Technical Crutches - good or bad or necessary evil?

I'm commenting on your questions backwards..

Regarding:
"Are you more impressed by someone who creates content without using generative AI, versus someone who uses AI all the time?"
It's not a question of being impressed or unimpressed. Most people love seeing talented people do things. I'm sure people will figure out for themselves if they could have achieved more, or done things quicker, and decide for themselves whether they feel it would be a shame if they deliberately held themselves back from doing that much more, or stick to working as before, whatever keeps them creative and productive.

Another question to think about: Even if you think you're not using AI, how do you know that any content you're learning from was not in part created by AI?

Here's an example where the combined sum of human plus AI is better than human alone: I worked on this project last night and today, and there's no way I would have achieved it on my own, I simply would not have had the time to complete it. It was just pragmatic to use AI to finish it in a timely manner.

Also, a small point is that through working on this project I (plus AI) managed to clean up some online digital microphone software, to make it work. Now (or at least when I get around to documenting it) anyone who wants to use that microphone, will be able to benefit from the human+AI effort even if they choose not to use AI themselves.

Although it wasn't intended to be, it's probably an example of how using AI can result in not regurgitating content, but creating some bits of new material to add into the Internet :)

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RE: Technical Crutches - good or bad or necessary evil?

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I've noticed that too, often there are some elements of commonality. There's a chance all are relevant in some ways.With traditional book learning, I try to get two books on the same subject, so that if I find one section confusing in one book, then I hope I might be fortunate and understand that from the second book. Fortunately books are sometimes a very cheap way to learn, because used books are about the only bargain I tend to get lucky at!

Thank you for this post Doug.  I have mixed feelings about AI.  There are some days where I use ChatGPT entirely too much.  I don't use it for code generation and I don't use it to write things like reports.  Generally I use it to...

1) Overcome knowledge gaps

2) Get a quick answer to a problem

3) Internet search

It could be said that I underutilize AI and don't fully unleash its full productivity potential... I resist this because I still want to have that sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment that comes from doing your own work. Perhaps this is setting myself up to be left in the dust... but I am far enough into my career that I can probably afford to do this... but time will tell.

Another negative impact of the internet is that I read fewer and fewer books.... and it takes me much longer to finish them.

I am with you... there's nothing more satisfying than figuring something out yourself.  I hope the younger generation continues to have this opportunity.

I fully agree with your opening point that the internet speeds up the learning process... but it isn't without its pitfalls... especially for the young generation, as you point out, being raised on social media and influencers.

dang74 said:

Another negative impact of the internet is that I read fewer and fewer books.... and it takes me much longer to finish them.

That seems to be quite common with school kids these days (at least based on my own). They've grown up on TikTok and YouTube videos. It tends to be their mode of choice rather than a good book. It's a real battle convincing otherwise.

There is no question that the Internet and AI provide a giant boost to productivity, and there is no question that AI can create new material.

One of the things I find most enjoyable is creating - which often involves transplanting a concept from one field and applying it to a completely different field or making linkages between different ideas where no linkage existed in the past. This type of creativity requires knowledge, it simply cannot occur without knowledge of things that might be linked, and the more knowledge we have the more new linkages we can dream up. AI can do this too, but if humans want to continue to be creative (and we do) we need to continue to learn and exercise the creative process. If it isn't exercised, it atrophies.

Of course people use the internet to learn things - it is spectacular for supplying things to learn. We just need to remember learning is a crucial part of creative performance. Hopefully AI offloads time-consuming tasks and provides us more time to learn.

There is something about reading books that really allows imagination to flourish, where video is coming at you with so much information, there may not be enough time for imagination to fully develop offshoots. It is important to exercise our imaginations and let them explore the tendrils that grow from material we read.

dougw said:

There is something about reading books that really allows imagination to flourish

Perhaps partly due to the linear delivery of text. The information is being drip fed to you in the order that the author has presented it. The brain has to store it word by word, paragraph by paragraph, whilst its auto-predict (imagination) anticipates what's coming next trying to build up the incomplete mental image.

With a photograph, all the information is available at once and it's up to the viewer to consume it in which order they want. However, a lot of people miss things in photographs, or misinterpret them due to bias. Also there is no creator confirmation of what it is that you are looking at. 

dougw said:

where video is coming at you with so much information

With a video you can have multiple events occurring simultaneously like the flash and the bang of the explosion and the screams and alarms all going off together. Or something more subtle like the simultaneous body language between two subjects. These are difficult to convey in a text based format but are more like the way most perceive the real world with our eyes and ears.

There are strengths and weaknesses in each format.

dougw said:

It is important to exercise our imaginations and let them explore the tendrils that grow from material we read.

I recall back at school, most of the school books contained printed text with little in the way of illustrations or photographs. I'm not sure that was always a good thing, as it lacked real-world context to help steer the imagination.

From what I recall, very few school kids were particularly avid book readers. It took me a while to get into them but perhaps that was mainly because there was a lack of non-fiction material available.

In some respects, the presentation format of educational content on YouTube is little different than that of the lecture, except that you can pause/rewind/etc. It's still a pretty poor example when it comes down to multimedia content delivery.