Discussing this in terms of anecdotes of whether people will use these tools to learn, or as mental crutches.. seems to be the wrong framing.
Stepping back - the way fundamental technology gets adopted by populations always has a distribution between those that leverage it as a tool, and those that enjoy it as a luxury.
When the internet blew up, the population of people that consumed web services dwarfed the population of people that became web developers. Before that when the microcomputer revolution was happening, there were once again an order of magnitude more users than developers.
Even old tech - such as written language - has this property. The number of readers dwarfs the number of writers. And even within the set of all "writers", if you were to investigate most text produced, you'd find that the vast majority of it is falls into that long tail of insipid banter, gossip, diaries, fanfiction, grocery lists, overwrought teenage love letters, etc.
The ultimate consequences of this tech will depend on the interplay between those two groups - the tool wielders and the product enjoyers - and how that manifests for this particular technology in this particular set of world circumstances.
> The number of readers dwarfs the number of writers.
That's a great observation!
'Literacy' is defined as the ability to both read and write. People as a rule can write, even if it isn't a novel worth publishing they do have the ability to encode a text on a piece of paper. It's a matter of quality rather than ability (at least, in most developed countries, though even there there are still people who can not read or write).
So think that you could fine-tune that observation to 'there is a limited number of people that provide most of the writings'. Observing for instance Wikipedia or any bookstore would seem to confirm that. If you take HN as your sample base then there too it holds true. If this goes for one of our oldest technologies it should not be surprising that on a forum dedicated to creating businesses and writing the ability to both read and write are taken for granted. But they shouldn't be.
The same goes for any other tech: the number of people using electronics dwarfs the number of circuit designers, the number of people using buildings dwarfs architects and so on, all the way down to food consumption and farmers or fishers.
Effectively this says: 'we tend to specialize' because specialization allows each to do what they are best at. Heinlein's universal person ('specialization is for insects') is an outlier, not the norm, and probably sucks at most of the things they claim to have ability for.
> Heinlein's universal person ('specialization is for insects') is an outlier, not the norm, and probably sucks at most of the things they claim to have ability for.
This is quoted elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45482479). Most of the things are stuff that you will be doing at some point in your life, that are socially expected from every human at part of human life or things you do daily. It also only says you should be able to do it, it does not need to be good; but should the case arise, that you are required to do it, you should be able to deal with it.
>those that leverage it as a tool, and those that enjoy it as a luxury.
Well the current vision right now seems to be for the readers to scroll AI TikTok and for writers to produce AI memes. I'm not sure who really benefits here.
That's my primary problem as of now. It's not necessary used as some luxury tool or some means of entertainment. It's effectively trying to outsource knowledge itself. Using ChatGPT as a Google substitute has consequences to readers, and using it to cut corners for writers has even worse consequences. I don't think we've had tech like this that can argued as dangerous on both sides of the aisle simultaneously.
> I don't think we've had tech like this that can argued as dangerous on both sides of the aisle simultaneously.
On the contrary, all tech is like this. It is just the first time that the knowledge workers producing the tech are directly affected so they see first hand the effects of their labor. That really is the only thing that is different.
I really hate this dismissal of "well it's affecting YOU now so now it's an issue". I'm not just "knowledge worker" and have grown up seeing the dangers of the internet, social media, invasion of privacy, and radicalization through seemingly benign channels. I've witnessed wars, unrest, and oppressions throughout all stages of my life.
So let's not just handwave it as "nothing special" and actually demonstrate why this isn't special. Most other forms of technological progress have shown obvious benefits to producers and consumers. Someone is always harmed in the short term, yes. But society's given them ways to either retire or seek new work if needed. I'm not seeing that here.
> I really hate this dismissal of "well it's affecting YOU now so now it's an issue". I'm not just "knowledge worker" and have grown up seeing the dangers of the internet, social media, invasion of privacy, and radicalization through seemingly benign channels. I've witnessed wars, unrest, and oppressions throughout all stages of my life.
Sorry, but my comment wasn't about you in particular. It was about the tech domain in general. I know absolutely nothing about you so I would not presume to make any statements about you in that sense.
> But society's given them ways to either retire or seek new work if needed. I'm not seeing that here.
No, not really. For the most part they became destitute and at some point they died.
What you are not seeing is that this is the end stage of technological progress, the point at which suddenly a large fraction of the people is superfluous to the people in charge. Historically such excess has been dealt with by wars.
>For the most part they became destitute and at some point they died
Having opportunity doesn't mean they will seize it. I will concede that if you are disrupted and in your 50's (not old enough to retire, and where it becomes difficult to be re-hired unless you're management) you get hit especially hard.
But it's hard to see the current landscape of jobs now and suggest that boomers/older GenX had nothing to fall back on when these things happen. These generations chided millennials and Gen Z for being "too proud to work a grill". Nowadays you're not even getting an interview at McDonald's after submitting hundreds of applications. That's not an environment that let's you "bounce back" after a setback.
>Historically such excess has been dealt with by wars.
Indeed. We seem to be approaching that point, and it's already broken out in several places. When all other channels are exhausted, humans simply seek to overthrow the ones orchestrating their oppression.
In this case that isn't AI. At least not yet. But it's a symptom of how they've done this.
> Having opportunity doesn't mean they will seize it.
Well, in that sense everybody has opportunity. But I know quite a few people who definitely would not survive their line of employment shutting down. A lot of them have invested decades in their careers and have life complications, responsibilities and expenses that stop them from simply 'seizing opportunity'. For them it would be the end of the line, hopefully social security would catch them but if not then I have no idea how they would make it.
Generally speaking, yes. I do understand not everyone has the opportunities for life circumstances beyond their control. So I don't want to belittle that.
But speaking in macroeconomics, most people have the capacity to readjust if needed. I had to do so these last few years (and yes, am thankful I am "able bodied" and have a family/friend network to help me out when at my lowest points). And the market really sucks, but I eventually found some things. Some related to my career, some not.
But I'm 30. In the worst worst cases, I have time and energy to pivot. The opportunities out there are dreadful all around, though.
> most people have the capacity to readjust if needed
I am not so sure about that. I know I can. But I also know that I'm pretty privileged, where most people are not.