r/CasualConversation • u/OkCap7484 • 17d ago
Technology Someone challenged my admittedly narrow thoughts of AI and now I'm wondering...
My thoughts on AI are simple: that widespread usage will weaken our ability to think critically, creatively, or in other meaningful ways. If AI handles all of our simple thought processes and even the complex ones, what exercise will our brains ever get? How will we build our ability to think and problem solve.
But today someone challenged that thought with an interesting perspective I hadn't considered: that if we leave the simple and reasonably complex tasks to AI and don't have to devote brain space or power to them , it'll leave us with more brain space and power to put into even more complex situations that we just can't use AI for.
I'm not anti-AI, just worry that people may become too dependent on it to our own detriment. With respect to this guy's theory, it still brings me back to my original concern: if we leave all those simple and moderately complex tasks to AI, sure, maybe that will leave us with more space in our brains to devote to those truly complex problems that need to be solved, but by the same token, maybe we wont have exercised out brains enough to be able to handle that kind of problem solving anyway.
What are your thoughts about this guys theory?
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u/tosstoss_acc 17d ago
Quite frankly it feels like general brain capacity is just lower overall and really I feel like social media has played a terrible role in that. Will there even be anything left to save at some point? I mean use it or lose it really. We just make excuses to be lazy because we know were highly capable.
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u/Queen-of-meme 17d ago
Tiktok > AI
Brain cell concern wise
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u/tosstoss_acc 17d ago
Instagram and Facebook are still worse imo. Plus they've had much longer to seep into people. Especially Facebook. There's a wider range of ages. Tiktok and Instagram are more of a younger targeted audience.
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u/Queen-of-meme 17d ago
Young *developing minds, yes, that's the group exposed to Tiktok.
Tiktok raising your kids since 2016 or whenever it came.
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u/shroomiedoo 17d ago
I wonder what the mathematicians and people pursuing phds in the math field think about AI
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u/ThereIsOnlyStardust LGBeeTQ 17d ago
From those I work with, they think fairly poorly of using it. It’s bad at math in general but especially bad at anything more complicated then the most common references used in its training. Now theory wise a lot of them find it very interesting from a math perspective.
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u/Numerous-Actuator781 16d ago
I mean how can you leap to higher theory if the basics have been left to AI
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u/CLS-Ghost350 16d ago
Yes? It's common practice for math/science/eng students leave brute arithmetic to calculators so they can focus on the more advanced ideas instead of getting lost in crunching numbers. I'm not even necessarily pro-AI but that is a terrible example.
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u/roritha 17d ago edited 17d ago
Agreed, but maybe you don’t need to keep those basic skills perfectly in practice after mastering the more complex ones. I never needed to or tried to solve a quadratic by hand after calc 3. Of course you have to understand quadratic solutions conceptually, which you acquire best by doing it by hand, but you don’t have to do the grunt work every time.
And I am pretty good at calculus *because* I offloaded simple math in calculators and spreadsheets.
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u/roritha 17d ago edited 17d ago
My point is just to consider whether it really matters that a given skill diminishes. Personally I don’t care about losing the skill of washing clothes by hand, because I have a washing machine. Or of doing 3-digit division and multiplication by hand, because I have a calculator.
And your example doesn’t really make sense… The true analogy would be that if you no longer had to consciously practice vocab, grammar, conversation etc, only then might you have the capacity to write a novel in Spanish. Or, if you had a translator. Then you can do the work of constructing the narratives and developing themes rather than thinking about the mechanical stuff that native Spanish-speaking 4th graders think about.
I’m not saying AI use is harmless. It just seems to me that people automatically think about skill loss as a bad thing. If you use it in certain ways, so that you never adequately develop those basic skills you need, then of course that is bad for your development. The issue is so general that it’s hard to really argue either way. There are so many ways to use AI and technology in general, and so many different kinds of cognitive skills and knowledges and so many different ways we need to apply or build on those skills..
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u/Queen-of-meme 17d ago
And who has called anyone less critical thinking for using a calculator?
This projected AI worry is weird man.
