In short, college students nowdays have lower reading comprehension than young children in the 1850s. That is not what I would call progress.
Speaking personally, I believe I would potentially have significantly worse critical reasoning abilities if I had grown up using LLMs. It is very clear to me the temptation of using them as an ersatz for engagement and thought.
I think you are perhaps conflating technological progress (yes technology has improved) with demographic progress. Demographic progress is far from monotonically increasing (reading comprehension is newly plummeting, maths scores are dropping in America, science per scientist is stalling compared to 50 years ago, etc...)
In short, college students nowdays have lower reading comprehension than young children in the 1850s. That is not what I would call progress.
Speaking personally, I believe I would potentially have significantly worse critical reasoning abilities if I had grown up using LLMs. It is very clear to me the temptation of using them as an ersatz for engagement and thought.
I think you are perhaps conflating technological progress (yes technology has improved) with demographic progress. Demographic progress is far from monotonically increasing (reading comprehension is newly plummeting, maths scores are dropping in America, science per scientist is stalling compared to 50 years ago, etc...)