I'd argue that a huge portion of the working population have for a long time exhibited an inability to think - probably in part due to the meaningless, widget churning work they're tasked with - I don't think that'll change, however being empowered to learn and try things beyond your individual grasp by leveraging AI as for example a coding parter can unlock whole new ways of thinking in domains they'd otherwise not have the time to investigate.
Watch out horses! The motorised carriage is going to do away with your ability to gallop!
add-sub-mul-div · 15m ago
Nothing convinces me of an impending thought crisis than defenses of AI centering around comparisons to calculators or cars.
The average person didn't take freedom from manual long division to unlock whole new ways of mastering math, they stopped doing math at the grocery store and became docile enough to allow the rise of modern consumer economics, Uber, Doordash, Klarna.
And I don't know what invoking the obsolescence of horses is supposed to achieve. Yes, there are fewer horses for roles today. No, the remaining horse population hasn't been uplifted to whole new ways of thinking about labor and transportation. (I'm probably leaving myself open to a counter that today there are many horses living lives of leisure as pets.)
You're not going to find a sufficient historical analogue to general thought being the skill we no longer have to practice, you have to engage in new thought about the qualitative difference of this situation.
joenot443 · 2h ago
> Another professor notes that AI papers are replete with “seemingly logical statements that are actually full of emptiness.” A depressing thought is that students are incapable of discerning such intellectual vapor because their heads are empty.
This is depressing, indeed. I think this type of empty-headedness has been growing for a while and isn't just a result of AI, I think it's a result of people generally not having a well-tuned mental barometer for what makes for strong writing.
I think if you didn't read much as a young person, the sort of grammatically-sound and calmly-smug prose that GPT produces probably passes as "good" writing because it has all of the characteristics you remember that good writing must possess. If I may..
> Summarizing paragraphs must begin with strong statements. References can be made to previous points, perhaps acknowledge weaknesses, but the main structure remains the same. Our writing is confident, familiar, and satisfied - just like writing should be.
Unfortunately, I think this is similar to someone growing used to "good" meals from Cheesecake Factory and allowing that to become their reference point for fine dining. All the pieces are there, nothing about it is distinctly "wrong", but something feels off.
I don't pretend to have a solution.
nottorp · 4h ago
> Another professor notes that AI papers are replete with “seemingly logical statements that are actually full of emptiness.”
In my country we were calling this "wooden language" back when were under a communist dictatorship behind the iron curtain.
Lots of words that are designed to avoid any responsability for anything.
Now we're automating this.
BeFlatXIII · 35m ago
That's why AI is so useful in a corporate setting. Internally, those are communist dictatorships, complete with faking results to look good and wealth accumulating in the hands of those who are more equal than the rest.
pgryko · 2h ago
What happens when AGI is able to think better than us? Will governments close schools and universities as its no longer economically useful?
lm28469 · 1h ago
School, and education at large, isn't about teaching you what's economically useful. It's about building a society sharing a common base of values/morals, history, patriotism, as well as the basics of science, maths, &c. You want people who are able to think for themselves to iter and create new things which are in the continuity of your country's history.
The vast majority of everything you learn before university isn't that useful if all you care about is creating robots for your economy.
> What happens when AGI ...
What happens IF AGI ...
pier25 · 12m ago
Even if we reach AGI I doubt it's going to be economically feasible to run it for the average user.
Probably only for big corps and govts.
viralsink · 1h ago
It would be unethical not to have an AI life coach since your own decisions would be not optimal more often than not.
brador · 1h ago
The human decision maker still wins if you’re optimising your life for novelty.
See also https://smcleod.net/2025/03/the-democratisation-paradox-what...
Watch out horses! The motorised carriage is going to do away with your ability to gallop!
The average person didn't take freedom from manual long division to unlock whole new ways of mastering math, they stopped doing math at the grocery store and became docile enough to allow the rise of modern consumer economics, Uber, Doordash, Klarna.
And I don't know what invoking the obsolescence of horses is supposed to achieve. Yes, there are fewer horses for roles today. No, the remaining horse population hasn't been uplifted to whole new ways of thinking about labor and transportation. (I'm probably leaving myself open to a counter that today there are many horses living lives of leisure as pets.)
You're not going to find a sufficient historical analogue to general thought being the skill we no longer have to practice, you have to engage in new thought about the qualitative difference of this situation.
This is depressing, indeed. I think this type of empty-headedness has been growing for a while and isn't just a result of AI, I think it's a result of people generally not having a well-tuned mental barometer for what makes for strong writing.
I think if you didn't read much as a young person, the sort of grammatically-sound and calmly-smug prose that GPT produces probably passes as "good" writing because it has all of the characteristics you remember that good writing must possess. If I may..
> Summarizing paragraphs must begin with strong statements. References can be made to previous points, perhaps acknowledge weaknesses, but the main structure remains the same. Our writing is confident, familiar, and satisfied - just like writing should be.
Unfortunately, I think this is similar to someone growing used to "good" meals from Cheesecake Factory and allowing that to become their reference point for fine dining. All the pieces are there, nothing about it is distinctly "wrong", but something feels off.
I don't pretend to have a solution.
In my country we were calling this "wooden language" back when were under a communist dictatorship behind the iron curtain.
Lots of words that are designed to avoid any responsability for anything.
Now we're automating this.
The vast majority of everything you learn before university isn't that useful if all you care about is creating robots for your economy.
> What happens when AGI ...
What happens IF AGI ...
Probably only for big corps and govts.