AI literacy leads to Dunning-Kruger Effect
tldr: Being proficient with AI correlates with greatly overestimating one's performance when doing tasks with AI assistance
Just another way AI is making people stupider
See also: Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
" The systematic downregulation of neural networks in response to AI assistance suggests that the brain adapts to reduced cognitive demands by decreasing the strength and complexity of connections required for independent analytical work"
or
Consequences of generative AI usage among university students
"... use of ChatGPT was likely to develop tendencies for procrastination and memory loss and dampen the students’ academic performance.."
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 2:24,
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AI is a tool
like a car is a tool or farm machinery is a tool. Cars and farm machinery, it could be argued, have led to humans overall being less fit and incapable of working 12 hours a day in the fields, or walking miles a day just to support themselves.
I would say that having a car, for example, correlates with greatly overestimating one's performance when travelling distances with motorised assistance. It could be argued your performance is genuinely greatly improved, but you may well have lost the ability to do it without one. Humans offload mundane and repetitive tasks to machines at every opportunity to great benefit, but this is often associated with a reduction in the ability to do those tasks without machine help. See : Engineering, construction, design, printing, communication, medicine, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, banking, data analysis, weather forecasting, navigation, entertainment production, education, research, logistics, translation, food production, retail, warfare, space exploration, disseminating images of cats.
This is nothing new IMO
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 11:00,
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Indeed not new, but can lead to a bit of the old 'unrest'
See industrial revolution
(, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 11:47, Reply)
Indeed
Even the backlash against it is not new. See : Luddites, sabotage, Swing Riots, railway opposition, Red Flag laws, telephone resistance, ATM opposition, calculator bans, VCR recording protests, GMO crop destruction, self-checkout opposition.
How well did they work in the end, and how does history view those people?
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Sat 1 Nov 2025, 10:33,
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I'd say it's different to all those example given, in that it's not offloading mundane, repetitive, and menial tasks, but offloading higher order analytical thinking
when a task is difficult to analyse or synthesise, the user ask ai for a solution. Can't figure out why you code doesn't work? You could spend half an hour going over it in your head while getting a cuppa until you figure it out. Or just prompt the AI, paste the code it gives you in, and it either works or you prompt it again.The second research paper I linked to would suggest that the less difficult thinking we do, the worse at it we get.
Getting worse at thinking is much more consequential than all those other things you listed, both personally and for society, there's little enough of it as there is
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 12:16,
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Not different or new
Calculators (1970s-80s): Teachers and educators fiercely debated whether calculators would destroy students' ability to do mental math and understand basic arithmetic. Many schools banned them, arguing students would become dependent and lose fundamental skills.
Computers/Word Processors (1980s-90s): Similar fears emerged that spell-checkers and grammar tools would erode writing skills and that students wouldn't learn proper spelling or composition. Critics worried computers would make people intellectually lazy.
Slide Rules (1950s-60s): When electronic calculators began replacing slide rules, some engineers argued students wouldn't truly understand calculations anymore.
Socrates famously warned that writing itself would weaken memory and understanding, since people would rely on external marks rather than internalize knowledge.
Every time it is claimed that skills humans will be eroded, and the tool did change how we used certain skills, but these tools also freed up cognitive resources for higher-level thinking. Do you argue we should abandon calculators to preserve long division skills? Do you think we should get rid of writing altogether to preserve long term memory?
AI will change how we think, but we will be more productive with it than without it, just as it was with every previous tool.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Mon 3 Nov 2025, 9:35,
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I reckon it's comforting to think the future will be similar to the past, with this change no more profound than those past events
But you have the last sentence backwards.
AI will be more productive without us
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Mon 3 Nov 2025, 14:08,
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Except that AI isn't making us phsically weaker, it's making us intellectually weaker.
And that has far more serious consequences.
(, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 18:37, Reply)
With a car you don't have to walk anywhere far
But that does no mean you should.
(, Fri 31 Oct 2025, 14:12, Reply)
Not surprising
A side effect that authoritarians will be happy with. Then those who control the 'AI' will have a huge advantage which they can manipulate.
'AI' as a tool has plenty of great uses, where humans are too slow for instance, but replacing basic thinking skills is potentially handicapping people.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 31 Oct 2025, 15:26,
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