I love to disagree with things

When is the last time you demanded a government agency do something that wasn’t already their idea, and they did it

I would simply click I Do Not Agree and then throw the computer in the trash

(picking up phone) Hello this is Sherlock speaking

No it’s am not

More than stuck on

This seems like a bad idea, to me

Why would they do that

I can hear this picture

So don’t give them access to every device you can put your hands on. I had one computer growing up and I didn’t die. You not being able to figure this out doesn’t obligate the rest of the world to be Sesame Street. You brought them into the world, and you are putting these devices in front of them. It is your responsibility, not everyone else’s.

My elders never hesitated to say no to me when the answer was no. They were not worried about “alienating” me in that way. They weren’t there to be my buddy, they were there to raise me. You can’t be both of those things 100% of the time. You often have to pick one at the expense of the other.

give it time

How so

Then give them dumb phones

I love their music videos

This still seems too simplistic. You say you can’t know whether it’s right unless you know the topic, but that’s not a binary condition. I don’t think anyone “knows” a complex topic to its absolute limits. That would mean they had learned everything about it that could be learned, and there would be no possibility of there being anything else in the universe for them to learn about it.

An LLM can help fill in gaps, and you can use what you already know as well as credible resources (e g., textbooks) to vet its answer, just as you would use the same knowledge to vet your own theories. You can verify its work the same way you’d verify your own. The value is that it may add information or some part of a solution that you wouldn’t have. The risk is that it misunderstands something, but that risk exists for your own theories as well.

This approach requires skepticism. The risk would be that the person using it isn’t sufficiently skeptical, which is the same problem as relying too much on their own opinions or those of another person.

For example, someone studying statistics for the first time would want to vet any non-trivial answer against the textbook or the professor rather than assuming the answer is correct. Answer comes from themself, the student in the next row, or an LLM, doesn’t matter.

I’m not sure what you’re implying. I’ve used it to solve problems that would’ve taken days to figure out on my own, and my solutions might not have been as good.

I can tell whether it succeeded because its solutions either work, or they don’t. The problems I’m using it on have that property.

It’s already capable of doing a lot, and there is reason to expect it will get better over time. If we stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that’s not possible, we will not be prepared.

It often is. I’ve got a lot of use out of it.

But what good is that if AI can do it anyway?

That is the crux of the issue.

Years ago the same thing was said about calculators, then graphing calculators. I had to drop a stat class and take it again later because the dinosaur didn’t want me to use a graphing calculator. I have ADD (undiagnosed at the time) and the calculator was a big win for me.

Naturally they were all full of shit.

But this? This is different. AI is currently as good as a graphing calculator for some engineering tasks, horrible for some others, excellent at still others. It will get better over time. And what happens when it’s awesome at everything?

What is the use of being the smartest human when you’re easily outclassed by a machine?

If we get fully automated yadda yadda, do many of us turn into mush-brained idiots who sit around posting all day? Everyone retires and builds Adirondack chairs and sips mint juleps and whatever? (That would be pretty sweet. But how to get there without mass starvation and unrest?)

Alternately, do we have to do a Butlerian Jihad to get rid of it, and threaten execution to anyone who tries to bring it back… only to ensure we have capitalism and poverty forever?

These are the questions. You have to zoom out to see them.

*whomst