AI 时代的认知分水岭:用思考的人,与逃避思考的人
当 AI 工具普及到几乎人人可用,真正的竞争已经不是技术本身,而是一种更古老的素质:思考的意愿与能力。
核心观点:AI 的真正分野不在于是否能取代人类,而在于使用者是用它来深化思考还是逃避思考,这一认知习惯的差异将决定个人在技术浪潮中的命运。
在技术圈最近密集的讨论中,一个被反复提及却总被轻描淡写的议题正在浮出水面:AI 的真正分界线,根本不是“AI 会不会取代人类工作”,而在于人们如何使用 AI。一位在科技行业浸淫七年的从业者在自己的长篇分享中直言不讳地说,最困扰应届生的焦虑并非全然没有道理,但问题的关键在于,你属于哪个群体——是用 AI 来帮助思考的人,还是用 AI 来逃避思考的人。这个判断听上去像一句漂亮的口号,但当我们把它放进具体的场景里,它的分量会变得完全不同。
想想看,一个刚毕业的软件工程师,如果只是把 AI 当成一个生成代码段、快速完成作业、应付面试题的工具,那么他追逐的不过是更快的执行速度而已。他依然在用旧时代的思维框架去套新技术,只不过把搜索引擎换成了一个聊天窗口。而另一些人,他们会把 AI 当作一个“会说话的代码库”,不仅要求它生成代码,还会追问它的设计决策逻辑,让 AI 解释为什么选择这种写法而非另一种,然后在此基础上修改、重组、创造新东西。这听起来只是做事习惯的差别,但在 AI 加速一切的时代,这种差别会迅速累积成不可逾越的鸿沟。
我完全不认同那种“AI 会消灭程序员”的末日叙事,因为这种叙事忽略了最关键的一点:真正有价值的不是写代码这个动作,而是理解问题本质的能力。AI 能做的是把“写代码”的门槛降低,但它无法替你做“决定写什么代码”的决策。如果一个人习惯了把思考外包给 AI,连最基础的逻辑推理都懒得自己过一遍,那他确实很危险——不是因为 AI 太强,而是因为他自己放弃了思考。风险并不来自外部技术,而来自内部习惯。
有趣的是,另一位在 AI 领域有深度实践的人——一位经常在公开场合发表技术见解的研究者——刚刚在投资峰会上分享了一个更微妙的观察。他指出,LLM 的能力分布是极度“锯齿状”的:同一个模型可以优雅地重构一个十万行的代码库,同时却可能建议你“开车去洗车店洗车”。这种极端的表现不一致,根源在于模型的训练数据分布。当任务落在模型被精心训练的领域内,比如重构代码,它表现得像天才;一旦脱离了这个范畴,它就像一个什么都不懂的初学者。这个现象带来的启示是深刻的:使用 AI 的关键,不是盲目信任它的全面性,而是精准判断什么时候可以依赖它,什么时候必须自己介入。
这种判断力本身,就是一种高级的元认知能力。它要求使用者不仅理解自己的需求,还要理解 AI 的能力边界。一个没有思考习惯的人,很容易陷入两个极端:要么对 AI 百依百顺,把它的任何输出都奉为真理;要么因为一两次失败体验就彻底否定 AI 的价值。这两种态度都源于同一根源——缺乏独立判断的意愿和能力。
更值得思考的是,这位研究者提到的“agent-native economy”正在快速成形。他预测,未来的产品和服务将被分解为传感器、执行器和逻辑层,而这些逻辑层会分布在传统代码和 AI 模型之间。这意味着,一个能够自如穿梭于不同计算范式之间、能够把复杂需求转化成 AI 可理解的任务描述的人,将拥有巨大的竞争优势。反过来说,那些只会在固定模板里打转、无法把问题抽象成可执行的步骤的人,无论使用多少 AI 工具,都只是换了一种方式原地踏步。
这种趋势已经在现实中显现出真实的冲击力。一位海外独立开发者分享了他的经历:他利用“vibe coding”的方式,为自己的电商网站开发了一个自动化争议处理工具。过去十年,他几乎从未赢过任何支付纠纷,每次都白白损失款项和高昂的手续费。但当他用 AI 编写了一个能够自动收集用户行为证据、生成详细抗辩 PDF 的工具后,他不仅开始赢回纠纷,甚至赢回了一笔 1199 美元的大额争议。这个故事的戏剧性不在于 AI 的“神奇”,而在于它揭示了一个事实:那些重复、繁琐、需要大量信息收集和整理的工作,恰恰是 AI 最擅长的。而那些“用 AI 逃避思考”的人,很可能连这个工具存在的价值都意识不到,因为他们从未认真思考过自己的业务痛点在哪里。
当然,必须承认的是,这种“思考 vs 逃避”的二分法在现实中并非非黑即白。人总有疲惫的时候,总有无从下手的时候,总希望有一个工具能代替自己完成那些令人厌烦的低级劳动。这完全正常,甚至可以说,正是这种需求推动了技术的进步。但问题在于,当这种“偶尔的逃避”变成一种“习惯性的依赖”时,认知能力的退化就开始了。这种现象在心理学上有一个经典概念叫“认知卸载”——当我们习惯于把记忆、计算、判断等任务交给外部工具,我们的大脑会主动放弃这些能力,因为大脑遵循“用进废退”的原则。
那些“用 AI 逃避思考”的人也并非没有理由。他们可能会争辩说,效率才是第一位的,把时间花在低层次的重复劳动上才是浪费。这个观点有一定的合理性,但它忽略了一个关键问题:没有经过深思熟虑的“高效”,往往只是把错误的事情做得更快。一个习惯了把需求直接扔给 AI 生成答案的人,可能永远无法建立起对问题本质的深层理解。而一旦遇到 AI 无法处理的边缘情况,他就会陷入彻底的无力感。
更隐蔽的风险在于,当一个人习惯了被 AI 喂养答案,他会逐渐丧失提出好问题的能力。而提出好问题,恰恰是人类智慧的制高点。AI 可以给你一百种答案,但它不能替你判断哪个问题值得被回答。在知识爆炸的时代,信息本身已经不再稀缺,稀缺的是筛选、重组、批判信息的能力。这种能力,无法通过任何工具外包,只能通过持续、主动的思考来维持和提升。
所以,当我们谈论“AI 是否会取代人类”时,我们其实在问一个更本质的问题:人类是否还愿意保持思考的习惯?技术总是在变,工具总是在迭代,但思考的价值从未改变。AI 把“懒人”和“勤快人”之间的距离拉得更大,因为它放大了每一个个体原有的行为模式。如果你本来就是一个善于思考的人,AI 会成为你的放大器;如果你本来就不爱思考,AI 只会让你的思维更快地萎缩。
最后,我想引用那位研究者的一句话作为结尾:他的演讲中一直在试图解释 LLM 的“锯齿状能力”模式,他承认自己仍然不完全满意这个解释,但他说,这种挣扎本身——想要构建一个关于 LLM 能力的准确模型,以便在实践中既利用它们的优势又避开它们的陷阱——才是真正有价值的事情。这种挣扎,这种不满足于表面答案的追问,这种主动建构认知框架的努力,正是人与工具之间最本质的区别。而任何 AI,都无权替我们完成这个任务。
参考来源
- 7 years in tech, now building AI products on the side. What I actually see happening and honest take for freshers navigating this mess - https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1t0ig0f/7_years_in_tech_now_building_ai_products_on_the/
- Fireside chat at Sequoia Ascent 2026 from a ~week ago. Some highlights:
- The first theme I tried to push on is that LLMs are about a lot more than just speeding up what existed before (e.g. coding). Three examples of new horizons:
- 1. menugen: an app that can be fully engulfed by LLMs, with no classical code needed: input an image, output an image and an LLM can natively do the thing.
- 2. install .md skills instead of install .sh scripts. Why create a complex Software 1.0 bash script for e.g. installing a piece of software if you can write the installation out in words and say "just show this to your LLM". The LLM is an advanced interpreter of English and can intelligently target installation to your setup, debug everything inline, etc.
