Does using LLMs make me dumber? – Wilsons Blog

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Does using LLMs make me dumber?

So this is something I’ve heard a lot and have thought about a lot. First I want to re-frame the question from what I usually read to what I think is actually a good question:

“How does using LLMs change the way I learn?”

I think this is better because 1. the dumb-intelligent axis is hard to pin down anyways and 2. nuance is the love of my life. Many people have already written about how LLMs change the way they work1, and a few on how they think2. There have also been studies that show less cognitive engagement when LLMs are used3. To not bury the lede, here’s a summary of what I want to contribute:

I learn when I think.

Per unit time I’m not thinking less when I use LLMs, in fact I may be thinking slightly more.

“Per unit time” is critical though.

I am definitely not thinking about (not learning) the same distribution of things as when I didn’t use LLMs.

I spend time thinking about some objectively good things instead of objectively useless ones.

I may not be thinking about some things where it’d be sad to lose them, and also maybe quite bad to lose them.

I need to be vigilant that I’m not learning things that are wrong (listening to LLM hallucinations)

The way I distribute any time that LLMs save for me should also be considered in terms of my “learning distribution”

1. What even is learning?

When you recall a memory, you reinforce it. When you hear a foreign word in context, you begin to learn the language. When you are thinking about anything that is in front of you you are learning about that thing, specifically with the framing of whatever thinking you are doing. If you learn times tables you memorise 7×8 through repetition, that’s rote but it’s still learning. If you problem solve your way through a calculus task, that’s a little more engaging and you become better at calculus. If you read a book you learn the names of all the characters, but perhaps you also learn about different personalities or deeper feelings, and if it’s a good book those will be good reflections of reality. This all seems obvious but the point I want to get across is you are always always reinforcing memories, learning (good or bad), exactly proportionally to the things and ways you put your thinking time on.

How correct and useful what you learn is then a secondary question. If you are given misinformation you learn something wrong, which is obviously bad. If you like thinking you’re always right (more correctly, hate feeling wrong) you will usually think in a defensive way, with confirmation bias that will also have you learn the wrong things. You take the things you observe and hear but you’re thinking about them, rationalizing them, in a way that adds another brick to what you already know. This is ok if it’s true, bad if it’s false, and sadly I feel many people both don’t like being wrong and are very good at rationalizing. Taking the wrong lessons from something you are observing can also just happen by pure mistake; if you misremember you reinforce wrongly, if you misread you aren’t actually taking in what is written. So, if what you learn isn’t true that’s not very good learning. Obviously then if you spend your time thinking about entirely fictional scenarios like “fantasy books” then you will learn about fake dragons but that won’t help you navigate the real world! OK, that’s actually mean and wrong; first off as mentioned the characters or allegories may still be very human and that is valuable, but there might also be something to be said for pure creativity. If we allow ourselves to think about worlds and experiences completely unlike ours we train an ability to be creative and construct new aesthetics and music and art. These are surely things that are still valuable. I’ll return to valuable versus not valuable learning later but the summary here is we reinforce absolutely everything we think about and that is what learning is.

2. Look, I have ADHD

Or even if I don’t (or you think I don’t) it doesn’t matter. What is definitely true is I hate4 rote cognitive tasks. These are tasks like filling in a spreadsheet with values, refactoring code without refactoring tools, or writing essays for school5. They suck because my mind is occupied but not challenged. Repetitive physical tasks? Great! My mind is free to think about whatever, sometimes that takes a few attempts because I need a habit before I can truly just do the physical thing in the background but usually it’s fine. Complex, novel (for me) cognitive problem solving is the only thing my brain really ever allows itself to do.

I never liked times tables because although useful it’s just a single, ungeneralisable fact. Call me pretentious but I thought the same of learning languages. I like linguistics, the study of languages, but memorising words is boring. I sometimes think that at the other end of the spectrum is problem solving, high level...