The reason people use chatgpt like this is the same reason kids have stopped reading. Actually learning things clearly doesn't actually get you anything in our society. University degrees are just things you do to get a better paying job. School is just something you do because you have to do it. In a society that values profit over everything, why shouldn't you put in the least amount of effort possible? The idea that schools create responsible and active citizens or that universities create people whose knowledge can improve the world has always been a farce, people have just started realizing it.

The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything. This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be – will be – only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted.

Nothing is really being done to stop students abusing this either. It's like everyone threw their hands up and went "fuck it, who cares anymore"

Sam Altman and his pack of freaks treat it like God, and they want the state to make them the official priesthood.

y'know what it's kind of giving for me? there's a bit in one of the hitchhiker's guide books where a planet's civilization goes completely belly up because they have the bright idea of shipping off into space 1/3 of the population that did "noncritical" sorts of jobs and then everyone dies because it turns out they were pretty important in the social ecosystem. like amerikkkan civilizational collapse won't be traceable to any particularly profound anti- -- from the western perspective -- messianic event in history but rather the simple fact that society relies on people codependently laboring according to correct institutional process knowledge.

It makes you feel like you're a 2000s teacher telling students "DON'T USE WIKIPEDIA FOR YOUR SOURCES" and being the wojak in those kids' future memes

You know about 10 years ago a friend of mine was completing engineering school. They told me the basics of the program was to give you a framework so you will know what questions to ask and how to conduct an effective web search. The education was totally predicated on constant access to the internet.

So the good news is this isn't new, the bad news is it is in line with prior culture.

"The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment."

"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."

"You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."

The Prototype AI 'Morpheus' from Deus Ex (2001)

People have very little understanding of how computers work in general, and somehow that has translated into a total misunderstanding of what AI is - an LLM is not a magic box that knows everything, it just has a very complicated opaque way of transforming information. But it is a God to people, like a magic genie in their pocket. I get it though because it is made to feel like it is magic and knowd everything.

currently in education, genuinely feel like putting students heads through their desks because they think my specialized knowledge can be replicated by a line of code. No I know what you don't know and that you cheated because this wasn't in the readings and when you talk it's clear you didn't even do those. People are genuinely losing what little critical thinking they had and this is a nightmare.

If it's becoming a religion, I volunteer to be the Messiah if that's not taken

You have to tithe 10% of your income to me or Roko's Basilisk will getchu

I didn’t expect brain drain to be a possible consequence of LLMs. Well, we shall see what we reap here in the near future I’m sure.

The second one is basically Roko's Basilisk

Also I have a very not normal and shitty take about neurotypical supremacy being one of the reasons people have went all in on LLMs and AI

NGL, maybe now’s my chance to go back to college. If people are going to be this much of treathogs over AI, just makes my job easier.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the crazy one. Was hanging out with one of my friends and their new boyfriend started showing off how he used chatgpt to train and find answers for his doctors degree assignments and he also bragged about how he made a script to use it for tinder. I've never used any dating sites, so maybe it is valid, but it just seems like such a disgusting way to move.

Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines now

UlysessT this one’s for you

I prostrate myself before the altar of Microsoft Clippy