AI is potentially a Dunning-Kruger effect amplifier(twitter.com)
52 pointsby binyu7 hours ago12 comments
  • steve_adams_866 hours ago
    I would argue that it's not just potential; it's actively happening, and a lot of us here noticed and discussed it years ago.

    The phenomenon of correcting people because Chat Gippity said x or y was the beginning. Now people repeat what the machine said as though it originated from them, and this has been totally normalized. It permeates everything. People feel empowered by it, but they have no intent or ability to verify. This is normal. It's another source of information, but it's vetted by probability at best, yet also misinterpreted and internalized at worst.

    People plagiarize and behave as though it's their own work with total confidence and no shame whatsoever. Speaking to teachers about this is mind-blowing. This is very real and present. These people believe they're doing 'the work' in many cases. Some are aware it's a farce, many are not.

    It has jammed a lever into D-K and cranked it up into something even worse, in my opinion.

    • jamesfinlayson3 hours ago
      I have a couple of people in my team at work whose first port of call for any hard question is to ask AI, and they proudly proclaim that AI said it can be done - all you need to do is x, y and z.

      Having had to actually work on something that their AI said was a nice easy 7-step process... yeah, two weeks' work was just laying the foundations.

    • warumdarum4 hours ago
      We need an, "your absolutly wrong" advocat diaboli agent in every conversation..
  • xracy5 hours ago
    I've been having this thought for the last month.

    The giveaway was my Medical Professional father thinking that AI was really good at things outside of his area of expertise, and really bad at things inside of his area of expertise.

    • bigstrat20035 hours ago
      Which is weird, because AI being bad at things in my expertise (programming) makes me distrust it 10x harder for things outside my expertise. At this point, unless an LLM can give me a reference that I can follow back to a trustworthy primary source (and unless that source says what the LLM synthesized from it), I automatically discard anything it says. It's simply wrong too frequently for me to do otherwise.
    • pratikdeoghare5 hours ago
      Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect

  • bauldursdev6 hours ago
    From a software POV, I feel like it makes it easier to implement stuff. Whether that stuff is good or bad. If you know what you're doing, vet the output, and use it properly, you can get a nice productivity boost while still producing good code. If you don't know what you're doing, you are prone to go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of unwise decisions.
    • keybored5 hours ago
      I would just like to lightly push back on that point. That bad code? That dead end? That month’s worth of tokens spent on a runaway loop? Those weren’t dead ends. Those were learning points. Experiences carried forward, etched in your mind. So take heart. We need both successes and failures to grow as people. And you are growing. I can see it.
  • matthewsinclair2 hours ago
    I’ve been referring to it as “Dunning-Kruger As A Service” for quite some time. Interesting that other folks are coming to the same conclusion.

    There’s a subtlety here, tho. It doesn’t mean (at all) that’s it useless. Just that those who don’t know what they’re doing are going to be amplifying their incompetence.

  • argee6 hours ago
    Wouldn’t that imply that it makes smarter people feel dumber? I haven’t heard of or seen such an effect from LLMs. Have you?

    If it only amplifies half the effect, I don’t think TFA is an accurate claim.

  • aarjaneiro3 hours ago
    I'm absolutely right.
  • WalterGR6 hours ago
    Related:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876744 - "LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger" (bytesauna.com)

    392 points | 7 months ago | 301 comments

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851483 - "AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service" (christianheilmann.com)

    268 points | 7 months ago | 199 comments

  • platevoltage6 hours ago
    Potentially? From what I can tell, Google's AI overview is one of the most widely sited sources now.
  • josefritzishere4 hours ago
    Anecdotally, I see this every day. I have seen otherwise intelligent people suggest that AI can defeat cause and effect, or that it's self aware, or secretly deterministic. Their enthusiasm borders on religious, or magical thinking.
  • stuaxo6 hours ago
    Potentially ?

    Definitely is.

  • keybored6 hours ago
    This is two-tweet hot take about DK and Idiocracy (we live in a society).

    Yeah we know that LLMs tend towards sycophancy.

    Discussing DK has a real Matthew 7:3-5 vibe about it.

  • joshka5 hours ago
    [flagged]