You said “Yay, the LLMs will save us from ourselves”. Yes, I have that hope also. Especially when I look at how easily people fall for lies, scams, conspiracy theories these days.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman (who recently passed away) describes two types of thinking:
“System 1” is thinking we do subconsciously based on our observing patterns in the world and using the massive parallel processing in our brains to predict what might come next. It is intuitive and very fast way of thinking that we use most all the time, but it can be wrong as this way of thinking can easily be mislead or even manipulated.
The other way of thinking that we humans do is called “System 2” and it occurs in our consciousness. We use logic and math applied to facts to reach conclusions that are more likely correct, assuming we do it right.
In the “Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI” paper, the authors wrote conspiracy theories “primarily arise due to a failure to engage in reasoning, reflection, and careful deliberation. Past work has shown that conspiracy believers tend to be more intuitive and overconfident than those who are skeptical of conspiracies.”
It is System 1 thinking that results in conspiracy beliefs.
The paper finds that GPT-4 Turbo used “reasoning-based strategies …evidence-based alternative perspectives were used ‘extensively’ in a large majority of conversations”.
This is System 2 thinking that this top rated LLM is using to change the human’s beliefs.
Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, says the goal for GPT-5 that they are working on now is to be even better at System 2 reasoning.
Meanwhile, humans are not evolving very fast, so they will continue to use System 1 for the majority of its decisions. But some humans will turn to these “reasoning” AIs to help them make good decisions in the future.
Will this result in two types of humans?
I use the term “Homo Mythos” to describe the vast majority of humans who make decisions based on myths, superstitions, faulty reasoning, etc. That is System 1 thinking.
I reserve “Homo Sapiens” to describe those humans who are “wise” (“sapien” is the Latin word). They use System 2 reasoning as much as possible. And soon with the rise of AIs that may be able to reason better than humans, they will come to rely on these AIs for most all decisions.
Hopefully those decisions made by AIs will be good for us humans.
Yes, System 1 and System 2 is a good framing. We'll see how much AI can help us get better. But we are teachable, one way or the other, if we're willing to be taught.
Ask ai if the 2020 election was stolen. All evidence points to yes, with no room for a different answer. And when it comes back and all evidence points to no, you will understand why ai is as useless as the idiot
Very good article. And with prsctical hints to deal with stuborn peop66
You said “Yay, the LLMs will save us from ourselves”. Yes, I have that hope also. Especially when I look at how easily people fall for lies, scams, conspiracy theories these days.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman (who recently passed away) describes two types of thinking:
“System 1” is thinking we do subconsciously based on our observing patterns in the world and using the massive parallel processing in our brains to predict what might come next. It is intuitive and very fast way of thinking that we use most all the time, but it can be wrong as this way of thinking can easily be mislead or even manipulated.
The other way of thinking that we humans do is called “System 2” and it occurs in our consciousness. We use logic and math applied to facts to reach conclusions that are more likely correct, assuming we do it right.
In the “Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI” paper, the authors wrote conspiracy theories “primarily arise due to a failure to engage in reasoning, reflection, and careful deliberation. Past work has shown that conspiracy believers tend to be more intuitive and overconfident than those who are skeptical of conspiracies.”
It is System 1 thinking that results in conspiracy beliefs.
The paper finds that GPT-4 Turbo used “reasoning-based strategies …evidence-based alternative perspectives were used ‘extensively’ in a large majority of conversations”.
This is System 2 thinking that this top rated LLM is using to change the human’s beliefs.
Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, says the goal for GPT-5 that they are working on now is to be even better at System 2 reasoning.
Meanwhile, humans are not evolving very fast, so they will continue to use System 1 for the majority of its decisions. But some humans will turn to these “reasoning” AIs to help them make good decisions in the future.
Will this result in two types of humans?
I use the term “Homo Mythos” to describe the vast majority of humans who make decisions based on myths, superstitions, faulty reasoning, etc. That is System 1 thinking.
I reserve “Homo Sapiens” to describe those humans who are “wise” (“sapien” is the Latin word). They use System 2 reasoning as much as possible. And soon with the rise of AIs that may be able to reason better than humans, they will come to rely on these AIs for most all decisions.
Hopefully those decisions made by AIs will be good for us humans.
Yes, System 1 and System 2 is a good framing. We'll see how much AI can help us get better. But we are teachable, one way or the other, if we're willing to be taught.
Ask ai if the 2020 election was stolen. All evidence points to yes, with no room for a different answer. And when it comes back and all evidence points to no, you will understand why ai is as useless as the idiot