But to latch onto the calculator argument: if you outsource adding numbers to a calculator, you're still you. On the flip side, if you use an LLM do most of your thinking, what's left? We have people here who use LLMs to raise their children, to manage relationships, to design products. So what's your unique contribution to this world - is it the prompt you once wrote? You're standing in front of a token-generating machine, pulling a lever, sometimes receiving gifts. Is that your edge, your unique experience, your purpose in life?
Many LLM maximalists say they use the tech to learn new things, but to what effect? Are you going to apply that knowledge of physics or computer science yourself, or will you just prompt the LLM again?
In my mind, it's pretty simple: I'm a human, LLMs are not. If a human writes a novel, it's inherently worth more because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share. I want to support that. And I want to be a human who can write novels, the old-fashioned way. I'm not good at lifting weights or running, so my thinking is the only thing I have.
You can treat AI as a whispering earring - "What should we do now? How do we fix this? What do you think?" Or you can treat it like an exoskelton - "Implement kd-tree with metric space xyz for this problem, mapping this to that blah blah".
That's pre-thought execution automation that makes review much simpler - you already know the shape of the desired output. The whispering earring is atrophy.
You may be more free and independent, but you may also be unable to compete as everyone else easily gains wealth and success. Natural selection doesn't particularly care about freedom of consciousness.
Bleak.
Many of the LLM maximalists I know don't have the skills or knowledge to excel in technology and need to use LLMs to do their job. It's seen as a cheat code to get work done.
As an example, A person I went to high school with that could barely figure out how to setup a Drupal site a few years ago, is now a frontier engineer at an AI startup. His Linkedin posts are filled with AI buzz words on a daily basis.
"It's inherently worth more because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share. "
At some point, it will be impossible to tell the difference. Many people already can't tell if something was generated by AI.
I'd extend on this as well: the process of creating changes you. In a technical sense, where you approach a problem and the way you solve that problem informs you. Both your problem solving skills, creative skills, but also even understanding how a compromise works.
This is why I have minimal compunction about an experienced engineer using AI-assisted coding ("hey claude, define this data class") versus finding AI-art to be repugnant.
The act of creating an artistic work is both an expression, but also the act of ideating and then executing on that changes you. Experience, emotion, and other more intangible concepts.
While I appreciate you laying it out so plainly, I disagree. A novel is a bunch of words and I don't care if they were written by one person, five, an AI, or infinite monkeys on typewriters. What's valuable in a novel (or a poem) is in the words.
I can maybe understand finding value in a machine-written novel if others also read it and enjoyed it, but having an LLM spit out a novel and reading it in isolation, that would be a complete waste of time to me.
It's possible to set that latter value to be nonzero. You can't use free markets to set it because they necessarily cannot see what price to set, so you kinda have to guess, but IMO, it isn't zero, and I'd hazard to say it's positive.
I'm not saying this to be snarky, but maybe it's time to work on lifting weights and running. The worth of a novel is, of course, subjective, but most people would judge it based on the entertainment value it provides and not how much human effort went into it. Hobbies like fitness (which don't have an output that's meant to be consumed) seem like a safer harbor in this new era.
Let the impl go.
.... What?
You open up with the calculator argument. Great. Then state "on the flip side". Ok.
And then declare it very simple in your mind when there is _only_ the flip side.
The whole issue is the not-simple gray area and where each of us believes the line between empowered human and brainless idiot is drawn.