alt Hacker NewsThere's one more: The "bicycle for the mind" analogy was one Jobs chose specifically in reference to the fact that a human on a bicycle moves more efficiently than a human on foot—or any other land animal for that matter. But it's still the human's own effort that propels the bike. Motor vehicles require an external energy source, the human only directs it. Similarly, with LLMs, it's no longer the user's own effort that's doing the thinking.
> There's one more: The "bicycle for the mind" analogy was one Jobs chose specifically in reference to the fact that a human on a bicycle moves more efficiently than a human on foot—or any other land animal for that matter.
One of the canonical references of Jobs’ use of “bicycle for the mind” also compared the efficiency of locomotion to the California Condor which was (I’m working from memory, here) 17X more efficient than a human walking.
A human on a bicycle, according to Jobs then, is more efficient than the most efficient animal locomotion known to humankind. The comparison included animals moving through non-terrestrial environments.