alt Hacker NewsAI is potentially a Dunning-Kruger effect amplifier
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I've been having this thought for the last month.
The giveaway was my Medical Professional father thinking that AI was really good at things outside of his area of expertise, and really bad at things inside of his area of expertise.
From a software POV, I feel like it makes it easier to implement stuff. Whether that stuff is good or bad. If you know what you're doing, vet the output, and use it properly, you can get a nice productivity boost while still producing good code. If you don't know what you're doing, you are prone to go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of unwise decisions.
Wouldn’t that imply that it makes smarter people feel dumber? I haven’t heard of or seen such an effect from LLMs. Have you?
If it only amplifies half the effect, I don’t think TFA is an accurate claim.
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876744 - "LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger" (bytesauna.com)
392 points | 7 months ago | 301 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851483 - "AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service" (christianheilmann.com)
268 points | 7 months ago | 199 comments
Potentially? From what I can tell, Google's AI overview is one of the most widely sited sources now.
Potentially ?
Definitely is.
This is two-tweet hot take about DK and Idiocracy (we live in a society).
Yeah we know that LLMs tend towards sycophancy.
Discussing DK has a real Matthew 7:3-5 vibe about it.
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I would argue that it's not just potential; it's actively happening, and a lot of us here noticed and discussed it years ago.
The phenomenon of correcting people because Chat Gippity said x or y was the beginning. Now people repeat what the machine said as though it originated from them, and this has been totally normalized. It permeates everything. People feel empowered by it, but they have no intent or ability to verify. This is normal. It's another source of information, but it's vetted by probability at best, yet also misinterpreted and internalized at worst.
People plagiarize and behave as though it's their own work with total confidence and no shame whatsoever. Speaking to teachers about this is mind-blowing. This is very real and present. These people believe they're doing 'the work' in many cases. Some are aware it's a farce, many are not.
It has jammed a lever into D-K and cranked it up into something even worse, in my opinion.