099 – Is AI Making Me Lazy?

[00:00:05] Lily: Hello and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m Lily Clements, a Data Scientist, and I’m here with David Stern. Hi, David.

[00:00:13] David: Hi, Lily. Excited to discuss. What are we discussing today?

[00:00:18] Lily: What’s interesting there is, I don’t know if you could tell, but I did just mess up the entry, which is a little bit linked to what we’ve discussed today.

I was meant to say a founding director of IDEMS. That was not intentional. But today to discuss is generative AI making me think less? Is it making me lazier?

[00:00:35] David: Oh, you do use it a lot.

[00:00:38] Lily: I do, and overuse of anything is bad.

[00:00:42] David: Yes, diversity is good. 

[00:00:45] Lily: In fact, I think it’s one of your quotes that you say is everything in moderation No, what is it? Everything in moderation…

[00:00:51] David: Especially moderation.

[00:00:52] Lily: Especially moderation, yes. And I guess it’s a good thing that it’s not only me. I know that I was speaking to Johnny who does the kind of processing of the podcast and this is how the kind of conversation came about was that he says the exact same and that, he doesn’t even let it. He doesn’t even let himself finish a train of thought.

He will then be like, Oh I’ll just, what’s this word I want? Oh, I’ll just look it up. I’ll just ask Chat GPT. And then it starts to make you, or any generative AI. And that starts to make you a little bit concerned. Cause I can, I feel it in myself that I’m losing something there that I’m losing this ability to think in a way that I once did.

[00:01:30] David: Yes. It’s amazing how regularly this happens. I remember back in the day, people used to remember phone numbers. 

[00:01:40] Lily: I can probably still remember my phone number from when I was a child, but yes, I guess that’s not quite there.

[00:01:46] David: That’s sort of the point. When you were a child, you had to remember phone numbers.

[00:01:50] Lily: Whereas now, actually, when my parents moved house, side story, when my parents moved house, I would I never learned the phone number, but at the time it was, I just knew the kind of start of it, and I kept accidentally calling the doctors, because they had the same start, and I’d literally get through to the doctors, I’d be like, this isn’t my mum.

And the more I rang it, the more it would come up on my phone as well, this is someone you’ve called recently.

[00:02:15] David: but this is exactly the sort of issue with generative AI, but it’s not just an issue with generative AI, it’s an issue with advancing technology. I could go on and on with other examples, about technology coming in and making us lose the ability to read a map, because…

[00:02:32] Lily: On that one definitely, it must be proven, but I know just in myself, that if I’m driving and I have the sat nav on I will not remember the route as well as if I’m driving without the sat nav on and you’re having to look out for pointers and things.

But no, it’s interesting that you used the word issue.

[00:02:50] David: What do you mean?

[00:02:52] Lily: I wanted you to say something positive about it. I wanted you to say, hey, you’re not becoming dumber. Yeah. You’re just as good as you always were. You’re getting better. No, I, I know.

[00:03:01] David: No, the point is that you are losing skills that you had.

[00:03:02] Lily: Yeah.

[00:03:04] David: You might be gaining other skills. Just like, when you stop having to remember all the phone numbers. Now you’ve lost that particular skill, or just like when you’re spending less time reading maps. So yes, you might have lost those skills, and maybe they aren’t skills you want to lose. And this is the point, that there’s choices we need to make.

Orienteering, I believe, has soared in popularity, which requires people to read maps. And so I believe this is the sort of thing, and it’s a hobby, it’s a choice. Not everyone has to do it. Not everyone has to be good at it.

[00:03:41] Lily: Yeah.

[00:03:42] David: And so this is the sort of thing where you could decide that actually the way you are using generative AI is changing skills you have in a way you don’t want to lose.

[00:03:56] Lily: Yes.

[00:03:57] David: And then you change your behaviour. It’s not the AI doing it. It’s your behaviour.

[00:04:02] Lily: Yes, I shouldn’t let the word. Yeah, okay. No, that’s

[00:04:06] David: It’s the tool. So it’s a choice. It’s a choice you can make. And, or you could decide that actually you don’t need to finish a sentence and you can let Chat GPT or any other generative AI do it for you.

