Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:25:59 GMT

faraiwe@mstdn.social — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:25:59 GMT

@koen_hufkens @ai6yr @cwebber experience: the collection of times when you went "oh, shit..." and filed it under "no, not doing that again, nope" for future reference.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:17:54 GMT

katls@ohai.social — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:17:54 GMT

@cwebber and there it is: our education system has mostly been designed for compliance. It needs a redesign because humans will follow the incentives. We are not complicated that way. We need to incentivize critical thinking.

Thankfully, compliance was never one of my parenting goals. Nor should it be anyone’s.

Cooperation is a much better goal.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:10:29 GMT

koen_hufkens@mastodon.social — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:10:29 GMT

@ai6yr @cwebber One of my life regrets is not studying physics, with a minor in life sciences / biology (rather than having to do it the other way around - which stinks).

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:09:45 GMT

notsle@kzoo.to — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:09:45 GMT

@cwebber I was having this discussion with co-workers and came to the conclusion that with people relying on AI, things are gonna stagnate. no "new" knowledge will be pumped into the system so it will just be regurgitated slop once people stop thinking for themselves.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:08:52 GMT

koen_hufkens@mastodon.social — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:08:52 GMT

@ai6yr @cwebber Along the same line. I often got the question, what major should I study. I tell them, pick the hardest you can handle (if not a bit more). You will never have as much time to deal with this stuff as during college.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:06:51 GMT

koen_hufkens@mastodon.social — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:06:51 GMT

@ai6yr @cwebber When mentoring students I often get the question - how do you figure things out so quickly.

Then I tell them that I've been messing with hardware and software since I was in my early teens - and I made tons of (innocent) mistakes.

When you get to be an adult you then know how to approach complex systems where you might not have this much margin.

Much of it is heuristics. Offloading heuristics (despite biases) is a VERY BAD IDEA.

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:00:42 GMT

ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:00:42 GMT

@cwebber Oooh, this quote, exactly!

"...In my view, the most likely explanation for this is not generational preference but biological development. The older group probably offloaded tasks they already knew how to perform. The younger group offloaded task they never learned how to perform. These neural pathways for source evaluation and constructing arguments were never formed. You can’t atrophy a muscle that was never built...."

Reply to Adults lose skills to AI; Children never build them. on Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:58:56 GMT

fedihacker@masto.es — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:58:56 GMT

@cwebber The list with the key points is demolishing.