Posts

AI: Mental Mobility Scooters for the Mentally-able

Image
(This is somewhat of a continuation to my AI, Technology, and the Death of Critical Thinking blog post, written largely due to the overwhelming sense of dread I feel when reading certain comments made by a particular kind of AI user.) "@Grok is this true?" LLMs exploit a fundamental flaw in human nature: optimization. I think the greatest threat from AI comes from how much we rely on LLMs (large language models). This is because, on multiple occasions, I've encountered people who, in my opinion, are already overly reliant on tools like ChatGPT or Grok to answer even simple questions. However, we are (perhaps unfortunately) a species almost solely focused on optimizing any task. Arguably, the only reason tools exist at all is that humans are essentially pathologically lazy. But users of AI tools, unlike users of the printing press or the car, often choose to set their brains aside and let machines do 100 percent of the work. This means, in these instances, that th...
Post a Comment
Read more

AI, Technology, and the Death of Critical Thinking

Of all the great 20th-century dystopian sci-fi novels, Brave New World stands above the rest, in my opinion, for its prescient understanding of how comfort and apathy can be used to control a population. However, what if, in reality, we were instead controlled by mental laziness, the path of least resistance? It was bad enough that we stopped needing to know how to search for information on our own, thanks to search engines like Google, which removed the need for effort and, possibly, some discernment when verifying information. But how will a technology like AI affect us? Many think AI's danger lies in its ability to replace human workers. However, more and more, I'm starting to believe that the real danger is that people will, again, like with search engines, offload more of their cognitive function onto technology. I've already seen people use ChatGPT responses as confirmation for utterly false information simply because it told them something was true. However, these C...
Post a Comment
Read more