It's amazing how increased knowledge causes us to recognize what we don't know. I wonder how the world might change if we recognized this bias in all heated conversations.
Worth pushing back slightly on the framing: AI is dangerous when it replaces struggle, but it is genuinely powerful when it accelerates it.
A recent example: I had no idea how to set up a stock calculation for a specific product.
I spent four hours with AI, starting with general principles of stock management, then iterating on the specifics of my product until I landed on a solution we will actually implement.
I’m not a stock management expert now, but I understand the logic behind what I proposed and can carry it forward to new situations.
Without AI, the same work would have produced a worse result in weeks rather than days.
The distinction that matters is whether AI is being used to skip the metabolization or to accelerate it: asking it to do the thinking for you produces the Dunning-Kruger trap, but asking it to teach you, pushing back on its answers, iterating until you actually understand compounds in the opposite direction.
The era of the slop cannon is here. It will be more important than ever to find people and institutions where you trust their judgement and they maintain that quality.
You framed this so well. I actually wrote about DKE this week, too! Although, mostly about the old-school, passive kind: https://jwby.substack.com/p/1-179-midwit
It’s a riff on Dan Hockenmaier’s excellent recent piece that helped me understand DKE more clearly. It’s about how to use AI in a healthy way - namely, to build competence, rather than skipping it. If you only check out one of these links, read his! https://www.danhock.co/p/how-to-use-ai
Ha, that is so true! I can’t tell you how many times I have busted Grok for feeding me false information. Sometimes it comes up with stuff just to be conversational, or friendly, and yet the narrative comes out as false as a three dollar bill. The most recent manifestation of this on an important scale was the Georgia prosecutor who put someone in jail for life, but it turns out that her court filing contained five citations to cases that never existed and three quotations that did not support the position as claimed. What was the cause of her accuracy? Artificial intelligence. Basically AI wrote her brief!
"The model will kiss your butt regardless of what you say" has not been my recent experience *at all*. If you are not using the paid versions of the latest models you do not really have a good handle on how they behave now.
(though I agree that the sort of person who most needs the correction is exactly the person who won't seek a model that will give it to them).
It's amazing how increased knowledge causes us to recognize what we don't know. I wonder how the world might change if we recognized this bias in all heated conversations.
Worth pushing back slightly on the framing: AI is dangerous when it replaces struggle, but it is genuinely powerful when it accelerates it.
A recent example: I had no idea how to set up a stock calculation for a specific product.
I spent four hours with AI, starting with general principles of stock management, then iterating on the specifics of my product until I landed on a solution we will actually implement.
I’m not a stock management expert now, but I understand the logic behind what I proposed and can carry it forward to new situations.
Without AI, the same work would have produced a worse result in weeks rather than days.
The distinction that matters is whether AI is being used to skip the metabolization or to accelerate it: asking it to do the thinking for you produces the Dunning-Kruger trap, but asking it to teach you, pushing back on its answers, iterating until you actually understand compounds in the opposite direction.
The problem is, this is not how most people utilize (or will ever utilize) their AIs. That’s a great point and distinction, though, for sure.
"Old Dunning-Kruger was a blind spot. New Dunning-Kruger is a yes-man with infinite patience and no skin in the game."
AGI 🤖🪙💱 TOKEN market pricing ‘splainer:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/8977751d-31fb-4240-b282-8ee15ddb2e25
.....follow the money, Boomtown Cycle!⚒️🎲🇦🇹🧐
The era of the slop cannon is here. It will be more important than ever to find people and institutions where you trust their judgement and they maintain that quality.
You framed this so well. I actually wrote about DKE this week, too! Although, mostly about the old-school, passive kind: https://jwby.substack.com/p/1-179-midwit
It’s a riff on Dan Hockenmaier’s excellent recent piece that helped me understand DKE more clearly. It’s about how to use AI in a healthy way - namely, to build competence, rather than skipping it. If you only check out one of these links, read his! https://www.danhock.co/p/how-to-use-ai
Thank you! I shall dive in this weekend!
🏺 Euthyphro, AGI, 🔢 Dunning-Kruger and 😏🤖🪞✍🏼🎯 living in interesting times.....
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/28f96f92-ff5e-4e7b-8769-1268a1429522
....truly "WHITE" noise, grace and peace to you Amigo! 🙊🙉🙈 📈🧮📉 (🦉/🦤) 💽📲🔍🔮🤔⚖️
Ha, that is so true! I can’t tell you how many times I have busted Grok for feeding me false information. Sometimes it comes up with stuff just to be conversational, or friendly, and yet the narrative comes out as false as a three dollar bill. The most recent manifestation of this on an important scale was the Georgia prosecutor who put someone in jail for life, but it turns out that her court filing contained five citations to cases that never existed and three quotations that did not support the position as claimed. What was the cause of her accuracy? Artificial intelligence. Basically AI wrote her brief!
The "YES-MAN" paradox 😏🤖⚠️🎯
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/28f96f92-ff5e-4e7b-8769-1268a1429522
This is like arguing that you should never read books or talk to instructors. Just sit with the problem yourself.
Its so easy to bully ai these days.
"The model will kiss your butt regardless of what you say" has not been my recent experience *at all*. If you are not using the paid versions of the latest models you do not really have a good handle on how they behave now.
(though I agree that the sort of person who most needs the correction is exactly the person who won't seek a model that will give it to them).