[mikemarsh]

Presenting this quote without additional commentary is an interesting Rorschach test.

Thankfully more and more people are seriously considering the effects of technology on true wisdom and getting of the "all technological progress clearly is great, look at all these silly unenlightened naysayers from the past" train.

[runarberg]

Socrates was right about the effects. Writing did indeed cause us to loose the talent of memorizing. Where he was wrong though (or rather where this quote without context is wrong) is that it turned out that memorizing was by the most part not the important skill to have.

When Socrates uses the same warnings about LLMs he may however be correct both on the effect and the importance of the skill being lost. If we loose the ability to think and solve various problems, we may indeed be loosing a very important skill of our humanity.

[eaglelamp]

You're misinterpreting the quote. Socrates is saying that being able to find a written quotation will replace fully understanding a concept. It's the difference between being able to quote the pythagorean theorem and understanding it well enough to prove it. That's why Socrates says that those who rely on reading will be "hard to get along with" - they will be pedantic without being able to discuss concepts freely.

[AIorNot]

While there are dangers to LLMs -science fiction has been talking about this issue for decades (see below) and I think its overblown and the point of the Socrates quote is valid.

e.g the Matrix Reloaded: https://youtu.be/cD4nhYR-VRA?si=bXGBI4ca-LaetLVl&t=69 Machines no one understand or can manage

Issac Asmiov's Classic - the Feeling of Power https://ia600806.us.archive.org/20/items/TheFeelingOfPower/T...

(future scientists discover how to add using paper and pencil instead of computer)

I mean Big Paradigm shifts are like death, we can't really predict how humanity will evolve if we really get AGI -but these LLMs as they work today are tools and humans are experts at finding out how to use tools efficiently to counter the trade offs.

Does it really matter today that most programmers don't know how to code in assembly for example?