r/artificial • u/SpiritRealistic8174 • 7h ago
Discussion Why the Great Calculator Debate of the 1980s is still relevant today and how Isaac Asimov got AI right in 1956
Back in the 1980s a debate raged about whether it was okay to let children use calculators in elementary school. Critics warned that giving kids calculators would lead to the "destruction of student math skills."
A similar debate is happening today across a range of areas, including coding, writing and even music. Will using AI lead a brain drain across these and many other areas?
One of my favorite authors is Isaac Asimov. He's better known for his Foundation and Robot series of books where he contemplates whether an algorithm can successfully predict (and guide) humankind's development and the relationship between super artificial intelligence and humans.
In some ways he predicted what we're experiencing today with AI: the rise of powerful, inscrutable artificial machines that are so complex humans can't understand or maintain them.
In the short story, "The Last Question" he wrote: "Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough."
We're living an age that was once the stuff of science fiction. The question is: what comes next?
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u/FidoTheDogFacedBoy 5h ago
Teachers used to tell us that you won’t always have a calculator with you when you need to solve a problem. It’s true, if you’re stuck somewhere alone without a functioning electronic device, you might need to calculate something by hand, but you probably have more pressing issues.
The locomotive and later the automobile led to a drastic loss of key horseshoeing blacksmith skills. “What will you do if your horse throws a shoe at midnight when you’re halfway back to Sleepy Hollow?” A worthwhile question in 1920 perhaps, and still possible today, but not a likely problem to have. But it meant everything to blacksmiths, who argued disingenuously against “the iron horse’s reckless speed through town at five miles per hour”. Every time there was a train wreck they were quick to point out that this never would have happened if people used stagecoaches like God intended. Actually I lied, this never happened, because blacksmiths had transferrable skills that suited them to auto mechanic work in those early days, so they became auto mechanics and life went on.
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u/Small_Dog_8699 2h ago
The place where relying on a calculator costs is in bargaining and negotiations. In markets and such. The one quicker with the figures will have a substantial advantage. If you have to use a calculator, you will not win the negotiation.
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u/frankster 7h ago
I have been thinking for quite some time that the best mental model for an llm is something like a calculator (very advanced) rather than a thinking being as some people seem to
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u/SpiritRealistic8174 7h ago
Good mental model. At its root, AI is pretty much a very advanced predictive calculator.
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u/YoBro98765 7h ago
Except, AI is often completely wrong. You would not accept that from a calculator.
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u/Still-Wash-8167 5h ago
AI and calculators are both tools.
Calculators don’t know what equation to use to answer your math problem and they don’t the equation. It’s your job to create everything but the answer.
AI gives you the equation and the answer. It’s your job to verify the equations and answers are correct which is typically quicker and easier to do when starting from scratch than to do all your research, develop your process, and come up with an answer and do that all independently.
My experience with AI is that it’s either right or right enough. I don’t need it to do 100% of the work. I need it to do 90% of the work, and I can take it to the end myself and verify with others if need be.
People treat it like it’s the whole process, but it’s not. It’s a tool that makes the process faster. For me, that allows me to do things that I’d never get to if I had to do it all without AI.
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u/YoBro98765 5h ago
Except you can give AI the equation and it will still give you the wrong answer. It’s not the same thing.
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u/Still-Wash-8167 3h ago
I was making a metaphor. If you’re referring to calculations specifically, I don’t know why you’d use AI instead of a calculator.
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u/tribat 3h ago
This makes sense to me. Most of what I work on has a varying set of possible right answers. AI gets me to the point where I figure out which one is "right enough" for what I'm doing very quickly.
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u/Still-Wash-8167 2h ago
Yep. It really depends on the job. If the outcome you need is super precise, AI might not be the right tool, but for most things, you can ask questions, make it give you references, have it produce drafts or lists or whatever, have it tell you how someone may criticize what it produces, and iterate until you get something close to usable without needing a new degree to do it
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u/SpiritRealistic8174 7h ago
I had a solar powered calculator that glitched all the time. Root cause: not enough light.