You’re…

[00:04:18] Lily: Yes, but I’m not always going to have the robots there to help me finish a sentence or to.. It’s just…yeah. But..

[00:04:24] David: You failed to finish the sentence then. I… you want access to the robots.

[00:04:28] Lily: These podcasts, were quite, these podcasts are like a little record. We’ve been doing this for a year now, coming up to the hundredth anyway.

[00:04:36] David: 99.

[00:04:37] Lily: Its 99. We’ve been doing this for a while now. You can see on these podcasts, you can probably tell, it’s she is thinking a lot less now than she was earlier. I don’t know.

[00:04:46] David: I don’t think so. From my perspective, I’ve enjoyed the fact that you, I think you’ll find if you listen back to the podcast, there’s been an interesting evolution in how you’re thinking, how you’re engaging in them, the topics you’re bringing up. I’m enjoying this!

[00:05:05] Lily: But then I guess what you’re saying is. Because it doesn’t need to be something that you have to do. It could become more of a hobby. For example, if you, now for example, when I was at school, I remember very well you had to read these books for schoolwork, and then when I finished school, one of the first things I did was, I was like, I don’t know what books I like.

And so I then was able to finally read as a hobby. I joined a book club and I tried all these different books. Now, because it’s, because I don’t have to do certain things for work, it could instead be that I do them as a hobby? Is that kind of the

[00:05:41] David: That’s the sort of thing, if you choose, if it’s something which is important to you, and which you’re, like, finishing a sentence, or a sentence,

You could take up the hobby of actually putting yourself in situations when you’re without the robots and you have to finish your own sentences. Or you could just be on podcasts where I don’t let you use the robots.

[00:05:59] Lily: Not when we’re doing it in person.

[00:06:00] David: Okay, that’s true. This is a rare occasion when we’re doing it in person rather than remotely.

[00:06:06] Lily: No, but but no, I don’t usually use the robots anyway during a podcast. I think you’ll probably notice or hear me tapping away. What is she writing?

[00:06:15] David: Oh, it’s the robots again.

[00:06:17] Lily: Try that. I’m going to try that. I’m going to try doing a podcast with you. I’ll do it in long enough time that you’ll forget this.

[00:06:24] David: My memory’s pretty good.

[00:06:27] Lily: Give you a podcast where all my responses are just generated by AI and they’ll see.

[00:06:33] David: I think I’d be able to tell pretty quickly and I’d enjoy that podcast as well.

[00:06:37] Lily: Yeah, give me your own Turing test.

[00:06:41] David: Can I tell you, this isn’t the real Lily, this is the chatbot Lily.

[00:06:46] Lily: Chatbot Lily, yeah, but

[00:06:50] David: the point is that’s not a deterrent test. Sorry, I mean you got that one wrong. It would have to be an external observer. This is the audience. And they tell which is the… which is the episode which is done by the chatbot Lily. Now my guess is that they will be able to tell you for no other reason than I’ll be saying, Lily, why are you using a chatbot?

[00:07:11] Lily: Why are you suddenly using these words like delve and critical?

[00:07:15] David: I use them anyway.

[00:07:17] Lily: Empower is another one. But okay. So while I, cause I had this conversation with Johnny about that, we are both feeling like we’re not using our brains the same way as before. You can feel yourself losing a skill and that’s painful.

That is not a comfortable feeling.

[00:07:32] David: I know. I feel it very substantially as I stopped doing sport. It and when I was really active and doing a lot of sport and then I was a bit less active. And whenever I went back to play volleyball or something like this, it was not as quite as good as I used to be.

Oh, it was painful.

And the point is, it disencouraged me from going back. I have a, an incentive emerging. To go back: my kids. And so when, they’re getting into sport and so as they get into it I can get back in, not feeling worried about the fact that I’m nowhere as near as good as I used to be, but I’m just enjoying doing sport in a different role in a different way.

And that could be the same in this context, that you may need a bit of time to grieve, to get beyond the fact that you’re losing that skill and you’re not quite as sharp as you used to be for that particular skill. Before you take it up in a different way, in a different role.

