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People who use AI are actual NPCs
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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Books and calculators externalise skills that we see as tedious, like memorisation and calculation. LLMs externalise skills that we value in and of themselves, like decision making, art, and socialisation.
Would you rather live with people who can't memorise dates and perform arithmetic? Or people who can't make a decision or write a beautiful story?
These other things were also once valued.
Do you want to create a society where storytelling isn't valued?
I am pretty sure if you asked people with knowledge if they want a society where accumulating knowledge is no longer an exceptional trait, they would have also said “no”. When I was a kid we were still told using calculators is bad; yet having calculators everywhere meant we could suddenly solve bigger issues at a larger scale.
Lots of technological progress has brought significant change. And no doubt all of them also brought big issues with them. But ultimately all of them helped us advance further.
I also don’t like that my (work) life changes considerably due to LLMs. But that cat is out of the bag. Now I can only try to adjust accordingly or I will simply be left behind.
Because you seem to be giving measured responses, even though I and other vehemently disagree with you, here's where I think you're missing things:
computers, the internet, and calculators make many tasks significantly easier. That's the point of technology. However, if you don't understand the how and why of math, you'll have no idea how to use a calculator. If you just take whatever the first result of an internet search tells you at face value, you're demonstrating a complete lack of critical thought. You have to be able to analyse sources, or you'll just be mired in mis- and disinformation. If the only thing you know how to do on a smartphone is search the internet or download and use an app, then not only are you inefficiently using the technology, but you are also making yourself incredibly vulnerable to security and privacy threats.
The same is true for LLMs, but doubly so, because everything they output is in natural language (or code output, in the case of coding). If you are an expert coder, then it is possible to use LLMs to significantly increase your efficiency. If not, though, you completely offload the entire problem to the LLM, and can't even check if the solution is valid because, like the internet, you have to have the knowledge necessary to question the source. If you make the assumption that it's responding to you as a person would, then you're screwed, because you're incorrectly ascribing knowledge to a stochastic parrot. LLMs have all the worst cognitive pitfalls of the smartphone, the calculator, and the internet, but only actually have the strengths of the internet, because they're only as good as the training data. Every single thing an LLM outputs must be treated with scepticism because the issues aren't in every output, but could be in any output.
In a world filled with LLMs being used as expert systems, the low-skill users will, inevitably, fail to actually gain skill from using the tool, because the flaw in the tool is inherent (it isn't actually an expert), and you require preexisting knowledge to be able to check its output. In exactly the same way that an LLM cannot reliably check its own output for errors, low-skill users are similarly unable to do so, and will simply offload their own cognition. This leads to a decreasing number of experts who are actually able to use the system efficiently, and an ever-growing layer of untermenschen who must simply trust the mechanical parrot like some oracle, with about the same level of accuracy as your average cold-reading psychic.
This is not an issue of those with knowledge trying to privilege their own skills. It is that experts are warning that this abomination, which the public wants to use like an expert system, is not and can never be an "expert". Non-experts simply think it's entrenched power trying to protect itself, but it's not. The data agrees with my points above. I can show you several particularly damning studies which demonstrate my point.
Well, let's have them then.
I agree with that. LLMs shouldn't be used as expert systems. They might be used as part of an expert system; for example for initial (!) classification of input. I also think they are exceptionally good at assembling information … as long as you look at the sources after you got the big picture overview from an LLM to verify the details.
This is also my main gripe with the current hype: everyone tries to shove them into everything and try to use it across the board. I am somewhat optimistic that this will tone down again the more people and companies get into trouble for the consequences of their recklessness. That will likely depend on the jurisdiction, though. If judges and/or law makers start dismissing liability when an LLM is involved ("it wasn't me; it was the AI"), we are fucked. If they treat people using LLMs as operators, they should (hopefully) also keep the blame where it belongs: on the meat proxy.
Everyone I know who uses LLMs is becoming a more boring person. I don't use LLMs because I don't want to turn out like them.
the cats out of the bag... for now. i wonder if it will remain financially feasible
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm9qzdqpxy48o
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/tech-stocks-nasdaq-ai-boom-fears-deepen-rcna606512
Locally running LLMs are already good for small tasks. Big tasks still require insane amounts of RAM. I am also pretty sure that OpenAI and Anthropic are doomed. They had to invest ungodly amounts of resources into R&D. But their results are out there. Other players can start from zero with no financial baggage; and they already did. There are many open weight models out there that aren't far from the quality of the frontier models.
When OpenAI and Anthropic implode, there will still be other companies that can and will continue to offer inference.
The creepier part is how Nvidia, Intel, etc. are entangled in this whole mess. Because them imploding will not just bring AI down, but will massively affect IT — especially our consumer centered IT — in general.
The AI bubble bursting won't eredicate AI.