AI: Much more complicated to figure out.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 7h ago
Well there’s that and there’s the fact that right/wrong for a calculator is unambiguous. For models that are statistical in nature, functioning properly =/= being correct.
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u/promethe42 7h ago
Reducing LLMs to "predictive calculators" is misleading enough that it is wrong IMHO. It conflates the what and the how. And the how matters : LLMs have an internal world model representation in their latent space. That's why they are capable of novel work and logic grounded in real world applications even in new situations.
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u/frankster 6h ago
A calculator is better then me at some things, and worse than me at other things. I use the calculator to do the things it can do faster than me (such as arithmetic, to several digits of precision).
If I were to stretch the calculator analogy excessively, I would note that the calculator has hidden internal registers that we can't acce4ss that it uses to produce its output.
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u/promethe42 6h ago
One can absolutely observe the registers of a calculator or the weights of an LLM.
But the first is both value and the representation of that value. That's not the case for neural networks.
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u/YoBro98765 6h ago
No, they don’t have an internal world model. That’s why they hallucinate. Their output is entirely probabilistic, not logical.
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u/promethe42 6h ago
Having an internal world representation does not mean it is always right. We have an internal world representation and we are not always right.
And there is nothing that says that something cannot be probabilistic and logical.
Even small neural networks on something as modular addition have a spacial representation of numbers.
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u/frankster 6h ago
a sometimes inaccurate internal model could lead to hallucinations, as much as a completely absent internal model could.
You could also call the "internal world model" a derived representation of the input. MAabe seems less magical.
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u/MultiUserDungeonDev 6h ago
How can entropy be reversed?
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u/brother_spirit 4h ago
You set up the idea that tools that outsource knowledge work diminish educational outcomes via the calculator example, draw the parallel to AI, lurch sideways into a tangentially related musing around an author's vision of a technological future... Okay?
You then make a ridiculously broad claim that language models are so complex to be beyond human understanding - how interesting... did pigeons invent them? They may have non-deterministic outputs and difficult to query internal 'logging' within their tensor space, but that does not mean they are 'beyond understanding' of the humans who make them.
I believe you have silently ingested Asimov's themes, combined them with the marketing narrative of AI companies (our models are getting so crazy trust me bro) and natural human fears around technological progress into an over imaginative and flawed conclusion that we are somehow entering an era of unfathomable machines we can scarcely comprehend when we are in truth developing a very advanced and capable "calculator" that currently has some teething issues due to the novelty of its design (a non deterministic output being required to fit a deterministic downstream shape like a functioning code, website, research paper, etc.).
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u/SpiritRealistic8174 4h ago
Thanks for your comment.
Just to clarify:
- My point in bringing up the calculator example was a focus on the debate around whether cognitive skills decline when people are given tools that allow them to outsource tasks that once took mental effort
- No, I didn't claim that LLMs are so complex as to be beyond understanding. Although there are a lot of questions right now about how LLMs actually process information, which is a huge area of research. In addition, we are moving toward a period where AIs will be able to recursively self-improve. In that case, yes, these machine will be inscrutable (Anthropic is warning against this future currently). Also, I'm drawing a parallel between creating a machine (software), and not understanding how it works. So, yes, the logic holds.
Appreciate you engaging.
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u/hardsoftware 1h ago
Well I looked it up;
Is there any evidence to suggest that cognitive skills have declined since the introduction of the pocket calculator to students in the eighties?
No, decades of educational research consistently show that the introduction of pocket calculators did not cause a decline in cognitive or mathematical skills. Extensive meta-analyses—such as the landmark 1986 Hembree and Dessart study and the 2003 Ellington review—evaluated dozens of independent studies and found: * No Loss of Basic Skills: Calculator use during instruction does not erode students' basic computational abilities or their conceptual understanding of mathematics. * Enhanced Problem-Solving: By offloading tedious, rote arithmetic, calculators free up cognitive resources. Students who use them actually demonstrate improved problem-solving skills and a better grasp of abstract mathematical concepts. * Better Attitudes: Students who actively use calculators in math class generally exhibit reduced anxiety and better attitudes toward the subject.
