AI utility

I really like this quote by Alex Komoroske (via Simon Willison). It may be confirmation bias, but I find that it is a good way to think about the utility of AI, whether plain-old “machine learning” or of the current hyped LLM variety:

LLMs shouldn’t help you do less thinking, they should help you do more thinking.

• They give you higher leverage.
• Will that cause you to be satisfied with doing less, or driven to do more?

Of course, humanity is likely to take the wrong path here – we seem to never miss an opportunity to switch our brains off – but we can choose to do more with these tools. The temptation, whether by average people or businesses, to do less for (nearly) free is the road to Idiocracy.