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When calculators came out in the 70s my college math instructor told us that it’s game over. He said that while college math degrees will still be offered in the future, hand held calculators would now do 99% of all math calculations.

Your college math instructor really said that?!

The trick is in knowing which mathematical formulae to use, and then drawing the proper inferences.

30 years later search engines and Google in particular started thinking for us.

They don't "think" for us.

To be sure: Search engines have made those old newspaper article reference checking services passé - but today, a single individual (say, a college student writing a term paper, or any mentally agile and skeptical person who likes to cross-check and verify media reports) might launch more searches on a daily basis than an entire corps of little old ladies viewing microfiche files could possibly grapple with.

And now AI is here.

Yes, at this point, we do indeed see the true intellectual performance of the human mind being replaced.

Regards,

While I am wary of the potential abuses that could come about in using AI, I also see how it can be very useful.

For example, in my personal experience, I am astonished by how helpful Grok is.

In October, my younger sister and I will be going on a trip. She is in charge of arranging the flights, and I am co-ordinating our sightseeing and securing our lodging.

After having done trip planning for other trips, I am so very grateful for the time saved and for the confusion avoided by having AI help. It can run through in seconds websites that I might have spent hours perusing.

"...Yes, at this point, we do indeed see the true intellectual performance of the human mind being replaced..."

I see this as one of the things that very few people are focused on. We all focus on the positive, good, and helpful things AI can do for us, in the same way a drug addict might focus on the things they find good about a particular drug.

But they don't pay any attention to the potential deleterious effects that drug might have, in the same way we are tempted to paper over the negative effect offloading our intellect wholly onto machines might have.

I have heard it said often that the mind is like a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly, otherwise, like muscles it will become flabby and soft.

I believe that is a real, significant, and serious danger.

When I saw the movie "Idiocracy", it was hilarious, but I wondered how it could come to pass (I know, it was just a comedy) that everyone was completely brainless. Was it this?

Possibly.

I see that as one pathway. But this issue of offloading our human intellect to AI might carry us to the same end..

Well. I'm going back to my television now.

Leave me alone. Baitin'.