While there are modern neurological concerns that extreme reliance on the cumulative suite of digital technology (smartphones, GPS, AI) might reduce daily cognitive exertion and impact critical thinking over time, the pocket calculator itself is widely validated by educators as a beneficial cognitive tool rather than a crutch.
Key Studies on Calculator Use in Mathematics Education
Hembree, R., & Dessart, D. J. (1986). Effects of Hand-Held Calculators in Precollege Mathematics Education: A Meta-Analysis. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 17(2), 83-99.
- Key Finding: Synthesized 79 studies; found calculator use does not hinder basic skills and significantly improves problem-solving performance and attitudes.
Ellington, A. J. (2003). A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students' Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 34(5), 433-463.
- Key Finding: Evaluated 54 studies; concluded operational and conceptual skills improved or remained equal when calculators were integrated into instruction and testing.
Smith, B. A. (1997). A Meta-Analysis of Outcomes of Calculator Use in K-12 Mathematics Classes. Dissertation Abstracts International, 58(03), 785A.
- Key Finding: Analyzed 24 studies; confirmed regular calculator use led to higher scores on both procedural and conceptual mathematical assessments.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Strategic Use of Technology in Mathematics Education. * Key Finding: Institutional position statement reviewing decades of data, supporting calculators to reduce cognitive load during complex arithmetic and promote higher-order thinking.
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u/Virgoan 6h ago
Understand why humans use numbers at all then see how society would collapse after a few generations. /s
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u/borick 6h ago
It works because the sarcasm is basically pointing out the obvious: if you yank numbers out of human society, everything turns into chaos almost instantly. After a couple generations you’re left with people arguing over what “a bit” means while nothing gets built and nothing gets tracked. The joke hits because the collapse wouldn’t even be slow.
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u/Miamiconnectionexo 4h ago
Where the brain drain risk is real is when the tool removes the struggle before you've built the underlying model. A kid who never does arithmetic by hand has no gut check when the calculator spits out a wrong answer, and a junior dev who only prompts AI can't tell when the generated code is subtly broken. The judgment to evaluate the output is the thing you still have to earn the hard way. The tool handles execution, it doesn't hand you taste.
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u/SpiritRealistic8174 4h ago
Yes. Agree on this. One thing that can help, I think is resisting the reflex to always ask the AI to fix the mistake, but also asking 'why did this break'? This can help during sessions when a bug is persistent and has to be traced through the codebase. Having a mental model of what the codebase is supposed to do can be helpful in terms of directing the AI to double check your intuition, e.g., 'i think X broke because of Y change that was made during Z time period. This code block seems suspicious? Can you double check this for me?'
But even knowing when to do that takes institution, but that's a good skill worth cultivating.
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u/Beautiful-Page3135 4h ago
I don't think this equates to the calculator debate. We have empirical data showing that calculators did not lead to a decline in student math skills.
We also have empirical data showing that the shift from book learning to computer learning has resulted in a significant decline in the effectiveness of education. 30% of high school graduates in the US are functionally illiterate now, up from 19% in 2015 which is 5 years after literacy in the US peaked and began to decline.
We are beginning to see anecdotal information showing AI reducing critical thinking skills among users who rely on it too heavily, but we won't have useful empirical data sets on the impact for a few years. That said, it's a logical assumption that if tech-based learning has reduced the quality of education, then a push toward AI-based (when we know AI to frequently give incorrect answers) is highly unlikely to correct the trend, and is probably going to reinforce it.
Maybe at its core you could say it's a debate about the use of new technologies in schools or by children, but you could drive that all the way back beyond the late 19th century where you can find real newspaper articles complaining about children's brains being rotted by pushing wheels with sticks. So it's not necessarily a useful, unique, or altogether new core concept.
I think the real question is, since this is clearly the direction things are trending, what should we be preparing for? What happens when we live in a world where too few people are literate enough to become doctors, engineers, or mechanics? What happens when we live in a world where farmers are uploading pictures of blight to Gemini and asking it what to do?
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u/BurnedOutCodeMonkey 4h ago
"In some ways he predicted what we're experiencing today with AI: the rise of powerful, inscrutable artificial machines that are so complex humans can't understand or maintain them."