[00:08:33] Lily: Sure, like I, I completely agree and that’s a really nice positive spin on it.

I guess the thing with sport is that’s something that’s happened for many years to many people.

[00:08:44] David: Yes.

[00:08:45] Lily: Whereas this whole concept of Chat GPT coming out, we don’t actually know.

[00:08:49] David: Generative AI. Because you don’t need to advertise a particular generative AI. Even though it is the one that everyone talks about.

[00:08:57] Lily: I know. And I would be interested to use other generative AI to see how different in response I get, but that’s that’s another thought for another day.

Let’s do one thought at a time while I’m able to even finish a thought.

[00:09:09] David: What was the thought again?

[00:09:13] Lily: We’re going to have to check. No. So it was that we don’t actually know the kind of I guess long term impact of stuff like generative AI, and how that can impact us. I know that some studies, for example, have said about when you stop working and go into retirement, if you then don’t let your brain stay active, that can cause a lot of deterioration and can be that can be when things like Alzheimer’s crop up a bit.

[00:09:41] David: I agree. I feel you are being challenged sufficiently in other ways. I try my best to challenge you. And maybe I’m not doing a good enough job.

[00:09:51] Lily: No, I think you’re fine.

[00:09:52] David: Would you like some more challenges?

I don’t think you need to consider ChatGPT, sorry, Generative AI, helping you engage in certain ways as totally reducing the amount of cognitive load you have.

[00:10:11] Lily: Okay.

[00:10:11] David: You may be losing specific skills. That I agree.

[00:10:17] Lily: Okay. And it just makes me think, of, okay, this is happening. I can feel myself losing these skills.

I know others are feeling this way. I know Johnny’s feeling this way, and I know that I looked it up to see if there’d been any studies on it, and if again, it’s early days, but if anyone else had been saying it, and people are also feeling this way, and I’m like, okay then what’s the kind of long term impact on this.

[00:10:38] David: But it’s the same problem with every technology. That’s my point. Okay. My point is, I’m afraid generative AI in this specific respect isn’t that special. Google Maps did it. Sorry, I shouldn’t say that. Online maps. Choose your favourite map system. This did it for navigation. Yeah. It was the same discussion in so many contexts.

[00:11:03] Lily: Even, even, hundreds of years ago people wouldn’t write things down. They’ll have things in memory.

[00:11:08] David: Yes. And, and then now you can just write it down and look it up any time. You don’t have to remember it anymore. You… how disempowering is this sort of crazy new skill called writing?

[00:11:22] Lily: So dependent on a pen and paper now. I don’t have a pen and paper on me.

[00:11:24] David: You don’t.

[00:11:26] Lily: You’ve got everything on your phone or something now anyway, but,

[00:11:34] David: but yes, exactly. New technology does lead to this. And this is, it changes the skills we have, it changes all that. And you’re right, we don’t know how it’s going to change it. Might it be for the better, might it be for the worse. Doesn’t really matter.

This is the key thing. The key thing is that you’re engaged, you’re intellectually stimulated, you’re intellectually stimulating. Of course, certainly I find you intellectually stimulating and therefore no, it’s not the robots. They may be intellectually stimulating you in other ways.

So you may be gaining new skills that you’re not really noticing. Maybe you are noticing them.

[00:12:10] Lily: I guess a lot of it though is that, I mean I’m in a very fortunate position that I can have these conversations with you and that and that I therefore have to think quite deeply about the impacts of generative AI.

[00:12:22] David: I don’t know that’s the conversations with me necessarily, that’s just the fact you are inquisitive. You want, you happen to be having conversations anyway, because this is what you’re doing. Now, it doesn’t matter whether we have the conversation or not. that instinct to look up the papers to see who else is doing this, what’s the research showing, that’s something you’ve got which is part of who you are.

Should you worry about this? If you want, you don’t have to. I’m not qualified to tell you whether or not to worry because, what I can tell you is that this isn’t special about generative AI. This is new technology. This is a very common process with any new technology.

[00:13:04] Lily: Yeah, and it’s probably just the big first one that I’ve been able to see.

