Came across this 2010 blog post about mindfulness in computing and so much of these behaviors have only intensified to new extremes with LLM usage. So much so that not only is the process of software creation being quickly supplanted by prompts and (stochastic) "search" assemblies, but more generally the kind of mindfulness talked about in the post (here meaning thinking through & solving a problem yourself[1]) is now being openly discouraged by industry and forcefully delegated out to a fuzzy pattern-match search megastructure, producing equally fuzzy results, uncaring of correctness or consequences[2] and requiring more resources than anything else ever built, regardless of problem scope/complexity.
Mindlessness.
Mindnumbness.
https://nf.wh3rd.net/space/posts/2010/08/the-invaluable-trait-of-mindfulness.html
"Later on, I thought about the strange thing that happened when I’d pulled out my phone. A modern smartphone is an impressive computer. My Nexus One is more powerful than my state-of-the-art desktop PC was 10 years ago, and is perfectly capable of factorizing a small number. But I didn’t ask it to. Instead, I told it to make a request that traversed a mobile network (comprised of tens of computers or routers), the open internet (20-50 computers), and into Google’s search infrastructure (thousands). There, in vast indexes, a reference was found to a site that could answer my question. The page at WikiAnswers clearly states “The factors of 91 are 1, 7, 13, and 91.” [...]
My request directly invoked the resources of thousands of computers, and indirectly used the energies of at least two other human beings (plus their supporting infrastructure). All to answer a question that could have been solved by my 8-bit ZX Spectrum (circa 1983) in the blink of an eye, or, simpler still, by thinking about it slightly longer than I had bothered to. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
We do stuff like this with technology all the time. By its very nature, technology makes it easy to solve trivial problems, even we don’t arrive at the solution by the most efficient (or reliable) means. A solution that works is, more often than not, good enough. Until it isn’t.
A poor algorithm will go unnoticed as long as it is fast enough to run within the available resources. Too often in this industry hardware is used to solve software problems."
[1] This also implies paying attention to resource & infrastructure usage required
[2] Limited Liability Machines: https://social.coop/@shauna/115787899531998860
#AI #LLM #Mindfulness #FrugalComputing
