Linus Torvalds used AI to fix a Linux bug, and now LLM critics on Linux face an uncomfortable choice

themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 months ago

Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 2 months ago

Part 2:

Brains show less activity when completing tasks with LLMs compared to completing tasks with search or completing tasks without digital help.
Developers who use early-2025 LLMs reported higher subjective performance, but were measured to have lower objective performance. This gap between subjective and objective performance was considered notable.
In an Anthropic study, learners using LLMs demonstrated lower learning rates on average compared to learners not using LLMs.
A recent study uses the term “cognitive surrender” to describe the way humans tend to offload key critical thinking skills onto LLMs, even when the output is wrong.
A paper entitled “AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance” from April 2026 by academics from MIT, Oxford, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon showed alarming evidence that performing a variety of tasks with the help of AI for only 10 minutes causes “inpaired unassisted performance and reduced persistence”. The researchers noted that “although AI assistance improves performance in the short-term, people perform significantly worse without AI and are more likely to give up”; they also pointed out that “these findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning”.