upvote
The important thing is that I could learn to use a flint and steel pretty easily if I wanted to. I don't need to carry out that particular task, but my ability to adapt to new problems means I can carry out more relevant tasks when needed. The most useful part of school and university for me wasn't that I learned the difference between a cirrocumulus and a cirrostratus cloud in geography class. It's that I learned how to learn.

If we let children cheat their way through school and justify it by saying they don't really need to think for themselves anymore, then we're going to end up with a generation of adults who struggle to take on any difficult tasks at all. I suppose your counter-argument to that will be "but we can just hand over everything to the AI" but that's an essentially an argument that humans should be considered obsolete altogether. I sincerely hope that that's not a path we end up going down (although I'm genuinely scared that it is).

reply
It’s not ‘even the learned how to learn’.

It’s the exposure to feeling under pressure, creativity of the mind etc - the less you expose a human to ‘suffering’ the more useless they become.

reply
[dead]
reply
These are students aged 12-18. Even if we ignore all the other negative externalities of AI and assume it will be ubiquitous and cheap, kids need repetition and exercises to make inferences and develop intuition.

Sure - you can ask AI to, for instance, calculate how much money you'll have given a fixed principal and a compounding interest rate. But we need to get a kid to the point where they even understand what the question to be answered is. If they're using AI all along the way, they are developing less understanding of what fractions and exponential growth are.

Will it stop the really smart and motivated kids? Of course not. But at population scale there will be big consequences.

reply
You need some baseline knowledge to be able to gauge the correctness of answers you get from AI and to be able to ask the right questions. Removing homework and exams seems very short-sighted.
reply
deleted
reply
deleted
reply
> We also don't know how to use flint and steel to start fires any more.

Tell me you weren't a Boy Scout without telling me you weren't a Boy Scout.

reply
Sure. Let's not think too hard about what it means that general thinking and creativity are the skills we've stopped practicing this time. It will be fine.

(You may be making the same point as me or the opposite point, I can't tell what's sarcasm anymore. I try to make mine obvious.)

reply
Why one would care? Look at your comment from two days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363319

> I hope we'll figure out some equitable society before that, but I'm not going to bet on it, so I'll do what I can to be on the side of the winners.

Obviously people care if they think they might lose out.

Is it going to be this hopes-and-prayers about egalitarianism/ah screw it I hope I get to oppress and dominate the majority? Or all of us sipping wine on the beach for eternity?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366313

You gotta pick a lane with your rah-rah-ism.

reply
deleted
reply
I believe 4 things:

1) We're building a tool that can make toil of every kind obsolete. We're not there yet, but I'm watching it happen in real time.

2) The fact that it works so well economically means that it's inevitably going to take over. Humans simply won't be profitably employable, and this will happen sooner than you think.

3) The takeover could lead to a utopia, where nothing is needed of anyone, and you could do what you want when you want it.

4) Humans are likely fuck that up, and it's worth doing what you can to end up in the group that benefits. Sipping wine on the beach isn't mutually exclusive with a great deal going to the winners.

I do not believe that human brains are magical, and I think that they can be surpassed with manufactured brains.

Concerns over equitable the distribution is doesn't affect the value of skills.

I get it, there's a strong anti-AI vibe here because of point 4. I'm somewhat worried, but I'm also really excited about the possiblilities, and I don't think we can avoid going to a fully AI future no matter how anti-AI you are; we can only figure out where to set the dial on how the rewards get shared.

reply
you know we let social media companies cause massive harm over 2 decades; but clearly, this will be deifferent!
reply