> I think another good historical analogy is the invention of writing. In Phaedrus[0] Plato argued that it may make people dumber.
No, he doesn't. Plato quotes Socrates quoting a mythical Egyptian king talking with the god that had supposedly created writing and wanted to gift it to the Egyptians. The entire conversation is much more nuanced. For one, writing had existed for three millennia by the point this dialogue was written, and alphabetic Greek writing had existed for several centuries.
Plato does make the point that access to text is not enough to acquire knowledge and it can foster a sense of false understanding in people who conflate knowing about something with knowing something, which I think is quite relevant when you see people claiming than can learn things from asking LLMs about it.
No, he doesn't. Plato quotes Socrates quoting a mythical Egyptian king talking with the god that had supposedly created writing and wanted to gift it to the Egyptians. The entire conversation is much more nuanced. For one, writing had existed for three millennia by the point this dialogue was written, and alphabetic Greek writing had existed for several centuries.
Plato does make the point that access to text is not enough to acquire knowledge and it can foster a sense of false understanding in people who conflate knowing about something with knowing something, which I think is quite relevant when you see people claiming than can learn things from asking LLMs about it.