31 May
2025
31 May
'25
10:30 p.m.
On Sat, May 31, 2025 at 12:46:16PM -0700, Luther Johnson wrote:
I think when no-one notices anymore, how wrong
automatic information is, and
how often, it will have effectively redefined reality, and humans, who have
lost the ability to reason for themselves, will declare that AI has met and
exceeded human intelligence. They will be right, partly because of AI's
improvements, but to a larger extent, because we will have forgotten how to
think. I think AI is having disastrous effects on the education of younger
generations right now, I see it in my workplace, every day.
There are quite a few reports from both teachers and university lecturers
that draw a pretty grim picture with two bad developments:
- a significant fraction of students use LLMs to cheat their way through
school and university, which means they'll never really learn how to
learn, acquire knowledge and actually understand things, leaving
them dependent on LLM support - this is reported to range from students
who just straight up use it as a shortcut to those who feel at a severe
disadvantage if they don't follow suit
- additionally, social media and short format videos appear to have done
an impressive job of ruining attention span and the ability to handle
a lack of constant stimulation, making it very hard for teachers to
even reach their students
We'll have to see how that plays out once these kids and young adults
approach "educated workforce" age, but I'm not very optimistic for them.
But we also see the opposing trend of parents who do understand the
technology (and its potential impacts on young, forming minds) trying to
carefully restrict their childrens exposure to these things in order to
both limit the damage to them and thus give them better chances in their
future.
Additionally, some of the smarter young adults seem to be realizing what
this does to their age group and are essentially going "I won't let my
brain get fried by this and will keep a careful distance" - I have hope
for them.
We're running some very large scale uncontrolled experiments on still
forming minds here with the long term consequences being at best hard
to predict and the short term consequences not looking pretty already.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison