“AI isn’t getting smarter. We are getting dumber.”
Link here. The point the op-ed makes is fundamental: AI cannot add anything to the information it has. It might be able to compile that information well, but its analysis is always going to be limited because it has no true creative spirit. It is merely a software program, albeit a very sophisticated one.
This quote from the essay will give you the sense:
Maybe you just use AI to clarify your thoughts. Turn the mottle of ideas in your head into coherent communicable paragraphs. It’s OK, you say, because you’re reviewing the results, and often editing the output. You’re ending up with exactly what you want to say, just in a form and style that’s better than any way you could have put it yourself.
But is what you end up with really your thoughts? And what if everyone started doing that?
Stripping the novelty and personality out of all communication; turning every one of our interactions into homogeneous robotic engagements? Every birthday greeting becomes akin to a printed hallmark card. Every eulogy turns into a stamp-card sentiment. Every email follows the auto-response template suggested by the browser.
We do this long enough and eventually we begin to lose the ability to communicate our inner thoughts to others. Our minds start to think in terms of LLM prompts. All I need is the gist of what I want to say, and the system fills in the blanks. [emphasis in original]
Comments are of course welcome. But please read the full essay before doing so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The point the op-ed makes is fundamental: AI cannot add anything to the information it has. It might be able to compile that information well, but its analysis is always going to be limited because it has no true creative spirit. It is merely a software program, albeit a very sophisticated one.
This quote from the essay will give you the sense:
Maybe you just use AI to clarify your thoughts. Turn the mottle of ideas in your head into coherent communicable paragraphs. It’s OK, you say, because you’re reviewing the results, and often editing the output. You’re ending up with exactly what you want to say, just in a form and style that’s better than any way you could have put it yourself.
But is what you end up with really your thoughts? And what if everyone started doing that?
Stripping the novelty and personality out of all communication; turning every one of our interactions into homogeneous robotic engagements? Every birthday greeting becomes akin to a printed hallmark card. Every eulogy turns into a stamp-card sentiment. Every email follows the auto-response template suggested by the browser.
We do this long enough and eventually we begin to lose the ability to communicate our inner thoughts to others. Our minds start to think in terms of LLM prompts. All I need is the gist of what I want to say, and the system fills in the blanks. [emphasis in original]
Comments are of course welcome. But please read the full essay before doing so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The last line from the editorial made me laugh: “We are so dumb we just think the machines are smart.”
This reminds me of the sarcastic remark made about velcro straps replacing shoelaces. Are you not smart enough to consistently use shoelaces properly?! Maybe the shoelaces aren’t the issue here.
Artificial intelligence may one day evolve actual intelligence of its own, but I would agree that it presently serves more as an emulator than a true “thinker”. In various applications, it DOES provide a benefit, but I am thinking (Hah!) more about specific uses, such as cameras making use of “AI” to enhance autofocusing capabilities.
When it comes to actual writing or other activities, it seems that a form of emulation, rather than true creation, is all that AI is providing.
I mainly use LLMs as a search engine and sometimes a calculator. Writing, never. I’m one of those people who still writes letters and sends postcards, though. I do not like reading text that others have clearly generated with an LLM; it comes off as so lazy. You couldn’t spend the time to consider what you wanted to tell me? Why should I bother reading it, then?
LLMs are little more than search engines with Eliza-level chatbots bolted onto the front end. Like a search engine, they can be useful for learning what the crowd thinks about a subject, but they have no actual intelligence of their own, and their output can easily be poisoned simply by peddling enough lies on a subject on the Internet.
Well, we’ve certainly opened Pandora’s Box.
Low-level writing jobs, the ones generally populated by mediocre writers, are already gone. The amount of AI-content in online publications is significant, and growing quickly. I can tell generated text: no matter how well-written, there is something ‘off’ about it. It’s apparent there is no, for lack of a better term, soul, behind the words. And I’ve noticed, across platforms, that all generated text reads the same, no matter the subject. If ‘AI-style’ isn’t a term, it should be.
Like programming, writing is one of those fields that will very soon be open to only the brightest, and most creative, Humans.
FTA – “”Here’s the equation: The time it takes someone to process a piece of information should be proportionally less than the time it took to compose that content.
It should never take someone longer to read something than it took for another person to write.””
Perhaps, but there are many times where I might take even longer to fully process something I have read. It is so full of information (known & unknown) that I may re-read it several times, and access notes, footnotes, and more. When Scientific American Magazine was still publishing real science, I did not understand every single page. It made me THINK! It caused me to delve further and increase my knowledge and understanding. Whose to say what sources modern LLMs use?
FTA – “”Emails that take a receiver five or 10 minutes to read are taking a sender seconds to create. Maybe someone does the “responsible” thing and reads over their generated email before hitting send. Maybe they don’t.””
Whether personally or professionally, “hitting send” without re-reading & proofreading is a recipe for disaster. There are consequences for this laziness.
One other thought. One of my favorite parts of the Dune Trilogy was the comments about their modern archeologists. Turns out that the modern Dune archeologists no longer ventured out into the Universe. They simply “analyzed” previous work and “wrote something new.” They may as well have used a LLM.
Imagine an LLM using the works about Piltdown Man and The Crystal Skulls. The LLM is not involved in the “truth” of something.
Talk about Garbage In Garbage Out!