CROSSPOST: DAVID DEMING: Using generative AI to learn is like Odysseus untying himself from the mast

The real action in economic history comes when we stop treating the past as a string of anecdotes and start treating it as a system we can measure, model, and poke at counterfactually. The promise...

The real action in economic history comes when we stop treating the past as a string of anecdotes and start treating it as a system we can measure, model, and poke at counterfactually. The promise of this course—“Quantitative Long‑Run Global Economic History”—is to do that across the entire human story, from hominins with handaxes to attention‑info‑bio‑tech economies with smartphones and large language models in their pockets. But we are launching it at a very particular intellectual moment. Generative AI is now a ubiquitous “exoskeleton for the mind”: astonishingly good at offloading routine cognitive labor, and equally good at tempting students (and professors) to skate on the surface instead of doing the hard work of understanding. Hence this crosspost: a warning…

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Deming asks: Are we solving a technological problem, or an agency problem?

<https://forklightning.substack.com/cp/185133671>

Using generative AI to learn is like Odysseus untying himself from the mast

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##crosspost-david-deming-using-generative-ai-to-learn-is-like-odysseus-untying-himself-from-the-mast
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##crosspost
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