I think what it comes down to, and where many people get confused, is separating the technology itself from how we use it. The technology itself is incredible for learning new skills, but at the same time it incentivizes people to not learn. Just because you have an LLM doesn't mean you can skip the hard parts of doing textbook exercises and thinking hard about what you are learning. It's a bit similar to passively watching youtube videos. You'd think that having all these amazing university lectures available on youtube makes people learn much faster, but in reality in makes people lazy because they believe they can passively sit there, watch a video, do nothing else, and expect that to replace a classroom education. That's not how humans learn. But it's not because youtube videos or LLMs are bad learning tools, it's because people use them as mental shortcut where they shouldn't.
I fully agree, but to be fair these chatbots hack our reward systems. They present a cost/benefit ratio where for much less effort than doing it ourselves we get a much better result than doing it ourselves (assuming this is a skill not yet learned). I think the analogy to calculators is a good one if you're careful with what you're considering: calculators did indeed make people worse at mental math, yet mental math can indeed be replaced with calculators for most people with no great loss. Chatbots are indeed making people worse at mental... well, everything. Thinking in general. I do not believe that thinking can be replaced with AI for most people with no great loss.