- 3. LLM knowledge bases as an example of something that was *impossible* with classical code because it's computation over unstructured data (knowledge) from arbitrary sources and in arbitrary formats, including simply text articles etc.
- I pushed on these because in every new paradigm change, the obvious things are always in the realm of speeding up or somehow improving what existed, but here we have examples of functionality that either suddenly perhaps shouldn't even exist (1,2), or was fundamentally not possible before (3).
- The second (ongoing) theme is trying to explain the pattern of jaggedness in LLMs. How it can be true that a single artifact will simultaneously 1) coherently refactor a 100,000-line code base *and* 2) tell you to walk to the car wash to wash your car. I previously wrote about the source of this as having to do with verifiability of a domain, here I expand on this as having to also do with economics because revenue/TAM dictates what the frontier labs choose to package into training data distributions during RL. You're either in the data distribution (on the rails of the RL circuits) and flying or you're off-roading in the jungle with a machete, in relative terms. Still not 100% satisfied with this, but it's an ongoing struggle to build an accurate model of LLM capabilities if you wish to practically take advantage of their power while avoiding their pitfalls, which brings me to...
- Last theme is the agent-native economy. The decomposition of products and services into sensors, actuators and logic (split up across all of 1.0/2.0/3.0 computing paradigms), how we can make information maximally legible to LLMs, some words on the quickly emerging agentic engineering and its skill set, related hiring practices, etc., possibly even hints/dreams of fully neural computing handling the vast majority of computation with some help from (classical) CPU coprocessors. - https://nitter.net/karpathy/status/2049903821095354523#m
- 🏆 For the first time in a decade on @Stripe I've started winning disputes with my vibe coded dispute responder
- I used to ignore disputes so I almost always lost them, now I've started winning, this one is the first big dispute for $1,199 USD!
- Whenever a dispute comes in, my site gets a webhook notice from Stripe, it then starts collecting evidence and generates a PDF with entire user's details, when they signed up, and most importantly what they did in the app
- In this case the user used the app for months, generated thousands of photos then tried to get the money back from their bank
- The evidence has to be REALLY detailed, and REALLY good, which is why it's perfect to vibe code it, you can get quite detailed with different types of users and activity on your app, and put that all in the PDF
- I'm shocked because I again I never would win disputes before
- People in US especially abuse the [ chargeback ] or [ dispute ] en masse, unlike the rest of the world, it's easily built into their banking app next to every transaction, so it's one tap to get free stuff. And why not? You get free stuff!
- It's destructive for business owners like me on many levels, if I get over 1% disputes on my account, I risk getting shutdown permanently by Stripe, Visa and MasterCard, like permanently for life, not just my business but on my personal name too, it's ruthless
- Disputes are also super expensive for business owners: you don't just pay back the amount they disputed, for every dispute you pay $30, which you only get back if you win!
- But with AI we can now create our own tools to fight back against dispute abuse and finally win! 🎉 - https://nitter.net/levelsio/status/2049847252680614105#m