I'm sympathetic to the author's core position. I think LLMs as they're currently deployed are doing net societal harm so far. For example, for every React app whistled up in five hours, there's a high schooler or college student out there sleepwalking through their foundational courses and being set up to catastrophically fail upon trying to enter the job market.
But I think it's important for the quality of public discourse that we forward only the best, strongest arguments for any given position (whether I personally agree with that position or not). A weak argument gives unnecessary purchase to unscrupulous haters who might use that weaker argument as a low-grade "straw man" to dismiss the whole position.
So with that preamble, some constructive criticism (very well-intentioned):
> I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” so that thousands, perhaps millions of people do not die.
On this one you are, in fact, exaggerating (certainly with "millions," likely with "thousands" as well).
The overwhelming majority of people who lose their job for whatever reason (and there are many reasons, not just this one issue) fall back on a support network of their family and friends while they "get back on their feet" by pivoting to another job or form of employment (sometimes branching into entrepreneurship, for example).
The alternative to employment at whatever FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company someone was laid off from is not "death." It is typically "some, sometimes quite significant, discomfort." Granted "AI Layoffs" are starting to ripple out beyond FAANG, but the story is similar in other industries.
If "layoffs kill people" is the moral hill we choose to plant our flag on, then mustn't we also campaign with equal vociferousness against all the other causes of layoffs in general? Since to do otherwise is to sit by while those laid off allegedly die in droves of thousands or perhaps millions?
It also occurs to me that this framing ("AI causes layoffs") also gives incompetent and unaccountable executives a pass by pinning the actual harm done by irresponsible layoffs (which to be clear, is not none!) on "the AI" rather than on the leaders who are in the positions to actually decide what happens in their organizations.
I think the argument is much stronger if we talk about the aggregate cost to humanity being paid in terms of displacement, life disruption, and curtailed opportunity (especially for juniors). We should not make the "toxic escalationism" move of equivocating things we don't like with negligent homicide, even if it makes for a punchy one-liner.
> For example, for every React app whistled up in five hours, there's a high schooler or college student out there sleepwalking through their foundational courses and being set up to catastrophically fail upon trying to enter the job market.
No I'm arguing that many developments that simplify work while not undermining understanding exist, and we have dealt with them. In the narrow scope of understanding engineering, the fact that AI can also engineer does not prevent us from proper education or gaining understanding.
Thanks for clarifying. I think we're talking about different things.
Your response would make sense to me if I was making a case against AI for professional use based on "skill atrophy among professionals who use AI" or something like that (which is a case that I see some people making).
I'm not talking about that, though. This is not me saying, "Slide rule is good, TI-84 is bad; because effortful work has good effects on practitioners and effortless work has negative effects."
I'm talking about youth, adolescents, and young adults who are voluntarily foregoing the effortful mental exercise of reading, understanding, and writing as part of their primary and secondary education—the very effortful mental exercise that our education system exists to "inflict" upon them, for their own long-term good.
I'm talking about people getting into the workforce who don't know how to learn because they've gotten all passing grades while having a chatbot generate the outputs that would previously have indicated that learning was occurring.
Maybe it's the case that AI/LLM usage is the primary skillset needed to thrive in the job market of tomorrow. But I'm not convinced of that, yet.
Just to be clear I don't think there's any way to put the cat back in the bag w/r/t LLMs and education—I think the education system as a whole needs to reinvent itself to account for the existence of LLMs. But in the mean time, until that mammoth societal initiative has time to make progress, I worry that there are many, many kids who are being systematically failed by an education system that was very rapidly outmoded by new technology (not that it was bleeding edge either right before ChatGPT launched, but that's neither here nor there). And that position, which I hold, is one supporting leg of my larger more ambitious position that, "AI is currently, so far, doing net societal harm."
These are the same thing. Youth has been able to effortlessly do math by using calculators in the past decades, yet we expect and succeed in them learning math. The main thing we need to do is ban llm use somehow for education, as we have with calculators. Then, piecemeal, bring it back when it makes sense.
> forward only the best, strongest arguments for any given position... A weak argument gives unnecessary purchase to unscrupulous haters who might use that weaker argument as a low-grade "straw man" to dismiss the whole position.
Excellent point. Thank you for writing such a cogent argument.
It is clear that the rich and powerful are making short-term decisions that are causing widespread and long-term harm. Decisions such as, AI-pilled investors demanding unsustainable productivity from companies, and CEOs in turn forcing employees to use agentic coding and laying the rest off.
Such decision-making is not new, of course, but LLM technology is helping grifters and con artists to turbo-charge it. Founders can raise money using cool demos that achieve the impossible. Investment analysts can back up their AI story with huge paper profits.
The result, as you summarized, is life and career displacement and missed opportunities for young people. It's just too abstract and diffuse of an impact to influence people with, and it also seems to be railing against the holy cow of Capitalism.
"Data centers bad!", or "AI is disrupting humanity and the end is nigh!" are much more punchy slogans.
But I think it's important for the quality of public discourse that we forward only the best, strongest arguments for any given position (whether I personally agree with that position or not). A weak argument gives unnecessary purchase to unscrupulous haters who might use that weaker argument as a low-grade "straw man" to dismiss the whole position.
So with that preamble, some constructive criticism (very well-intentioned):
> I am not exaggerating: We need to resist “AI” so that thousands, perhaps millions of people do not die.
On this one you are, in fact, exaggerating (certainly with "millions," likely with "thousands" as well).
The overwhelming majority of people who lose their job for whatever reason (and there are many reasons, not just this one issue) fall back on a support network of their family and friends while they "get back on their feet" by pivoting to another job or form of employment (sometimes branching into entrepreneurship, for example).
The alternative to employment at whatever FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company someone was laid off from is not "death." It is typically "some, sometimes quite significant, discomfort." Granted "AI Layoffs" are starting to ripple out beyond FAANG, but the story is similar in other industries.
If "layoffs kill people" is the moral hill we choose to plant our flag on, then mustn't we also campaign with equal vociferousness against all the other causes of layoffs in general? Since to do otherwise is to sit by while those laid off allegedly die in droves of thousands or perhaps millions?
It also occurs to me that this framing ("AI causes layoffs") also gives incompetent and unaccountable executives a pass by pinning the actual harm done by irresponsible layoffs (which to be clear, is not none!) on "the AI" rather than on the leaders who are in the positions to actually decide what happens in their organizations.
I think the argument is much stronger if we talk about the aggregate cost to humanity being paid in terms of displacement, life disruption, and curtailed opportunity (especially for juniors). We should not make the "toxic escalationism" move of equivocating things we don't like with negligent homicide, even if it makes for a punchy one-liner.