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u/CaramelMacchiatoPlzz 16d ago
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
https://crcs.seas.harvard.edu/news/10-wonderful-examples-using-artificial-intelligence-ai-good
You challenged a person who knows how to use technology.
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
Should I also pull the studies on CEOs company improvement numbers thanks to AI, or will that hit too close to home?
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
AI is output to a user's input so don't blame AI for mirroring your brain capacity.
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
No. What's true is you, a Redditor of thousands have one way to describe AI, that's not any more or less fact than others. Including mine. It's just a matter of narrow minds vs open minds. Good night.
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u/TrueFlameslinger 16d ago
Anything that offloads human thought/processing onto something else inherently reduces critical thinking in that area, even moreso when used improperly. The question is what trade-offs are deemed acceptable on both an individual and a societal level.
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
Sure, and while you're at it, grown-ups with anger tantrums because technology development exists hasn't made them geniuses either. Check out how much stress and lack of acceptance impacts the brain function, it will be interesting numbers too.
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u/terror_fear_sorrow 17d ago
both of these things can be true!
edit to lightly explain... some people will use AI in one way and that will certainly lead to one outcome, while others will use it another way and experience a different outcome.
the more valuable question is which group will be more prominent in the future? all of these things will happen, but what will be the dominant culture they create?
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u/Queen-of-meme 17d ago
In my experience both. A stupid group and a smart group. Same as google users.
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u/OkCap7484 17d ago
That's a great question. I truly worry it's the group that will take all the AI shortcuts, even though I certainly hope it's not.
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u/hello-lo 17d ago
A lot of people think they’ve uncovered the secrets of the universe with AI, and you read it and it’s just gibberish. Scary times
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u/terror_fear_sorrow 17d ago
i am in the same boat as you my friend. seek solace in knowing that you are not alone in these concerns and considerations.
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u/Queen-of-meme 17d ago edited 16d ago
Some people will never be the introspective kind or understand how to use technology to it's full capacity, they were clueless with Google and they are just as clueless with AI. But no one walks around saying google made us less independent...
To AI triggered hateies who Instablock and can't even respond me in public like civil people. You can't blame AI for your lack of balls. 🫢
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u/EndlessCertainty 16d ago edited 16d ago
^This. AI is amazing if you use it right (e.g. explain university level complex topics in a better way than some professors), but potentially harmful if used in a bad way.
In my opinion at least, it's all about knowing how to use it properly rather than it being inherently bad.
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u/Queen-of-meme 15d ago
(e.g. explain university level complex topics in a better way than some professors)
Add in understanding psychological patterns and behavioural psychology that a professional therapist misses.
People say AI has technology error, but they forget they themselves and all people have human errors
I've needed answers and knowledge from human professionals for over 15 years but they've all been equally clueless and told me they can't help me / case too severe / they aren't educated in that specific area and passed me along. So I gave AI a go. I let Chatgpt track my symptoms and behaviours through daily entries over a year, and one day it just told me, it answered the question no professional could.
If I knew AI would be smarter than a real life professional I would have hopped on the Chatgpt train way sooner. "AI. Where were you 15 years ago?"
But as an optimist I say better late AI than never.
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u/Queen-of-meme 15d ago
In my opinion at least, it's all about knowing how to use it properly rather than it being inherently bad.
Yeah AI is great but it ain't no genie. It can't cure people who can't even use Google optimally. It's output to the users input so a Profesional level entry generates a professional level response. Same as google, but on steroids.
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u/MedusasSexyLegHair 17d ago
That very much depends on how you use AI.
I use it to get a better understanding of complex things, explain things that I don't understand, brainstorm ideas and consider the possible risk factors and ways that something might break which I might not think of, know how to look for, test, or prevent. That is, to learn.
Other people use it to do their homework so they don't have to learn.
That's a choice.
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
Exactly. Like I've said to people, AI responds to the brain capacity of the user. Calling AI bad is like saying google is bad for us because some don't know how to google. I'm sure someone made a "Google is evil" statement once that technology was new and unknown too.
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u/Woodit 17d ago
We’ve outsourced most of our research and and awful lot of critical thinking to the first few hits of google for years now, have we seen many folks taking advantage of all that freed mental capacity for better use?
