[trod1234]

I don't use AI at all, primarily because I believe its harmful and I am quite mindful of things.

I've observed colleagues who have used it extensively, I've often been a late adopter for things that carry unspecified risk; and AI was already on par with Pandora's box in my estimation when the weights were first released; I am usually perceptually pretty far ahead of the curve naturally (and accurately so).

Objectively, I've found these colleagues attitude, mental alacrity, work product, and abstract reasoning skills have degraded significantly in reference to their prior work pre-AI. They tried harder, got more actual work done, and were able to converse easily and quickly before. Now its, let me get back to you; and you get emails which have been quite clearly put through an LLM, with no real reasoning happening.

What is worse, is its happened in ways they largely do not notice, and when objective observations are pointed out, they don't take kindly to the feedback despite it not being an issue with them, but with their AI use, and the perceptual blindspots it takes advantage of. Many seem to be adopting destructive behaviors common to junkies, who have addiction problems.

I think given sufficient time, this trend will be recognized; but not before it causes significant adverse effects.

[dosco189]

This is super interesting, could you share some examples? Plenty of philosophers are with you in that technology doesn't just exist as a "tool" but actively affects the ways in which we perceive and relate to the world, and understand ourselves.

What are some ways in which you have seen the perceptual abilities of coworkers erode over time?

An efficiency oriented logic makes us think that we're getting the work done "faster", and it "feels" like faster time to market, but in reality you experience a slowdown and a decline in quality...

PS: my own dependance on Wispr (a speech to text dictation tool) changed the way I write / interact with computers - my over-reliance meant I didn't proofread the title, and the "EXTEND" sticks out like a sore thumb...

[trod1234]

Although I do read a lot of philosophy books, I came to this point of view from a different direction.

I took a course awhile back taught by a retired military professor on communications and it was eye-opening. He covered what you would expect but with a slant towards 5GW, irregular warfare, political warfare; and heavily referenced Gershanek as a supplemental book; which is published by Navy Press. (https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Political%20Warfare_web.pd...)

Communications holds a privileged position that is tied strongly to and influences our individual psychology and identity.

Reflected appraisal is how we adopt culture from our parents, and it can be manipulated to distort that in ways that are harmful, if you understand the mechanics; and distortions cause psychological stress (the basis for torture), which can be used for malign influence, destructive interference of core identity, compulsion, or torture.

This along with other structures, elements, and clustering, can cause changes where if you aren't mindful of your environment, you don't recognize its happened, all you have is confusion, as your identity/soul gets pealed back and hollowed out, and this is the basis for how cult programming, and the related involuntary hypnosis works in practice. The same goes for PoWs from the 1950s.

There's quite a lot of material on this if you know where to look.

> Some ways in which you have seen the perceptual abilities of coworkers erode over time?

This is going to sound very subjective, but their overall cognitive speed has decreased dramatically. When you learn a skill to the point where its automatic, you can get a good flow going from a to b to c pivot to e, etc with no delays; and they struggle with each step/connection, each reasoning portion. Almost like there's interference, but its persistent and consistent; and they either don't notice, or they get defensive.

When they need to make a determination or design decision, they will miss the pivots, and not account for things that lead to significant mistakes which would never have happened before.

The solutions they come up with are for the most part no longer creative. They used to take functional structures they had collected and knew well that worked, and repurpose them, or apply them in ways that were quite creative towards a problem that they defined. Now they largely don't; and the definition of the problems they define are only slightly better than the LLM at this point; it used to be much better.

A lot of due diligence is also no longer being done. When asked about specific things, instead of being able to answer, they get confused, sometimes even incoherent, behaviors that seem very dementia-like, but these are guys almost fresh out of college in their mid 20s, and they aren't on drugs (we are all tested regularly).

There are ways people can be blinded, where they will adopt a misleading stance based upon structure (without any reasoning), even very intelligent people.

I'm of the opinion the inconsistency of the LLM's responses which are treated as communication, are gradually damaging people. Incidentally, people who have had a lot of exposure also have stopped taking on the more difficult or challenging tasks.

[FerkiHN]

I see AI the same way we see calculators: they don’t make us worse at math, they just offload repetitive computation.

The core question is not “are we degrading,” but rather: are we thinking better with better tools? Personally, I use AI only to reduce boilerplate and explore alternatives — the decision-making and abstraction stays on me.

If someone starts thinking less because of tools, the problem isn't the tool — it's how it's used.

[trod1234]

This is misplaced circular fallacy, but to each their own. I value my life, and by extension my mind quite highly.

Those that seem to use these tools become dumber in ways they do not notice. In much the same vein I become smarter in relative retrospect just holding to my guns and shielding my exposure.

If you use a tool, whose primary consequence of use is that you become damaged and less each time you use it, and this happens in most cases in a way where you cannot recognize it happening. How do you ever stop? If you cannot know how to safely use it, and you cannot recognize the mechanism or issue, what is left?

If it alters your ability to perceive things, you certainly can't decide something if you don't recognize the need to decide.

If the factors required for that decision to come about are outside your perception, where the connections for a correct decision no longer exist, there isn't anything you can do.

You take an old argument that its just a tool, saying the choice is with the person who is responsible, not the tool, and yet the person doesn't or more likely cannot notice, or recognize the damage happening.

Its a very rare person who is capable of introspection at such a subtle degree. There is also no informed consent of the danger so all those children being force fed this stuff as GenAI when the data finally is in; well I don't want to think about a future like that, where there may be no future at all for them.

The decision-making process requires things that you may not have anymore, and while you may continue to think falsely that you do and are still capable of that but you've been blinded and when that happens, you've definitionally entered a state of delusion. Quite a lot of delusional people don't realize they've gone off the deep end, its a perceptual deficit.

Who knows maybe it will go so far as delirium as the debasement progresses and you unravel as a sentient person.

We all have psychological blindspots, and there is one blindspot above all others that we have no defense against; called distorted reflected appraisal.

There are some things where the issue is directly with the tool, not how its used.

[yoav]

You make some very good points but I would argue that many if not all the people you observe “without introspection” have enough to know they’re getting dummer but they don’t care because they never liked the art of writing code itself or problem solving they just liked getting a paycheck and are relieved that they can still have output their managers don’t fire them over with far less effort.

They see the same thing as you but are overjoyed to power down their brain and spend more time thinking about their personal hobbies and sports and 90 day fiance instead of real problem solving or code.