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Thoughts on thinking

(dcurt.is)
645 points bradgessler | 2 comments | 16 May 25 19:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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wjholden ◴[16 May 25 19:36 UTC] No.44009053[source]▶
I just wrote a paper a few days ago arguing that "manual thinking" is going to become a rare and valuable skill in the future. When you look around you, everyone is finding ways to be better using AI, and they're all finding amazing successes – but we're also unsure about the downsides. I hedge that my advantage in ten years will be that I chose not to do what everyone else did. I might regret it, we will see.
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1. oytis ◴[16 May 25 19:40 UTC] No.44009077[source]▶
If AI is going to be as economically efficient as promised, there is going to be no way to avoid using it altogether. So the trick will be to keep your thinking skills functional, while still using AI for speedup. Like focus in the age of Internet is a rare skill, but not using Internet is not an option either.
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2. fkfyshroglk ◴[16 May 25 20:06 UTC] No.44009337[source]▶
Not all processes are the same, though. I strongly suspect any efficiency improvements will come in processes that didn't require much "thinking" to begin with. I use it daily, but mostly as a way to essentially type faster—I can read much faster than I can type, so I mostly validate and correct the autocomplete. All of my efforts to get it to produce trustworthy output beyond this seem to trail behind the efficiency of just searching the internet.

Granted, I'm blessed to not have much busywork; if I need to produce corporate docs or listicles AI would be a massive boon. But I also suspect AI will be used to digest these things back into small bullet points.