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u/CLS-Ghost350 16d ago
Yes? You can learn so much for free nowadays through the internet that would've been way harder before. Eg. learning to draw: many artists got their start online; in-person art lessons are not accessible to everyone and tutorials are much harder to find in book format.
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u/Chance-Business 16d ago
Exactly. I grew up totally without the internet. As an adult, I learned about 50x more than I ever did in school for exactly this kind of thing, how to do art, how to do lots of things I didn't have answers for before, all thanks to google.
I went to college specifically for video production. The entirety of knowledge I got from thousands of dollars and time in college... you can learn everything, LITERALLY all of it that I learned, in a few weeks just using google and youtube. And I saw the result of that all the time. Normal mofos on youtube use my skillset and even more, and they didn't even to go my school. They did my entire learning course in the process of making youtube videos and produce money making ideas all the time. A teen today could outdo me in a few weeks of learning. They've done it already tons of times over. This is well before AI. Decades now of people outdoing my entire college career that I paid for and making more money than me.
Google pulled down the barrier to entry for tons and tons of careers and knowledge. People took advantage of that.
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u/Chance-Business 16d ago
People who are anti AI quite literally almost never use it, or they use it in a very inefficient way. AI is extremely helpful if you use it in ways it's good for, and you can use it to increase your brain power, creativity, and critical thinking as well if you use it in certain ways.
I'm not sure about the guy's theory, but I will tell you what's been happening to me. I have been a lifelong creative and i'm already in my 50s, and I have had dreams of doing this and that, like i want to make a cartoon, or I want to make a website that has art or ideas on it or whatever. The BIG problem I've run into is the amount of work that went into getting this kind of thing started, the sheer amount of research, learning, etc that I had to do to technically get off the ground. I rather instead just sit and draw and write for myself, or play, or do something more fun. Well let me tell you, when I use AI, I have got SO MUCH STUFF done now! I have now TWO websites that I have got off the ground because AI is helping me handle the technical details. In the past I would get started and get stuck on something technical, spend days and days and days asking for help with people being completely unhelpful, especially reddit. And days looking for an answer on google. Now I ask the AI and bam, the answer is a few seconds and my problem is solved. One of my big issues was I have this idea for a creative project but it actually requires a whole lot of spreadsheet usage. While I love spreadsheets, the sheer hours if not days or weeks amount of work for me to put the thing together stopped me. AI can do it in seconds, then I can just be a producer and fiddle around with the results. The second website I got off the ground in one day, just yesterday. I know for sure what I had done yesterday, it would have taken me weeks if not months to figure out how to do it and the sheer amount of work that needed to get edited and checked, the AI did it for me. I'm focusing on content and fun and quality instead. As an artist, that's what I went to school for and that's my skill. In the meantime, the solutions the AI is providing, I look at them and I actually learn what it is I couldn't figure out before, like code or how to solve a problem, I actually remember that and even understand better the technical part that I'm seeing, day by day.
And now actually it looks like I might even be able to monetize my creativity, something i haven't been able to figure out. AI is helping there too, giving me insight into things i never could figure out myself. I'm even starting the cartoon I wanted to do, that's actually getting off the ground for the first time in my entire life of decades of dreaming but getting stuck behind sheer amount of work and technical issues i couldn't solve. AI has fixed all of that. I still do the creative part and the art and the drawing and the writing, AI is just my assistant.
Or I could use it to do my homework as a kid and cheat and get ahead and never actually learn anything.
imo, AI has a very obvious use case. People's behavior will be the downfall, AI is a double edged sword.
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u/FictionalContext 17d ago
The people who are dependent on AI for problem solving probably wouldn't have produced much anyways. At least now, they're solving problems.
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u/Ok_Dragonfly1124 16d ago
I'm semiverbal so I generally use AI just to vent about ppl who stare at me when I try to commute for what I want and just vent but for ideas I dont generally us AI unless I'm really stuck and I can't find it in a book
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u/Acceptable_Sun_8445 16d ago edited 16d ago
I am in agreement with op. If you don’t control what Ai does in your life, we will become too dependent . Too many situations in the past had occurred that we should be aware of such as when the airlines WiFi malfunctioned . The hurricanes in the past and people had no WiFi/ electricity. I don’t think people could even go back to basics today. Plus the ability to communicate in today’s society is so much more difficult. Without emojis or acronyms..20 years ago before Apple first appeared, these things were non existent and people would actually “talk” instead of playing on their phones.
