It is a quirky article but the author, instead of engaging with information sources to understand what important thoughts people have had about these topics, feels the best thing to do is introduce new terms that other terms already exist for. This is basically just inductive bias plus the AI homogenization idea producing a distribution shift.
This is what happens in thought-isolation. It isn’t better than educating yourself, whether that education involves AI or not.
Phillip Kitcher is known for epistemic monoculture, Dawkins and then Henrich popularized collective intelligence and cultural evolution.
The thing about these fear pieces is concepts like the hollowed mind are reductive and that reductionism is based on a reductive view of (usually other) people.
But what actually happens is we have formalized processes and can externalize them. This is a benefit if you can use your newfound capacity and free time for something better, which I think most people ultimately will.
When I read pieces like this all I think is, resistance to change is a helluva drug.
I've been working on a project and using LLMs heavily to inform my design decisions. There's already a long list of cases where it has taught me things I wasn't familiar with, alerted me to possibilities I didn't consider, shown me how to do things that I was struggling with. In those cases I ask for references, and it delivers.
This is not "endangering human development". If anything, it's the exact opposite - allowing human knowledge to be transmitted to other humans in an accessible way that otherwise, usually simply would not have happened.
Of course, this all depends on using AI to enhance cognition and access to knowledge, as opposed to just letting a machine write all your code for you without review, Yegge-style.
I'm not saying there isn't a moral dimension to all this, and areas of serious concern. But the one about "endangering human development" is wholly in our individual hands. You can use AI to help you learn, or to replace the need to learn. The former will be better for human development.
One real lesson from this is perhaps that we need to teach people how to use AI in ways that benefit their development, not just their output.
I think it depends on the person. As a teacher, I see this. Some kids (the gifted ones) use AI to multiply their efforts. Most kids use to just get by and are actually coming out of the class with less knowledge than they would have without one.
> When I read pieces like this all I think is, resistance to change is a helluva drug.
When I read comments like yours, I’m reminded of (though I’m not comparing you to—I believe you are arguing in good faith) the cryptocurrency shills saying anyone who is against cryptocurrencies is just jealous they didn’t get in on the gold rush; they are incapable of imagining or accepting other people have their own reasons beyond what the author can themselves conceptualise.
When people criticise cryptocurrencies, NFTs, the Metaverse, LLMs, they’re not just stubbornly “resisting change”. Those technologies have important issues and repercussions which should be addressed, we shouldn’t just accept change unquestionably.
> Of course, this all depends on using AI to enhance cognition and access to knowledge, as opposed to just letting a machine write all your code for you without review, Yegge-style.
And the latter is exactly what is going to happen and is already happening in large enough quantity that it’s going to be a serious problem.
> But the one about "endangering human development" is wholly in our individual hands. You can use AI to help you learn, or to replace the need to learn.
That completely ignores the loss of skill that happens without you realising, as you lean more on a tool.
Usually when things are "in our individual hands" it ends very poorly.
This is because humans are actually extremely easy to exploit. Our biology is very stupid and also dumb, so even basic attacks can cause us to self-destruct.
And that's how we get obesity, smoking, war, I mean... you name it.
LLMs are basically perfect. While I'm sure some people, somewhere, can theoretically exist attacks from LLMs, on the whole I'm not sure that will be the case.
As I see it, LLM’s require far more self-discipline and introspection than people expect or generally engage in.
It’s a corner cutting machine that allows people to shift the burden of their work on to others either in the form of more slop we have to wade through OR more work we have to correct because they couldn’t bother to vet the results.
It’s like writing a paper, running spellcheck, then sending it to some less to look over for you without ever taking a pass yourself. It’s selfish.
> But what actually happens is we have formalized processes and can externalize them.
Even if I believe that is what happens in 10% of uses of AI, it doesn't excuse what happens with the rest.
Many people can not do mental math anymore and still more question why we need to learn math at all in the first place when we have simple calculators. "When will I ever use XYZ?" is a common refrain.
AI is currently developed and owned by billionaires who also happen to own news sources. If that correlation doesn't spark questions about why we shouldn't externalize processes to AI, you have likely been using AI too much already.
I argue that those people didn't forget mental maths in the last 1-2 years. They never managed them, as a consequence of flawed education, lack of practice, and so. Could AI be blamed for many things? Yes of course. But the plain ole boring enshittification and the general dumbing down definitely did not start with chatgpt.
I call the author out for not being widely read in areas where they are attempting to coin neologisms. If that seems like insulting someone’s intelligence and telling them to calm down to you then I’m not sure this will be a productive conversation.
Coining new terms for established ideas is not intellectual contribution — it is, in Wiredu’s language, the opposite of conceptual decolonization. The topic does not need new vocabulary. The author needs to read more widely, cite more justly, and recognize that the scholars they overlook understood these problems first, understood them more deeply, and in some cases paid significant professional costs for doing so.
She didn't claim to be an expert, so she doesn't have to satisfy any "standards".
You consider yourself intellectual but you don't apply benefit of the doubt? You neither offered reasonable correction, only a thin bun with a lot of beef.
