This doesn't seem like a well-thought-out post. I mean, I probably could have told you that from the fact that it's either pro-AI or anti-AI (in this case the latter), but this is a particularly poorly thought out post. Others here have pointed out the water-wasting red herring, but there are several other pieces of nonsense here — the general environmental doom-mongering, and labeling recursive self-improvement as "mystical", for example.
Me, I pointed Claude Opus 5 at a C codebase I've been working on for years and it immediately found five serious bugs and told me how to fix them, as well as how to use Linux system calls I wasn't familiar with to solve some other problems. And I gave it a new language for PEGs I'd written up a couple of years ago, and it wrote me a working implementation in OCaml that afternoon, fixing several bugs in my example grammars along the way and resolving a conceptual problem I'd had a roadblock on. I asked Fable 5.1 to implement a minimal proof assistant, and it wrote a clone of J-Bob in Python, which I'm studying now. Although there is a certain firehose quality to this stuff, I sure don't intend to use AI to actively de-skill my brain.
That doesn't guarantee that AI will be a beneficial innovation overall, of course! As with most innovations, it probably depends on the balance between people being able to use the innovation to gain control over their own lives, and people being able to use it to gain control over others' lives. (Barring a FOOM scenario, of course, where our prediction ability is nonexistent.)
So, I don't think a pro-AI post can be well thought out, either. It's too early and chaotic to understand what's going to happen, and it may actually be uncertain. Pro and anti are both far too simplistic.
I am sure many smokers in the 1950s also saw the health benefits of tobacco, that they were very happy to experience the increased energy after a smoke and could get more done as a result. I‘m pretty sure none of them felt their lungs and throats deteriorating either.
Likewise, you may not feel like AI is de-skilling your brain. But it probably is. We don‘t have the research (yet) that AI is addictive and causes brain atrophy, but all the evidence is certainly pointing that way, the same way the evidence were pointing that way about tobacco in the 1950s. My only hope is that it doesn’t take us another 2 decades to prove the obvious.
One thing I've learned in life is to accept that I'm in many ways an outlier, which means that even if the research is done, it frequently doesn't apply to me anyway.
Like I wouldn't doubt that research could show that more time spent on youtube is inversely correlated with learning. But if you just use it to watch lectures or tutorials for some skill, obviously you will be an outlier.
Or when "research shows that dieting doesn't work," obviously the result there is "research shows that most people don't maintain a healthy diet," and it shouldn't dissuade you from doing so. Choosing to do so anyway is what makes you the outlier.
And so it will likely go with AI's effect on the brain. Most people will likely use it to avoid thinking, and the research will show it to be a disaster. A small group will use (or already is using) it to challenge them and expose them to new ideas. You can choose to be in the latter group if you'd like.
> One thing I've learned in life is to accept that I'm in many ways an outlier, which means that even if the research is done, it frequently doesn't apply to me anyway.
This is a complete logical fallacy. It is quite literally mathematically impossible for you to not be "typical" for at least some aspects of your life. If you weren't, you'd probably be dead, or immortal.
Sure, I expect that if you gave me the LD99 of some poison, I will die. But there are still many things (and my point is this is one of them) where all it takes to be an outlier is to decide to be one.
I am pretty sure that likewise in the 1950s many smokers did indeed decided to be the outlier who smokes occasionally, and for the right reasons, and using the “correct” method/brand of cigarettes. And that every one of them decided that they were not gonna get addicted to nicotine. I am also sure that every single one of them did indeed get addicted to nicotine, and many of them died from cancer.
The majority of smokers did get addicted to nicotine, but significant percentages did not. However, it is true that even many "non-daily" smokers died from cancer as a result of their smoking.
I know that research on tobacco is full of bad science and bad actors, and experts in different fields (such as social psychology) continued to publish bad science on the topic well into the 2000s. This includes your 2002 German paper (which I can’t read because of a paywall).
Your second source says nothing about addiction in the chapter you posted, however they do talk about addiction in chapter 6, and they claim that most people agree that smoking is addictive, but heavy smoking is more addictive.
Still, (chiming in), your claim that " I am also sure that every single one of them did indeed get addicted to nicotine, and many of them died from cancer" could use some evidence to back it up.