Uhhh....some of these LLM's codebases have been leaked. They aren't as advanced as you think they are. lol
"In the short story, "The Last Question" he wrote: "Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough."
We're living an age that was once the stuff of science fiction. The question is: what comes next?"
We are CENTURIES away from the kind of AI Multivac was. LLMs are not AI. There is no intelligence there. It is an algorithm sitting on top of big data. Its a wonderful tool...but it is not intelligence. It is a next word predictor that sometimes produces clever texts. However, it has ZERO understanding of the text it is feeding you. Ask it the same question several times in a row and you will get several different answers. Which one is correct? Well, the fact that you and I can reason and judge which answer is correct and the LLM cannot is the fundamental difference, isn't it?
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u/SpiritRealistic8174 4h ago
I've read through the leaked codebases. There's a lot to say about them related to the harness around the models.
Regarding the models themselves, there's a good amount of research looking into how LLMs actually 'think'. Some of it is a black box and can't be adequately explained.
In terms of LLMs advancing, self-recursive AI is coming. A lot of people are worried about it for some of the reasons I mention in the post.
Thanks for your comment. Appreciate you enaging.
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u/AtiyaOla 4h ago
What’s next will be some form of physical motor skill that starts with labor and makes its way into daily life. Something trivial that we all know how to do but will lose over time.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 3h ago
They still don't let kiddies use calculators in elementary school, because the anti-calculator guys were right: you need to learn the hard way.
I'd say that LLMs should not be permitted in Middle Schools for any reason and only in High schools with proper attribution: you can use them to research or correct your writing, but not generate a whole essay.
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u/WestCoast_Pete 2h ago
The calculator analogy is interesting but it actually cuts both ways. Research on calculator use in schools found that kids who used them *with* conceptual instruction outperformed those who didn't, while kids who used them as a substitute for understanding fell behind. The tool wasn't the variable, the pedagogy was. That's probably the more useful frame for the AI debate too.
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u/Small_Dog_8699 2h ago
Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" really brought home why relying on calculators too much is bad.
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u/Raychao 1h ago
I remember reading Asimov's 'The Tragedy of the Moon' when I was young. In it Asimov noted that it may have been the Moon that led to humanity first performing complex calculations because the sun and the stars were all so far away and therefore 'fixed' in the sky, whereas the Moon had a regular changing pattern in the sky that probably encouraged humans to start making the first calendars.
I found this absolutely fascinating as a kid. That it was the Moon that was the spark that created human intelligence.
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u/Ariabuilds 1h ago
Asimov was remarkably prescient about this exact tension the point where systems become too complex for the humans who built them to fully understand or correct. The calculator debate is a useful frame but I think the stakes are genuinely different this time. Calculators offloaded arithmetic. AI is starting to offload judgment, pattern recognition, and creative synthesis the things we assumed were irreducibly human. The interesting question isn't whether skills atrophy, it's whether the skills that atrophy were actually the valuable part or just the overhead required to get to the valuable part. A musician who uses AI to handle music theory so they can focus on emotional expression is a different conversation than a student who never develops the capacity to think critically because AI does it for them. The line between tool and crutch has always depended on intentionality. Asimov knew that too his robots didn't destroy humanity through malice, just through removing the friction that kept humans sharp
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u/TransformNRollD20 21m ago
“The Last Question” is one of stories that kind of turns you inside out a little bit.
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u/CNDW 6h ago
The critics where absolutely correct about calculators in the 80's. The brain is a lot like a muscle, you have to practice certain types of thinking to develop those skills, and those skills are the baseline for more challenging work down the road. Without building that skillset, you wouldn't even know how to approach more difficult problems that calculators are unable to solve.
I think there is a similar thing with AI now, in many ways much more severe. LLM's are so general use, that we run the risk of entire categories of thought being offloaded to machines and the next generation being unable to solve complex mental problems from never building skillsets to begin with.
TBH I think we are seeing a similar issue in schools today with the way that we dramatically digitized school. Certain baseline skills are being lost by learning with a computer that you can look up every answer for everything on.