Is AI Making Us Dumb?

https://profgmedia.substack.com/p/is-ai-making-us-dumb

by obscurette • 5 months ago

16 10 5 months ago

profgmedia.substack.com

garciasn• 5 months ago

Q: Is AI Making Us Dumb?

A: No.

From the substack:

We can’t fully blame AI. After all, it’s only been with us for the last four years. This decline began with the internet and got worse with smartphones.

SideburnsOfDoom• 5 months ago

"We can’t fully blame X" Is a different proposition from "X is not causing Y".

The first only says that several things cause Y, it does not exclude X from being not one of them. Or even from being the latest and worst one. It's a qualified yes, not a no.

artisin• 5 months ago

No matter how you slice this apple, it's going to be lopsided. The real problem is that true learning is hard, ugly work, and the vast majority of people simply don't have the grit to choose friction over shortcut. Lord knows, I wouldn't have put in the grinding effort to learn how to code if I could have just bot-it. To make matters worse, you have advertisers masquerading as influencers pushing the notion: if you're not shipping 10 features a day, you'll be left behind. It's a perfect damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

jakupovic• 5 months ago

Yes

coderwolf• 5 months ago

I've been able to learn about niche topics far more after LLMs have become available. Reading through less materials, lets me learn about things right away. I'd say the same thing can happen for the students. The less friction to learning things usually makes things easier to learn. That leads the curious minds to more knowledge. That's a good thing.

nom• 5 months ago

@grok is this true?

selridge• 5 months ago

If we’re restricting ourselves to the United States, then we have to admit that we have been incinerating public education for decades. American schools have had to do more with less and eventually less with less, for as long as most of us have been alive. We have watched in the last 10 years and increasingly in the last five years high school graduates be less and less able to read.

None of this happened because of AI. We could if we want blame smartphones for it, but I think that’s also pretty dubious. We will probably succeed in blaming AI for this. If there is a history, it will get the dates wrong in the 21st-century as to when America lobotomized itself.

We are really not prepared for how few people can competently read and write coming to adulthood right now. It doesn’t matter because we’re gonna speed run the results. Kicking out immigrants en masse means that we can’t even lean on countries that teach their kids how to read and write.

whattheheckheck• 5 months ago

Many people that can read lack the emotional maturity to look reality in the face and realize they have to fight tooth and nail politically and bureaucratically to keep basic rights

metalman• 5 months ago

since you have to ask, then no, AI isn't making you dumb, it's making you dumber.

koalemos• 5 months ago

yes