[00:13:09] David: And that you’ve been through yourself. Because you might not have noticed some of the others that happened to you.

[00:13:15] Lily: I was lucky enough to have Google and the internet at school. And sure, we had to do things with a calculator and not with a calculator, but I’ve always had a calculator on me through my phone or since I was, 11 or 12.

Yeah. So not noticed, there of, oh, I no longer need to do mental maths. Yeah, that’s true.

[00:13:34] David: And phone numbers?

[00:13:35] Lily: Phone numbers? No, I just had to know my parents one when I was younger and I still know it. I won’t say it. I don’t know what would happen if I rang it now.

[00:13:42] David: Yeah, because they’re not there anymore. So actually, you’re saying it, you’re giving out a random number.

[00:13:48] Lily: That’s true. You just make it up.

[00:13:50] David: It doesn’t really matter. It’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter whether it exists or it’s valid or whatever it is. It’s just a number you know, and you will always know.

But that skill of taking numbers like that and knowing them like that, and it was a skill we used to have, and I used to know lots of numbers, phone numbers in different ways, because that’s what you did.

[00:14:13] Lily: Yeah. And so you’ve noticed that, that loss in yourself, presumably of

[00:14:18] David: Oh, many times, in many different contexts, in many different ways. And this is the thing, I’ve also had the privilege of working in different areas in different ways. That meant that every time I’ve changed I’ve lost skills that I used to have. I can’t tilt T structures like I used to. That wasn’t very useful in the first place.

[00:14:39] Lily: This is a mathematical thing, I think, which I don’t know.

[00:14:43] David: I just happen to do my PhD studying it, and so at one point I was pretty much the best person in the world at tilting T structures on Calabi Yau varieties related to their patches, their surfaces. That’s what I really did in my PhD and nobody in the world was really as good at it as me.

Right now I’m basically an amateur. From going to that sort of, that the height of tilting t strips down to where I am now, it’s a painful process.

Exactly, yeah.

[00:15:18] Lily: Now look at you and your sketch. Exactly,

[00:15:20] David: where are they going? I just lost them because I’ve not been tilting those t strips enough.

[00:15:26] Lily: So that’s fair, that is fair. I guess I wanted to pick up on something else. Towards the start of this, you said about diverse. You said that, that it’s less diverse and I guess we’ve spoken before about, about how using generative AI will, I guess make our text and what we’re saying less diverse.

[00:15:47] David: Depends how it’s created. It depends how good it gets in different ways. We don’t know. This is the thing. Yes, at the moment and in the nature of way where AI and machine learning and what it does is it does. Unless it’s baked in to increase diversity in certain ways, and then of course you get problems that can existed, and we discussed this in the images related to GemIIni and so on.

And so unless you try and bake diversity in, it doesn’t… It’s not what it’s set up to do.

[00:16:20] Lily: Yeah.

[00:16:20] David: And yeah, it’s interesting to see where it goes. We don’t know.

[00:16:23] Lily: It is interesting, and it is something that I’m looking forward to seeing. And it’s also what, again, while I was looking it up, someone who asked, I think it was on like a Reddit page or something, just while I was looking it up, is AI, is generative AI making me lazy or dumb or whichever term we want, because I feel a lot of them.

But but, someone responded they’re using Generative AI. And you can immediately tell, everyone could just immediately tell. And there’s something in there, something in that text that makes you be able to tell. Yeah. Wonder how things are going to go over the next few years of, if we just all start converging to speaking a certain way, which I really don’t want to happen.

[00:17:01] David: I think you’ll find that in the world there are forces for convergence and there’s forces for divergence. And I don’t believe generative AI is that different from other technologies in this respect. It’s a new technology, it is reshaping the world, just as many other technologies have in the past.

Is it going to totally dominate? The amount of money poured in, you’d think so, but I don’t believe so. I think that it’s just like many other big transformative technologies. It will leave its impact, it will leave its mark, and then something else will leave its mark, and, the world will move on.

