Funny, the author of this piece was one of the two on the byline of the Ars article with the AI-fabricated quotes.
The cognitive surrender is the most predictable outcome. Many here will claim they'll rise above the path of least resistance and use AI responsibly, and even if that is true for many here, think about the most typical worker. Those who only want to go home at 5 after putting the least amount of effort into their job. Our society is about to be rewritten by them.
Don't know about that research but I certainly have read many HN comments made by those who drank the AI kool-aid (and I write this as someone using Claude Code CLI daily) where any semblance of logical thinking was gone.
I work in a creative field, and we've started to get a lot of clients using AI to generate initial concepts for us to build upon. The problem is, they're not actually thinking about these concepts, they're just generating until they see something they like.
Then, we have meetings where we will ask a basic but specific question about what they want us to make, and we're just met with blank stares. They have no answers, because they've never actually thought about it.
And then everyone else needs to do the thinking for them.
Yeah, realized this the first time I used an LLM to code. I've not used them since. No matter how good it gets, it's dangerous to lose touch of my own intelligence.
This is really dangerous. Several models like Grok get worse. Grok-4.2 spews illogical confident sounding propaganda. A reader who does not think might believe it.
On soft topics like politics models say something different depending on the prompt or the latest fine tuning. As Microslop say in its TOS, AI is for entertainment only.
Software is unfortunately dominated by fakers. Paul Graham said in one of his essays that the C students command the A students. Back then it meant MBA > software engineer. Now it means that the bullshitters in software command the intelligent ones.
You have to resist daily and expose the frauds if this profession is to be saved.
"Cognitive surrender" seem a bit of a loaded term for trusting the AI.
If you stop doing long division by hand and use a calculator is that cognitive surrender or just normal life? And if the calculator has the wrong answer and you accept that is that that surprising?
In terms of the danger of trusting stuff without double checking there seem more problems with Fox News etc. than AI which tends to be fairly neutral if sometimes wrong.
"And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows."
- Plato
I think no reasonable person would be against literacy in the modern world and similarly we will continue to adapt to new technology and be the better for it.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.2 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47632016
The cognitive surrender is the most predictable outcome. Many here will claim they'll rise above the path of least resistance and use AI responsibly, and even if that is true for many here, think about the most typical worker. Those who only want to go home at 5 after putting the least amount of effort into their job. Our society is about to be rewritten by them.
Then, we have meetings where we will ask a basic but specific question about what they want us to make, and we're just met with blank stares. They have no answers, because they've never actually thought about it.
And then everyone else needs to do the thinking for them.
On soft topics like politics models say something different depending on the prompt or the latest fine tuning. As Microslop say in its TOS, AI is for entertainment only.
Software is unfortunately dominated by fakers. Paul Graham said in one of his essays that the C students command the A students. Back then it meant MBA > software engineer. Now it means that the bullshitters in software command the intelligent ones.
You have to resist daily and expose the frauds if this profession is to be saved.
In other, moderate older news, cognitive surrender leads TV users abandon logical thinking, research finds.
In other, even older news, cognitive surrender leads newspaper readers abandon logical thinking, research found.
Shall I go on with how cognitive surrender leading to abandon logical thinking spreads out in history, AI being nothing special in this regard?
If you stop doing long division by hand and use a calculator is that cognitive surrender or just normal life? And if the calculator has the wrong answer and you accept that is that that surprising?
In terms of the danger of trusting stuff without double checking there seem more problems with Fox News etc. than AI which tends to be fairly neutral if sometimes wrong.
yes, you have surrendered to the assumption that the calculator can calculate quicker and more accurately than you can, almost invariably correct.
Now people are surrendering to the assumption that the AI knows more and can reason from what it knows better than they can.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows."
- Plato
I think no reasonable person would be against literacy in the modern world and similarly we will continue to adapt to new technology and be the better for it.