-testing for coding tasks to assess for me if and when I have to start looking for a new job and take up software engineering as a hobby. The reason I test with rustlings is to also assess the value as a learning tool for students and future colleagues. Maybe these things have use as a teacher? Also, the rust compiler is really good in offering advice, so there's an excellent baseline to compare the llm-output. And well, let me put it this way: deepseek-r1 won't be replacing anyone anytime soon. It generates a massive amount of texts, mostly nonsensical and almost always terribly, horribly wrong. But inexperienced devs or beginners, especially beginners, will be confused and will be led down the wrong path, potentially outsourcing rational thought to something that just sounds good, but actually isn't. Currently, over-reliance on the ramblings of a statistical model seems detrimental to education and ultimately the performance of future devs. As the probably last generation of old school software engineers, who were trained on coffee and tears of frustration, who had to really work code and architecture themselves, golden times might lie ahead, because someone will have to fix the garbage produced en masse by llms.

diggan 2y ago
> And well, let me put it this way: deepseek-r1 won't be replacing anyone anytime soon. It generates a massive amount of texts, mostly nonsensical and almost always terribly, horribly wrong. But inexperienced devs or beginners, especially beginners, will be confused and will be led down the wrong path, potentially outsourcing rational thought to something that just sounds good, but actually isn't. Are you considering the full "reasoning" it does when you're saying this? AFAIK, they're meant to be "rambling" like that, exploring all sorts of avenues and paths before reaching a final conclusive answer that is still "ramble-like". I think the purpose seems to be to layer something on top that can finalize the answer, rather than just taking whatever you get from that and use it as-is. > Currently, over-reliance on the ramblings of a statistical model seems detrimental to education and ultimately the performance of future devs. As the probably last generation of old school software engineers, who were trained on coffee and tears of frustration, who had to really work code and architecture themselves, golden times might lie ahead, because someone will have to fix the garbage produced en masse by llms. I started coding just before Stack Overflow got popular, and remember the craze when it did get popular. Blogposts about how Stack Overflow will create lazy devs was all over the place, people saying it was the end of the real developer. Not arguing against you or anything, I just find it interesting how sentiments like these keeps repeating over time, just minor details that change.

_the_inflator 2y ago

What did the researchers expect? Humans are lazy by nature, they seek shortcuts. So given the chance to go rote learning for years for an education which in most cases is simply a soon to be forgotten certification vs watching TikTok while letting ChatGPT do the lifting - this is all predictable, even without Behavioral Design, Hooked etc. And that usually the benefits rise with IQ level - nothing new here, that’s the very definition of IQ. Learning and academia is hard, and even harder for those with lower IQ scores. A fool with a tool is still a fool and vice versa. Motivation seems also at an all time low. Why put in hours when a prompt can works wonders? Reading a book is a badge of honor nowadays more than ever.

diggan 2y ago
> So given the chance to go rote learning for years for an education which in most cases is simply a soon to be forgotten certification vs watching TikTok while letting ChatGPT do the lifting - this is all predictable, even without Behavioral Design, Hooked etc. Would you argue that having books/written words also made people more lazy and be able to remember less? Because some people argued (at the time) that having written words would make humanity less intellectual as a whole, but I think consensus is that it led to the opposite.
n4r9 2y ago
> the benefits rise with IQ level - nothing new here, that’s the very definition of IQ This is not obvious to me, and certainly is not the "definition" of IQ. There are tools that become less useful the more intelligent you are, such as multiplication tables. IQ is defined by a set of standardized tests that attempt to quantify human intelligence, and has some correlations with social, educational and professional performance, but it's not clear why it would help with use of AI tools.

nottorp 2y ago

Funny, I passed the link to a whatsapp group with some friends and the preview loaded with the title "error: cookies turned off". I'm sure my friends will RUSH to read the article now...

submeta 2y ago

My observation is that I learn more than ever using LLMs. I tend to learn asking questions, I did this using Anki cards for years (What is this or that?) and find the answer on the back of the index card. Questions activate my thinking more than anything, and of course my attempt at answering the question in my own terms. My motto is: Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Covey). And I do this in engaging with people or a topic—-by asking questions. Now I do this with LLMs. I have been exploring ideas I would never have explored hadn’t there been LLMs, because I would not have had the to research material for learning, read it, create material in a Q&A session for me. I even use LLMs to convert an article into Anki cards using Obsidian, Python, LLMs, and the Anki app. Crazy times we are in.