My understanding is that only about 35% of those who ever try nicotine become addicted.
If you are going to instead say that nearly everyone who smokes occasionally will become addicted, you need to back it up with evidence, because it's not apparent.
I am speaking general. I don‘t have historical sources either that people spoke like that in the 1950s, and that is a much more glaring omission of citation. If I am wrong about that my whole argument falls apart. But if say 65% of regular tobacco users who use some strategy or otherwise believe the addictive properties of nicotine won‘t apply to them for some reason, then my argument still stands.
I don‘t know the figure here, but if it is true that 35% of those who try tobacco get addicted, and given that we know nicotine is highly addictive, I would guess that most regular users do indeed get addicted (and so would most people).
kragen · · focus · HN ↗
Me, I pointed Claude Opus 5 at a C codebase I've been working on for years and it immediately found five serious bugs and told me how to fix them, as well as how to use Linux system calls I wasn't familiar with to solve some other problems. And I gave it a new language for PEGs I'd written up a couple of years ago, and it wrote me a working implementation in OCaml that afternoon, fixing several bugs in my example grammars along the way and resolving a conceptual problem I'd had a roadblock on. I asked Fable 5.1 to implement a minimal proof assistant, and it wrote a clone of J-Bob in Python, which I'm studying now. Although there is a certain firehose quality to this stuff, I sure don't intend to use AI to actively de-skill my brain.
That doesn't guarantee that AI will be a beneficial innovation overall, of course! As with most innovations, it probably depends on the balance between people being able to use the innovation to gain control over their own lives, and people being able to use it to gain control over others' lives. (Barring a FOOM scenario, of course, where our prediction ability is nonexistent.)
So, I don't think a pro-AI post can be well thought out, either. It's too early and chaotic to understand what's going to happen, and it may actually be uncertain. Pro and anti are both far too simplistic.
runarberg · · focus · HN ↗
Likewise, you may not feel like AI is de-skilling your brain. But it probably is. We don‘t have the research (yet) that AI is addictive and causes brain atrophy, but all the evidence is certainly pointing that way, the same way the evidence were pointing that way about tobacco in the 1950s. My only hope is that it doesn’t take us another 2 decades to prove the obvious.
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗
Like I wouldn't doubt that research could show that more time spent on youtube is inversely correlated with learning. But if you just use it to watch lectures or tutorials for some skill, obviously you will be an outlier.
Or when "research shows that dieting doesn't work," obviously the result there is "research shows that most people don't maintain a healthy diet," and it shouldn't dissuade you from doing so. Choosing to do so anyway is what makes you the outlier.
And so it will likely go with AI's effect on the brain. Most people will likely use it to avoid thinking, and the research will show it to be a disaster. A small group will use (or already is using) it to challenge them and expose them to new ideas. You can choose to be in the latter group if you'd like.
voidhorse · · focus · HN ↗
This is a complete logical fallacy. It is quite literally mathematically impossible for you to not be "typical" for at least some aspects of your life. If you weren't, you'd probably be dead, or immortal.
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗
runarberg · · focus · HN ↗
kragen · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002204260203200220" rel="nofollow">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002204260203200220
<a href="https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-3-health-effects/3-36-health-effects-of-occasional-smoking" rel="nofollow">https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-3-health-effec...
The majority of smokers did get addicted to nicotine, but significant percentages did not. However, it is true that even many "non-daily" smokers died from cancer as a result of their smoking.
runarberg · · focus · HN ↗
Your second source says nothing about addiction in the chapter you posted, however they do talk about addiction in chapter 6, and they claim that most people agree that smoking is addictive, but heavy smoking is more addictive.
Windchaser · · focus · HN ↗
My understanding is that only about 35% of those who ever try nicotine become addicted.
If you are going to instead say that nearly everyone who smokes occasionally will become addicted, you need to back it up with evidence, because it's not apparent.
runarberg · · focus · HN ↗
I don‘t know the figure here, but if it is true that 35% of those who try tobacco get addicted, and given that we know nicotine is highly addictive, I would guess that most regular users do indeed get addicted (and so would most people).