Students getting lazy, or dropping out of subjects entirely because they don't think they have a future in them.
Depression and a general feeling of despair. I see this in programming communities quite a bit - people who see LLMs as an existential threat to their careers and that they have wasted their lives getting good at something which is now being devalued.
"ChatGPT psychosis" - where people talk to LLMs and have unhealthy thought patterns reinforced by them to disastrous ends - gets a ton of coverage. But what about these milder but still meaningful effects where the very existence of AI disrupts people's future plans and self-worth even if they're not using it at all?
When we’re all brain rotted and unemployed, how will we spend money on corporations? Its a spiral.
> I went through this Ford engine plant about three years ago, when they first opened it.
> There are acres and acres of machines, and here and there you will find a worker standing at a master switchboard, just watching, green and yellow lights blinking off and on, which tell the worker what is happening in the machine.
> One of the management people, with a slightly gleeful tone in his voice said to me, “How are you going to collect union dues from all these machines?”
> And I replied, “You know, that is not what’s bothering me. I’m troubled by the problem of how to sell automobiles to these machines
- Walter Reuther, Nov. 1956
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-with-tyl...
It was a bit towards the end, I think.
I use mobile services timeboxed and in conjunction with blockers for certain services. I also went back to use old-school pencils and paper for work whenever possible. It is helpful - and fun.
Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/2/pgaf017/80160...
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462
If others are slacking, it's an opportunity to level up and stand out. Also, IMO there are market forces currently reshaping the jobs landscape, it's not only AI, I don't even think AI is the main driver.
> Surely this would be indicated by a glut of unfilled job postings.
I posted a link about Ghost jobs. Then, you said:
>[...]it is a job posting an employer has no intention of filling to begin with.
GP' comment speaks to recent graduates feeling less engaged. Whether it's because they fail to meet the requirements, or the requirements are literally fake doesn't matter. AI isn't used simply to cheat on coursework, but also to erect a de facto glass ceiling viz fake jobs with fake requirements, engagement suffers.