boromi 2y ago
What does your workflow look like?
- submeta 2y ago
  I use functions in openai and a template that forces the LLM to generate questions and answers from a text in a format that can be synced into the Anki app. Very straightforward workflow.
  - boromi 2y ago
    Very interesting, would love a more detailed tutorial on setting something similar up
polishdude20 2y ago
Yeah I've found the same. I might have some surface understanding of some topic and I like just asking "am I right in thinking this and this about this?" Or "Tell me why I'm wrong about this".
david_allison 2y ago
> Questions activate my thinking more than anything, and of course my attempt at answering the question in my own terms. This is very well-studied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect [not a high-quality article, but should give an overview]

bradarner 2y ago

Any time an empirical research project has to add QUOTES around a common term, it sets off the non-sense radar: ..."laziness"... In the battle cry of the philosopher: DEFINE YOUR TERMS!! What they really mean: new and different. Outside-the-box. "Oh no, how will we grade this?!?" a threat to our definition and control of knowledge.

vunderba 2y ago

I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of manipulating the problem in your head—critical thinking—is ultimately a craft. And the only way to become better at it is by practicing it in a deliberate, disciplined fashion.

motorest 2y ago
> The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. I get the point you're trying to make. However, quietly pondering the problem is only fruitful if you have the right information. If you don't, best case scenario you risk wasting time reinventing the wheel for no good reason. In this application, a LLM is just the same type of tool as Google: a way to query and retrieve information cor you to ingest. Like Google, the info you get from queries is not the end but the means. As the saying goes, a month in the lab saves you a week in the library. I would say it can also save you 10 minutes with Claude/ChatGPT/Copilot. Is hiring a private tutor also laziness?
- abathur 2y ago
  I'll stop short of asserting you don't, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself your reply does reflect that you get GP's point. If I were to reframe GP's point, it would be: having to figure out how to answer a question changes you a little. Over time, it changes you a lot. Yes, of course, there is a perspective from which a month spent in the lab to answer a question that's well-settled in the literature is ~wasted. But the GP is arguing for a utility function that optimizes for improving the questioner. Quietly pondering the problem with the wrong information can be fruitful in this context. (To be pragmatic, we need both of these. We'd get nowhere if we had to solve every problem and learn every lesson from first principles. But we'd also get nowhere if no one were well-prepared and motivated to solve novel problems without prior art.)

wsintra2022 2y ago

Inevitably the advancement of knowledgeable information generation will have same mental effect as having a contact list on your phone. When I was a kid I knew at least 5 peoples phone numbers maybe more. Even now I can recall 2 of them. How many can you recall from your actual contact list?

golly_ned 2y ago

I don’t see how the “metacognitive laziness” (a term used by the abstract, but not defined) follows from what they describe in the abstract as the outcomes they observed. They specifically called out no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; doesn’t that imply that the ChatGPT users were no lazier after using ChatGPT than they were before? I’m also a skeptic of students using and relying on ChatGPT, but I’m cautious about using this abstract to come to any conclusions without seeing the full paper especially given that they’re apparently using “metacognitive laziness” in a specific technical way we don’t know about if we haven’t read the paper.

tippytippytango 2y ago

This is not a concern when you are responsible for real results. If you aren’t responsible for real results you can pass off the good rhetoric of these models as an “answer”. But when you need results you realize most answers they give are just rhetoric. They are still extremely valuable, but they can only help you when you have done the work to get deep understanding of the problem, incentivized by actually solving it.

jmmcd 2y ago

In my recent programming exam (in an MSc in AI), I asked students to reflect on how generative AI has changed their coding. Almost all remarked that it's a great time-saver, but it makes them lazy and worse at coding. And yes indeed, their ability to answer basic questions about coding on the same exam has drastically dropped versus last year.

dragonwriter 2y ago
Is the problem the use of AI in coding, or using AI in coding in a curriculum designed without that assumption? Because if AI is an effort-saver, than a curriculum that isn't designed with its use in mind will just result in the students doing less work, in which case learning less is unsurprising but not really an "AI makes you less knowledgeable" problem but an "insufficiently challenging curriculum for the actual context" problem.

lxe 2y ago

Before pervasive GPS, it took me very little time to actually learn and internalize a route. Now it takes a lot longer to remember it when you're constantly guided. Same exact thing is happening with guided reasoning we get with LLMs

numba888 2y ago
I have different experience. It took me some time to make a rote and write down all turns. Now getting from location A to B is a lot easier. Take a look at proposed rote and make some corrections. Meanwhile I spend time thinking about something else. So, GPS doesn't make me stupid or forgetful. It's just a tool which makes me more productive. The same almost true for LLM, except getting the right answer isn't always easy or possible. But overall on coding small utilities it's very helpful. For reasoning models I still need to find the right tasks. May be more complex utilities. Or the one I can't get from 4o yet: red-black tree with custom memory management and custom 'pointers' in data objects (small integers). While custom allocators are supported by std, the implementation still keeps native pointers, which locks it in memory.

