Before I used Google Maps regularly, I would be more aware of road layout while driving and soon become capable of navigating any town I visited regularly, without a map. It’s weird to drive through a place I last visited twenty years ago, knowing that last time I was there I’d navigate based on memory, but now I’m completely leaning on that device to do it for me. That mental faculty might not be absolutely lost, but I don’t use it and I don’t suppose I would ever have developed it if I were learning to drive today.
Perhaps it’s obsolete, and a modern brain can now use those resources for something more relevant. Over the course of human history we have developed tools to use our finite mental resources more effectively, but never without a price. Socrates feared that the use of writing would weaken our memory and true understanding. I’m sure he was right, at least about the memory, but it was worth the price. Without writing, nobody would know what Socrates thought about anything.
But with AI, we’re not enabling ourselves to do more and develop new faculties, because AI seeks to be our universal crutch. Perhaps under other circumstances it could be better, but the entities pushing AI want us to be compliant consumers hypnotized by a endless stream of advertising slop. Fundamentally, they are not incentivized to help us develop our potential. They want to replace us.
I don’t think it will take long either. When you look at all the grifts the American evangelists pull, and people fall for it every time, then you’ve got all these people thinking that Trump is anointed by God or some such crap. No problem at all in selling these idiots the idea that they have an instant always-on hotline to God via God’s Chosen LLM. Then you’ve got them locked in to whatever psychosis you choose to construct for them.