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Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

arxiv.org

101–110 of 442 posts

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#101
post #32

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".

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Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#102

When 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.

The rule of thumb "LLMs are good at reducing text, not expanding it" is a good one here.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#103
post #32

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".

> 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

#104
Will we end up with a world where the only experts are LLM companies, having a monopoly on thinking. Will future humans ever be as smart as us or are we the peak of human intelligence and can AI make progress without smart humans to provide training data, getting new insights and increasing its intelligence?

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#105

I 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.…

Writing is pure magic.It allows so much reflection and so many insights, that you wouldnt otherwise get. And writing as part of the reading process allows you to directly integrate what you are reading as you are doing it. Like cant recommend it enough. Only downside is that its slow, compared to what people are used and want to do, especially in the work environment.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#106
post #14

I 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 think a better way to say it is that the brain doesn't commit to long term memory things that it doesn't need.

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

#107
post #60
post #53

Earlier 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.)

You are talking about productivity, I'm talking about knowledge. You may come-up with a product, then fire all engineers having built it. Then, what? It's not sustainable for a business to start from scratch every other year. Your LLM won't be a substitute for owning your product.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#108
post #62
post #3

Now, 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…

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.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#109
After using ChatGPT a lot, I’ve definitely noticed myself skipping the thinking part and just waiting for it to give me something. This article on cognitive debt really hit home. Now I try to write an outline first before bringing in the AI. I do not want to give up all the control.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#110
post #62

Earlier 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.

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