Yes, AI makes you dumber

[Beyond Everything]

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[SkullTraill]

Every technology ever makes you less competent (without it). Every information technology makes you dumber (without it).

Unga bunga say young bunga use spear all time and not know how hunt with bare hands. Unga bunga think spear make young bunga dumber.

 

[Beyond Everything]

Every technology ever makes you less competent (without it). Every information technology makes you dumber (without it).

Unga bunga say young bunga use spear all time and not know how hunt with bare hands. Unga bunga think young bunga dumber.

IQs have been measurably going down, and AI doesn't look to reverse this trend.

So, I'm not sure the use of a spear is really a useful analogy.

 

[SkullTraill]

AI doesn't look to reverse this trend.

Neither do computers in general.

Information Technology directly augments our intelligence. When it is taken away, like during an IQ test, we are dumber, sure.

Just like a spear increases our capacity to hunt, until it is taken away.

All technology makes us more capable with it, but we adapt to it and rely on it so when it’s taken away, we become less capable.

This has been the case since the beginning of time.

It’s good to be self reliant but where do you draw the line? Smartphones made people dumber. The internet made people dumber. Computers made people dumber. Calculators made people dumber.

 

[SkullTraill]

FWIW I think IQ tests were great for their time, but are completely outdated today. They are a relic of a time when your intelligence without any tools other than a pen and paper was important. It’s not that important now.

I’ve taken 5 IQ tests in my life (at actual centers) and tested 130±5 every time. Yet how many 90 IQ boneheads are richer, more successful, and even more capable than me in the real world? Millions, probably.

Humanity as a whole is so irreversibly dependent on so many layers of technology at this point that in an apocalyptic scenario, you’d only have a marginally higher chance of survival than some brain dead Gen Alpha proompter. They’d be dead in 3 days, you’d be dead in 5. Inconsequential difference.

 

[KjEno186]

Believing "experts" propagated by media corporations is likewise conducive to reduced intelligence, assuming we want to use a metric such as IQ to gauge trends. I remember 40 years ago when "experts" said in major news media outlets that eating a low fat diet was better for one's health. It's not true, by the way, since the advice ignored concrete science on human metabolism in favor of flawed studies constructed with questionable methodologies. However, sugar-laden breakfast cereal and fruit-flavored low fat yogurt could be advertised as health foods in those same media outlets, supporting a multi-billion dollar food industry.

Perhaps AI is just another "expert", but media companies like the one that owns Futurism dot com don't like it because it is competition that further reduces their ad revenue. I'm pretty sure those same journalists are using ChatGPT and other LLMs to do their jobs, but they'd prefer to have you click on their articles (and the ads) instead of using AI.

The intelligent person may not know everything, but they do question everything. Ignorance isn't a flaw the same way that credulousness can be.