SpaceManNabs 2y ago

As technology gets more impressive, we internalize less knowledge ourselves. There is a "plato" story on how he laments the invention of writing because now people don't need to memorize speeches and stuff. I think there is a level of balance. Writing gave us enough efficiencies that the learned laziness made us overall more effective. The internet in 2011 made us a bit less effective. I am not gonna lie; I spent a lot more time being able to get resources, whereas I would have to struggle on my own to solve a problem. You internalize one more than the other, but is it worth the additional time every time? I worry about current students learning through LLMs just like I would worry about a student in 2012 graduating in physics when such a student had constant access to wolfram alpha.

wisty 2y ago

This is the old "siiiiiir why do we need to do this if we have calculators"? It matters - https://www.edweek.org/education/little-numbers-add-up-to-big-differences-in-high-school-math-tests/2013/01 https://www.edweek.org/education/little-numbers-add-up-to-bi... Students who know the facts will be better at math. Even if the computer is doing all the thinking, it's still a tool. Do you know what to ask it? Can you spot a mistake when it messes up (or you messed up the input)? Can you simplify the problem and figure out what the important parts of the problem are? Do you even know to do any of that? Sure, thinking machines will sometimes be autonomous and not need you to touch them. But when that's the case, your job won't be to just nod along to everything the computer says, you won't have a job anymore and you will need to find a new job (probably one where you need to prompt and interpret what the AI is doing). And yes, there will be jobs where you just act as an actuator for the thinking machine. Ask an Amazon warehouse worker how great a job that is :/ Everything is the same as with calculators.

xenadu02 2y ago

I wonder how will LLMs learn anything new when no one does original research and just asks the LLM? Will LLMs just feed back on each other, effectively hallucinating false "learning"? Maybe we'll end up as a society of a few elites who still know how to research, think, and/or write with LLMs digesting that and regurgitating it for the masses.

0n0n0m0uz 2y ago

That just demonstrates the difference between idiots and intelligent people. I use AI and chatgpt to learn about a zillion topics I am interested about more efficiently.

gcanyon 2y ago

1. Socrates criticized writing itself: in Plato's Phaedrus he said it would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories" (274e-275b) 2. Leonard Euler criticized the use of logarithm tables in calculating: in his 1748 "Introductio in analysin infinitorum" he insisted on deriving logarithms from first principles 3. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) initially dismissed mechanical calculators, stating in an 1878 lecture at Glasgow University that they would make students "neglect the cultivation of their reasoning powers" 4. Henry Ford in his autobiography "My Life and Work" (1922) quoted a farmer who told him in 1907 that gasoline tractors would "make boys lazy and good for nothing" and they'd "never learn to farm" 5. In 1877, the New York Times published concerns from teachers about students using pencils with attached erasers, claiming it would make them "careless" because they wouldn't have to think before writing. The editorial warned it would "destroy the discipline of learning" 6. In "Elements of Arithmetic," (1846) Augustus De Morgan criticized the use of pre-printed multiplication tables, saying students who relied on them would become "mere calculative mechanism" instead of understanding numbers 7. In his 1906 paper "The Menace of Mechanical Music," John Philip Sousa attacked the phonograph writing that it would make people stop learning instruments because "the infant will be taught by machinery" and musical education would become "unnecessary" 8. In his 1985 autobiography "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Richard Feynman expressed concern about pocket calculators and students losing the ability to estimate and understand mathematical relationships I could go on (Claude wrote 15 of them!). Twenty years from now (assuming AI hasn't killed us all) we'll look back and think that working with an LLM isn't the crutch people think it is now.

bibelo 2y ago
what was your prompt?
- gcanyon 2y ago
  The initial prompt was: Write a out a list of statements about how each generation thinks the next is lazy because they have it easy. For example, people who had to memorize trig or log tables would think those who had books to refer to were lazy. Those who used slide rules thought calculator-users were lazy. People who plowed with a horse thought early tractors were cheating. etc. etc. List as many examples as you can up to 50, leaning toward the mental rather than physical, but including both, and give specifics rather than generalities. My examples above are at the edge of what's acceptable; try to do better than I did. That got me a bunch of abstractions like: "Librarians who memorized the Dewey Decimal System dismissed those who used card catalogs" So I replied: Sorry, I should have been clearer: this should be real-world examples, with cites if possible. As one example, your point about photographers is no good unless some specific manual photographer actually said something about light meter users -- e.g. "Ansel Adams once said that..." and it needs to be not-made-up. That got me the first three. After I confirmed that those were good I got 4-8. I followed that with: more please. it's okay to add in a few "XYZ is supposed to have said that..." as long as they aren't completely made up, and they are in the minority. That got me the rest.

ashoeafoot 2y ago

We destroyed our artists for a mash up and then wondered why there was nothing new under the sun.