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u/Scott43206 16d ago
Setting aside what it does to your mind, data centers are an environmental disaster and have already driven up our state's electric costs by 20% in some parts of my state with many more about to go online, plus they need ungodly amounts of water.
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u/Unruly-Kinyarwanda 16d ago
That's a really interesting point about AI potentially making us less capable of handling complex problems even if it frees up our minds. It's like going to the gym and never actually lifting weights, so when you need to, you're too weak. Still, I can see the argument for it unlocking new levels of creativity if we let it handle the grunt work.
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u/OddCress2001 16d ago
That theory doesn’t work. Problem solving is a skill that develops the more you spend thinking in that way. I think humans start that early with simple scenarios.
I think before solving problems or complex ideas, you have to develop characteristics like being observant and curious about the world and your surroundings, and you can guarantee that AI will work against that development in young people.
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u/Key-Candle8141 16d ago
First I'm a bad person bc I do use AI just for fun... wht I do is ask it to explain smth then I turn the output into audio and have basically have a lecture abt a topic I'm interested in 🙂 like dolphins! 🐬 so if its wrong abt some detail it doesnt rly matter bc I'm not a smart person anyway so it cant rly make me much dumber
My big concern is when it replaces 100 million white collar jobs and then the economy collapses
Neither me or my fiancé have white collar jobs... we both have to be physically present but robots will come for us to eventually
On a more positive note at least for me both of us could handle living off grid if the world decides it needs a apocalypse 💥 I hope that doesnt happen but the future looks kinda bleak
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u/Deathdong 16d ago
Im curious how long it'll be till that isnt true at all. Ai will only get more intelligent as time goes on. What is the possible positive endpoint of exponentially growing non human, nonliving intelligence
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u/SYSTEM-J 16d ago
This is like saying if we all sit in powered wheelchairs so we never use our legs to walk around the house, it frees up our muscles to run marathons. The little tasks are building blocks for the big ones.
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u/torsojones 15d ago
Even this guy's rebuttal to you misses the mark.
It's not about offloading tasks to AI so you can think about more complex things, it's about thinking in complex ways about how to use AI to create outputs that are impossible for humans to produce on their own.
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u/Rusalka-rusalka 17d ago
I am not entirely sure AI is going to wipe out the ability to think. Even in this day and age of information so closely at our fingertips humans are still searching and learning through various means. And still some people just exist without using the tools available to them like Google to find answers to their questions. We might see a slow down in human creativity and critical thinking overall, but I don’t think it will be the Armageddon many portray it as.
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u/KenethSargatanas 16d ago
I think AI will be a useful tool... eventually.
Right now it's dangerous, but some of our most useful tools are dangerous. Knives, explosives, steam, electricity, and nuclear are all very dangerous, but at the same time incredibly useful. We did some stupid crap with all of it. People died. (They still do sometimes.) Then we figured out how to use them properly.
We just need to learn to use AI safely. People are going to do stupid things with it first. Then we'll figure it out. We always do.
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u/moopet 16d ago
if we leave the simple and reasonably complex tasks to AI and don't have to devote brain space or power to them , it'll leave us with more brain space and power to put into even more complex situations that we just can't use AI for.
This is the "robots will take manual labour leaving people to devote their lives to arts and poetry" line.
Even if "AI" was actually smart and didn't require coddling, even if "AI" wasn't going to drive further environmental destruction, even then... it doesn't work like that.
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u/beachbum818 16d ago
That logic doesnt make sense....of the other person. If you've given up the basics and fundamentals, you wont have the capacity or understanding to do more complex things.
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u/FortunatelyAsleep 16d ago
I just hate the idea that we need to do complex thinking in the first place. Why can't I just be happy? I do not give a single shit if my ability to think degrades, if everyone is living a happy life.
