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

arxiv.org

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

#161

Post by QuantumGood »

larodi wrote: post #56
vishnugupta wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

The impact of writing is immensely undervalued. Even writing with a keyboard or screen is a lot more than non writing. Exercising writing on any topic is still beneficial, and you can find many psychologists recommend having a daily blog of some sort to help people observe themselves from a side. The same goes for speaking, public speech if u want, and therapeutic daily acting-playing which is also overlooked. I’d lo…

Similarly, the impact of white-boarding-type activities is undervalued. When discussing problems with a viewpoint, a quick whiteboard usually gets at some easy-to-find underlying issues that others can understand, rather than it devolving into positional framings.

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

#162

Post by tguvot »

barrenko wrote: post #49
SchemaLoad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use AI tools for amusement and asking random questions, but for actual work, I basically don't use them at all. I wonder if I'll be part of the increasingly rare group who is actually able to do anything while the rest become progressively more incompetent.

My nickel - we are in the primary stages of being given something like the famed "bicycle for the mind", an exoskeleton for the brain. At first when someone gives you a mech, you're like "woah, cool", let's see what it can do. And then you zip around, smash rocks, buildings, go try to lift the Eiffel. After a while you get bored of it (duh), and go back to doing what you usually do, utilizing the "bicycle" for the ki…

if you will use exoskeleton for walking, eventually you will have muscle wasting and depends on type of exoskeleton degradation of neural pathways that you need to use for walking

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

#163

Post by nk_mit »

user453 wrote: post #124

Interesting study but I don't really get the point of the search group. Looking at the essay prompts, they all seem like fluffy, opinion based stuff. How would you even use a search engine to help you in that case? Quote some guy who had an opinion? Personally I think my approach would be identical whether put in the web-search or the only-brain group.

Search Engine is a tool, similar to the one we have now, LLM. It seemed unfair to compare a purely no-tools approach (Brain-only) with a tool (LLM), thus the first motivation of including it. The second one is that we had already seen several studies exploring the Search Engine and its effects on one’s brain. This allows us to ground the research a bit and have a solid base. Finally, I think you had just responded to your own question in your own statement - indeed, to get a user exposed to other opinions. Echo chambers are present in both cases, but it is also important to understand what was the training dataset for ChatGPT and what is the current trend in Google keyword planner (see the example on homeless and giving in the Discussion of the paper). Hope it is more clear now.

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

#164

Post by tom_m »

vishnugupta wrote: post #25
jsrozner wrote: post #13

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.…

They made a documentary about this actually. You can probably find it on Netflix or something. It's called Idiocracy.

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

#165

Post by deinonychus »

namaria wrote: post #73
energy123 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the optimistic side with how useful LLMs are, but I have to agree. You cultivate the instinct for how to steer the models and reduce hallucinations, but you're not building articulable knowledge or engaging in challenging thinking. It's more learning muscle-memory reactions to certain forms of LLM output that lean you towards trusting the output more, trying another prompting strategy, clearing context or not,…

Maybe, much like we invented gyms to exercise after civilization made most physical labor redundant (at least in developed countries), we will see a rise of 'creative writing gyms' of some sort in the future.

I like this outlook a lot. I suppose I've met a lot of people that do creative writing recreationally and also socially in clubs, writing not just poetry but also things like adventures for roleplaying games like D&D.

I wonder what the commercialized form of a "gym but for your brain" would look like and if it would take off and if it would be more structured than... uh... schools? Wait, wouldn't this just be like a college except the students are there because they want to be, and not for vocational reasons?

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

#166

Post by bsenftner »

niemandhier wrote: post #154
bsenftner wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Never ever ever have AI write for you. Ask it to critique what you wrote, ask it to pick your arguments apart. Then use your mind to fix what it pointed out. If you cannot figure out how, ask the AI to explain how. Then take a break, 20 minutes is fine, and then return and fix the issue yourself using your own mind to write without assistance. This is how one uses AI to learn.

The problem with this strategy is that unless you commit logical fallacies you cannot trust the AI critic. Why? It might cite non existing diverging opinions, misuse sources or introduce subtle changes in a citation.

> It might cite non existing diverging opinions, misuse sources or introduce subtle changes in a citation.

Just like a person could, which is why one validates. AI is not one's sole information. That's dangerous, to say the least. It also helps to stay within one's formal education, and/or experience, and stay within logical boundaries one can track themselves. It is really all about understanding what you are doing, committing to run without you.

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

#167

Post by stephen_g »

falcor84 wrote: post #139
energy123 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> "LLMs are good at reducing text, not expanding it" You put it in quote marks, but the only search results are from you writing it here on HN. Obviously LLMs are extremely good at expanding text, which is essentially what they do whenever they continue a prompt. Or did you mean that in a prescriptive way - that it would be better for us to use it more for summarizing rather than expanding?

I think the key is how you define “good” - LLMs certainly can turn small amounts of text into larger amounts effortlessly, but if in doing so the meaningful information is diluted or even damaged by hallucinations, irrelevant info, etc., then that’s clearly not “good” or effective.

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

#168

Post by SissyphusXOXO »

vishnugupta wrote: post #25
jsrozner wrote: post #13

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.…

> And most importantly you have to write. A lot. Writing allows our brain to structure our thinking.

Not to be pedantic, but I’d still argue that thinking is the most important. At least when understanding the nature of learning. I mean, writing is ultimately great because it facilitates high quality thinking. You essentially say this yourself.

Overall, I think it’s more helpful to understand the learning process as promoting high quality thinking (encoding if you want to be technical). This sort of explains why teaching others, argumentation, mind-mapping, good note-taking, and other activities and techniques are great for learning as well.

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

#169

Post by tomhow »

namaria wrote: post #143
tomhow wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this here. If a comment seems unfit for HN, please flag it and email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can have a look. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44287157 and marked it off topic.

I did not say it was unfit and I don't see how discussing writing styles and the influence of LLMs on it is off topic on a thread about the effects of LLMs on cognition. I don't believe I was impolite or making a personal attack. I had a relevant point and I made it clearly and in a civil manner. I strongly disagree with your assessment.

OK, I may have been too quick to pattern-match on characterising someone's writing as being LLM-generated. Sorry for that. However we do want to be careful about criticising someone’s writing style; the guidelines ask us to avoid that.

Also, suspicions about the changing frequency of certain phrases in HN comments can easily be tested:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=false&query=%22...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=true&query=%22I...

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