If one has an LLM “do the work,” then one does not actually learn anything. Taking notes improves recall, and so does trying to remember the answer before looking something up. In any case, to become more proficient, something has to happen inside the mind. If we skip that part in our rush to produce volume of output, we are trading away our future skills.
“Not gaining proficiency” would be indictment enough, but worse, unused skills decay. There is a reason that C is not on my résumé anymore! I can’t imagine what would become of my PHP if I didn’t do the coding, and I utterly dread the potential outcome of using an LLM to make changes for an entire month.
An LLM will never produce original work, since it is trying to “predict” based on a corpus of past, public work. It’s great for writing code like fanboys on the internet write code. It’s not so great at cost optimization.
Overall, I wonder about how institutional knowledge might be affected by heavier LLM usage. If we’re not doing the thinking, will we be able to remember anything about our own history?