Let’s not avoid the problem by being disingenuous. The below, to you, does not qualify as trying to be an intellectual? The author skips over 150 years of engagement with Peirce and tries to go straight back to the source but fails to locate any actual reason to do so:
> In the research phase of this article, I came to the conclusion that existing system models are insufficient as they do not describe the process of how human knowledge, ideas and concepts evolve and how they are connected in a form that makes the idea of this work easily understandable. That is why I propose the “Dynamic Dialectic Substrate” to describe a model of cognition including the resulting dynamics and evolution. I hope this system model helps to understand this article. I choose the name “Dynamic Dialectic Substrate” because it symbolizes the obvious dialectic process, but other than the popular understanding of dialectic, it is, in my understanding, not static and rather dynamic, which I wanted to explicitly include in the name. Also, although a substrate is usually thought of as something passive, it is used here in a very active way. The idea was that humans (and apparently also AIs) are the actors and the Dynamic Dialectic Substrate is just the pool or medium out of which the actors draw their dialectics and, in doing so, changing the substrate itself. One could also say that the Dynamic Dialectic Substrate is just Pragmatism (C.S. Peirce’s logic of abduction) or Evolutionary Epistemology… if you have this perspective, please ask yourself if it is really REALLY the same and if the Dynamic Dialectic Substrate is not a much better representation of what needs to be grasped here.
I know that there are many theories of cognition like Conceptual blending, Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis and also in some sense Memetics, but they all catch only parts of what we need here to understand the problem, like they only describe the mechanism of cognition or the transport mechanism of memes. The Hegelian Dialectic is too abstract, widely misunderstood, and bloated while vague at the same time. For example, the Hegelian Dialectic is often perceived as static and not dynamic, although Hegel would probably be very angry about that. It is by the way a common misconception that the Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis model is from Hegel, it is actually from Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus. ↩
Dialectic, also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and rhetoric; the object is more an eventual and commonly held truth than the ‘winning’ of an (often binary) competition.
I have provided several references to authors who developed material subject to peer review that would belong in an properly cited article. You have contributed exactly nothing to the discussion except trying to imply I am responding out of sexism, and then implying that someone referencing Peirce and stating they feel there is a need for a new informational substrate without engaging with any of the work since is not acting as an “intellectual.”
so i am not entirely sure what you mean with "trying to be an intellectual", to me it sounds like a personal attack tbh and a quite cynic one.
I wanted to preventively write about all the concepts i have looked at because i wanted to prevent that people get hung up on the form and stop discussing about the content the the core message of my post.
As i wrote i don't see that "150 years of Peirce" have produced a model that is similar to what i am trying to say here.
You apparently take a offence in whatever you are offended and i want to give you a chance to speak with me directly about whatever you seem to think i have missed under the precondition that you try to actually engage with my text and don't hand wave it in a cynical fashion like you did until now.
I have looked, as i wrote, at Peirce and although he describes theories that are similar to the end effects of the DDS with AI-skew, it still is something completely different.
Besides that i am saddened that you seem to put form over content and that you did not really engage with the blog post itself.
I said she didn't claim to be an expert. I said you consider yourself an intellectual. Don't twist my words for your false arguments. I wanted to hear from you that you are just slamming her for the sake of it. I got multiple answers.
You again go on an pseudo intellectual LLM assisted rampage just for the win. You don't contribute to the discussion, you erode it.
It's nuts that I use the pronouns of the author, and you turn it into an sexism accusation.
I am not sure without additional clarification, but by “pseudo intellectual LLM assisted rampage” you seem to be referring to the long passage I pulled verbatim from the notes section of the author’s post.
I am not sure what argument you are making about sexism but it seems like we are not having the same conversation.
We disagree that “not claiming to be an expert” is sufficient cover for “apparently not having read much at all in the topical area.”
You are actively misunderstanding me. Of course I can differ your text from quoted text. Is that really the way you see disagreement? Others got you wrong in the most miserable way?
You insinuated that I've accused you of sexism. Which is simply not true, not even implied. To make it very clear: You are harsh without reason and hide behind intellectual gibberish.
If it is your opinion she is doing it wrong and I give her too much credit, that's fine. You don't have to prove it, it's sufficient to say it. I am happy to disagree.
Thank you for disclosing that your entire purpose was ad hominem, it makes it easier to understand why it was difficult to pin down your criticisms of my arguments.
I think we're excluding from this analysis the probability that these "AI" products will remain truly unbiased and free from external (corporate) influences.
When AI gains true marketshare in the "think-space", I have zero trust that the corporate overlords controlling these machines will use them in the fairest interests of humanity.
>This is a benefit if you can use your newfound capacity and free time for something better, which I think most people ultimately will.
I think for a lot of of us the problem is that this is not a given. It’s often promised and rarely occurs, especially in the modern era. Increased productivity usually just means increased demands in the workplace.
Similar to What people were saying about television. They imagined it would bring Shakespeare to the masses, but what ultimately ended up happening is television met people where they are hence we got reality TV. There’s no reason to believe AI won’t be similar.
If you want to watch Shakespeare on your TV you are welcome to. But also I don't think that's the point at all. If it's my job to hammer 100 nails a day, and then my boss gives me a hammer that is 10x more effective. I don't get to go home early, I'm just expected to hammer 1000 nails now. Maybe the work becomes more pleasant, maybe it doesn't. But either way it definitely benefits the boss and the person who makes the hammer.
This is what happens in thought-isolation. It isn’t better than educating yourself, whether that education involves AI or not.
Phillip Kitcher is known for epistemic monoculture, Dawkins and then Henrich popularized collective intelligence and cultural evolution.
The thing about these fear pieces is concepts like the hollowed mind are reductive and that reductionism is based on a reductive view of (usually other) people.
But what actually happens is we have formalized processes and can externalize them. This is a benefit if you can use your newfound capacity and free time for something better, which I think most people ultimately will.