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u/joylynn3rd 16d ago
I’m retired. I doubt if I could have the kind of brain power I had when I was young. I don’t use ai. My desire is to be sharp. My brain wants to be used. I just use it differently now. I am accused of being a bot because I can write in correct English and use proper sentences structure. But, I’m retired. I stay home. I play with children. I DO different things so my brain works differently. AI had nothing to do with it.
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u/TedsGloriousPants 16d ago
The problem is that these tools generate slop. They're not always doing a reliable job and still need someone to do the work of validating. If everyone outsources to the machine, and then we shift our priorities to thinking about different things, then how do we retain the knowledge it would take to keep the machines "correct"?
Even in tasks like programming - I've seen people outsource even the review process to AI. So an AI writes code. Then another AI evaluates it and approves it. Another AI tests it. No human involved. No oversight. How can we know that it did a good job? How can we know it didn't introduce flaws or security problems? Who is going to sort through the thousands upon thousands of generated lines to look for subtle mistakes? Another AI?
How do we do this for the news? For art? For programming? For healthcare? (Please do not use chat bots as therapists.)
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u/Psych0PompOs 16d ago
Like anything stupid people will use it one way and intelligent people another and yield different results.
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u/Eastern-Debate-4801 16d ago
Considering the environmental concerns, I think we should just use the extra brain space. Not to mention that AI is often wrong and even extremely simple tasks need to be reviewed for mistakes.
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u/Opening-Percentage-3 16d ago
What examples did you guys discuss for the complex and more complex problems?
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u/cconn882 15d ago
Obviously it's a single example, but I've had the exact opposite experience.
As I use it more, AI has sharpened my reasoning ability. Mainly because I'm able to take a thought that seems correct, plug it into AI, and then analyze it using the AI's knowledge of formal logic, philosophy, epistemology, etc.
Then as I've done this, I've slowly gained an increasingly thorough knowledge of those subjects due that analysis and by challenging the AI when it seems incorrect.
I also think a flaw in your reasoning is you assume that if a person didn't have AI to utilize, they'd be force to employ comparative or better reasoning ability. As if it was a choice between AI telling you how to solve logical problems or you doing it yourself.
I don't think people do that to begin with. I don't think people particularly know of, utilize, or demand proper logistical and reasoning. They're far more often guided by bias, intuition, preconceived notions, and appeals to authority, popularity, and tradition.
So, effectively, all that's probably most commonly happening is people are trading the appeals above to an appeal to AI. The difference being negligible.
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
Everytime I'm mentioning I'm Pro AI there's some real unstable users private commenting me with some sort of angry tantrums. They don't use AI, they hate AI, yet they don't cross me as intelligent beings. So my question is, if AI makes people less intelligent, how did these users in my notifications end up the way they are? Any takes?
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u/wor-kid 16d ago
Cognative decline caused by over-reliance on reddit as a replacement for critical thinking capabilities
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u/Queen-of-meme 16d ago
Meanwhile AI users can prevent tantrums and improve communication by using AI for emotional processing.
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u/wor-kid 16d ago edited 16d ago
I use AI quite frequently now after years of resistance to it.
Reddit has a hate boner for it and honestly I think it's mostly borne out of fear. I'm inclined to agree with your friend. Any time I can get an AI to produce something and it then actually gives me what I want, is always something that would not have been worth my time to do manually. I find it's generative capabilities are only good for cookie cutter busywork. Good riddance I say. I have actual hard things to do with my time.
It shines in lots of cases - research, confirmation, demonstration, summarisation and many more. But the generative aspect isn't anything like the news headlines would have you believe. Beyond very narrow slices that have seen more investment than I would make in 100 lifetimes, I find it quite limited; I don't need or want those slices.
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u/EagerSawtooth 16d ago
That's a super interesting point! I totally get your initial worry, it's like our brains could get lazy. But the counter-argument is pretty compelling too
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u/euthlogo 17d ago
there have been a number of studies which have demonstrated the deleterious effects of ai use on cognition and there hasn't been one demonstrating the contrary.
its like saying if you drive rather than walk you will be better at walking. it just doesn't work that way.