Ask HN: Will AI make humans smarter or dumber in the long run?
1 furrowedbrow 3 4/30/2025, 9:20:25 PM
Big question, probably too big, but let’s speculate wildly just for fun. On one hand you have the argument that the ultimate knowledge/productivity boost comes from combining humans and AI effectively, bouncing ideas off of them, looking things up more efficiently, tutoring, etc. On the other hand, the argument is that people will take the lazy route when available, just cut corners and take whatever AI says as fact and move on, all the while losing the capacity for focused, deep contemplation and subject mastery. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence in both directions. What do you think? Any research on this yet?
The reason that I think this is because it seems that all of the thinking-enhancement tech we've developed through history seems to have had that effect. They may be amplifiers society-wide (although I think that's a debatable assertion), but it's a different story individually.
> knowledge/productivity boost
That might be true, but knowledge and productivity are different things than intelligence.
This of course happens presently but to a smaller extent, last 4 decades at least with those attaining position that feedback loops or whatever data suggested they didn't really need to have a population educated higher than the position they might end up at, and with narratives on other agendas eg [1] pushed that much of the population just accepts that's the status quo.
[1] The most striking example I can think of, any time vegetable oil for fuel is mentioned in the news, almost without exception people will think biodiesel and the issues that might arise with certain engines. The reality is we never read much about cracking that oil into regular fuels as the industry presently does with some fractions of crude oil - I've only seen it mentioned it in one book, but it was IIRC written specifically for the petroleum industry in mind.
Evolution follows the path of least resistance