Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t believe riding a horse and carriage wouldn’t make you better at riding a horse. Surely you mean "would"? Because riding a horse and carriage doesn't imply any ability at riding a horse, but the reverse relation would actually make sense, as you already have historical, experiential, intimate knowledge of a horse despite no contemporaneous, immediate physical contact. Similarly, already knowing what you want…
The first sentence in the comment you are responding to is sarcasm. Just replace "I can't believe" with "Of course".
Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
101–110 of 442 posts
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#102When I write with AI, it feels smooth in the moment, but I’m not really thinking through the ideas. The writing sounds fine, but when I look back later, I often can’t remember why I phrased things that way. Now I try to write my own draft first, then use AI to help polish it. It takes a bit more effort upfront, but I feel like I learn more and remember things better.
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t believe riding a horse and carriage wouldn’t make you better at riding a horse. Surely you mean "would"? Because riding a horse and carriage doesn't imply any ability at riding a horse, but the reverse relation would actually make sense, as you already have historical, experiential, intimate knowledge of a horse despite no contemporaneous, immediate physical contact. Similarly, already knowing what you want…
The first sentence in the comment you are responding to is sarcasm. Just replace "I can't believe" with "Of course".
Do you have any evidence of this?
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#104Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#105I wouldn't call it "accumulation of cognitive debt"; just call it cognitive decline, or loss of cognitive skills. And also DUH. If you stop speaking a language you forget it. The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Anybody remember the couple studies on the use of google maps for navigation? One was "Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation"; another rep…
> You can't just skim a math textbook and know all the math. You have to stop and think. And most importantly you have to write . A lot. Writing allows our brain to structure our thinking. Enables us to have a structured dialogue with ourselves. Explore different paths. Thinking & pondering can only do so much and will reach the limits soon. Writing, on the other hand enables one to explore thoughts nearly endlessly.…
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#106I wouldn't call it "accumulation of cognitive debt"; just call it cognitive decline, or loss of cognitive skills. And also DUH. If you stop speaking a language you forget it. The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Anybody remember the couple studies on the use of google maps for navigation? One was "Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation"; another rep…
> The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Sounds very plausible, though how does that square with the common experience that certain skills, famously 'riding a bike', never go away once learned?
I remember hearing about some research they'd done on "binge watching" -- basically, if you have two groups:
1. One group watches the entire series over the course of a week
2. A second group watches a series one episode per week
Then some time later (maybe 6 months), ask them questions about the show, and the people in group 2 will remember significantly more.
Anecdotally, I've found the same thing with Scottish Country Dancing. In SCD, you typically walk through a dance that has 16 or so "figures", then for the next 10 minutes you need to remember the figures over and over again from different perspectives (as 1st couple, 2nd couple, 3rd couple etc). Fairly quickly, my brain realized that it only needed to remember the figures for 10 minutes; and even the next morning if you'd asked me what the figures were for a dance the night before I couldn't have told you.
I can totally believe it's the same thing with writing with an LLM (or having an assistant write a speech / report for you) -- if you're just skimming over things to make sure it looks right, your brain quickly figures out that it doesn't need to retain this information.
Contrast this to riding a bike, where you almost certainly used the skill repeatedly over the course of at least a year.
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good of you to suppose that engineers cognitive decline doesn't translate into long term impactful business challenges as well. I mean, once you truly don't know your product and its capabilities any longer, what's left for you to "sell"?
To quote myself: > Companies don't own employees: workers can leave at any time. > Thus protecting employees productivity in the long run doesn't necessarily help the company. (Unless you explicitly set up contracts that help there, or there are strong social norms in your place around this.)
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#108Now, let's do same exercise but with programming and over longer period of time. Would really like to present it to management that pushes ai assistance for coding
I don't think that research will show what you're hoping it would. I'm not a big proponent of AI, you shouldn't bother going through my history but it is there to back up my statement if you're bored. Anyway, even I find it hard to argue against AI agents for productivity, but I think ik depend a lot on how you use them. As an anecdotal example I mainly work with Python, C and Go, but once in a while I also work with…
Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#109Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that research will show what you're hoping it would. I'm not a big proponent of AI, you shouldn't bother going through my history but it is there to back up my statement if you're bored. Anyway, even I find it hard to argue against AI agents for productivity, but I think ik depend a lot on how you use them. As an anecdotal example I mainly work with Python, C and Go, but once in a while I also work with…
You're proving the point in the actual research. Programmers who only use AI for learning/coding will lose this knowledge (of python, for example) that you have gained by actually "doing" it.