And the world will keep moving. It will become what it becomes. I wouldn’t worry too much about the skills you are losing. By all means, be conscious of them and think about whether you want them as a hobby or you want to maintain them in some other way. But if they’re not useful to you anymore in the way they were in the past, embrace that.

Embrace what that frees you up to be able to do and learn in the future. This is what’s so exciting. We don’t have a single path in life. Now, Is it going to be disruptive for many people? Yes. You’re in the fortunate position that you have enough different skills that, it’s not if the only skill you had was manual labour working in a factory and suddenly your role is automated.

[00:18:31] Lily: Yes.

[00:18:32] David: Now it’s much, much harder to regain a new skill or to, and so on. And you’re in the fortunate position, yeah, you might be losing a mental skill which you gained, which you enjoyed, which you engaged with. You can gain others, you can enjoy others and if the robots make it easier for you to do that skill, great, then put your mind to something else.

Finding out, how are the robots making us lazier? That’s a really interesting study. There’s a lot to be learned from that. You could engage in that.

[00:19:05] Lily: Yes, I wouldn’t though. I’ll just give the papers to Generative AI and get that to tell me. That’s alright for me, thanks, yeah. And letter analysis.

[00:19:16] David: Can you read it for me?

[00:19:17] Lily: Yeah, I’d much like to submit it too. Do you mind telling me the submission process? Put it down into this format.

[00:19:26] David: Exactly, there you go.

[00:19:28] Lily: But no, OK, yeah, that’s, that is, that’s very interesting. Like I say, it’s an uncomfortable feeling, but I’m sure that I know that many people are feeling it as well.

But you’re right, you just need to and you hit it on the head when you said it’s up to you. No one’s making you do this.

[00:19:47] David: Exactly. It’s your behaviour choices. And, I’m not saying they’re bad choices. If you’re not happy with them, you can make different choices.

[00:19:55] Lily: Yeah, but I’m so much more efficient this way.

[00:19:57] David: But, okay. But that means, but that might make you happy. Does it make you happy to be efficient, or does it not make you happy?

[00:20:03] Lily: I like being efficient.

[00:20:04] David: Exactly, I know. And therefore, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.

[00:20:09] Lily: No, okay

[00:20:11] David: I’d start worrying about it. If you find that you can’t discuss it, you can’t engage as you are doing now in an interesting discussion on these things.

Now, then, you could say okay, I still want to be able to discuss things in interesting ways. What do I need to do that? And the point is, it’s not you then have to get rid of using responsible AI or think about doing it responsibly though. Oh yeah. Yeah, but it’s that you then need to find ways to make sure the skills you want to maintain can be nurtured.

[00:20:42] Lily: That’s true.

[00:20:43] David: So I think, I’ve got a really good idea. I think basically instead of doing one third of the podcast, you could take over and do all of them.

[00:20:52] Lily: No matter how

[00:20:55] David: Episodes rather than podcasts. Yeah.

[00:20:58] Lily: Unfortunately, but podcasts can, if they’re, 20 to 30 minutes, you can’t really make that any quicker when you’re talking.

[00:21:05] David: Oh, so yeah.

[00:21:06] Lily: Whereas work wise, you can really speed up that process. 

[00:21:09] David: Ah, it’s okay, I understand. So you can’t, you’re in that search for efficiency.

[00:21:12] Lily: I’m in the efficiency hub. Yeah, okay.

[00:21:17] David: This has been fun, I’ve enjoyed this. 

[00:21:18] Lily: No, me too. Do you have any final things to say?

[00:21:21] David: I don’t, do you? No, I absolutely don’t. And this one is about you.

[00:21:24] Lily: Of course I don’t. I need to check with the robots.

[00:21:26] David: Oh yeah, if you check with the robots then you might have a final thought.

[00:21:29] Lily: That’ll give me a nice summary.

[00:21:30] David: Exactly, that’s exactly what we should do.

[00:21:34] Lily: Yeah.

[00:21:34] David: Watch this space, maybe in the comments you’ll find a summary from Lily by the robots.

[00:21:40] Lily: Of, yeah, of what I, yeah, of my final words. Sounds wonderful. Thank you very much, David.

[00:21:46] David: Thank you. Cheers. Bye.