Live data from Hacker News

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

arxiv.org

321–330 of 442 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think of AI as cars: You can go to the Walmart outside town on foot. And carry your stuff back. But it is much faster - and less exhaustive - to use the car. Which means you can spend more quality time on things you enjoy.

At the price of a sluggish, atrophied body.

which is why people now pay $100 a month for a gym membership.

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

#322

As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places. It's no surprise that a tool like this, used for the purpose of outsourcing a task that our own brains would otherwise do, would result in a decline in the skills that would be trained if we were performing that task ourselves.

Navigation is a narrow task. For many intents and purposes, LLMs are generally intelligent.

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

#323

As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places. It's no surprise that a tool like this, used for the purpose of outsourcing a task that our own brains would otherwise do, would result in a decline in the skills that would be trained if we were performing that task ourselves.

> As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places Can you point to a study to back this up? Otherwise, it's anecdata.

i really tire of people always asking for studies for obvious things.

have sword skills declined since the introduction of guns? surely people still have hands and understand how to move swords, and they use knives to cut food for consumption. the skill level is the same..

but we know on aggregate most people have switched to relying on a technological advancement. there's not the same culture for swords as in the past by sheer numbers despite there being more self proclaimed 'experts'.

100 genz vs. 100 genx you'll likely find a smidgen more of one group than the other finding a location without a phone.

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

#324
This study is methodologically poor: only 18 people, SAT topics (so broad and pretty poor with the expectation of an American style “essay”), only 20 minutes of writing so far too little time to properly use the tool given to explore (be it search engine or LLM).

With only 20 minutes, I’m not even trying to do a search. No surprise the people using LLM have zero recollection of what they wrote.

Plus they spend ages discussing correct quoting (why?) and statistical analysis via NLP which is entirely useless.

Very little space is dedicated to knowing if the essays are actually any good.

Overall pretty disappointing.

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

#325

Wasn't THE SAME said when Google came out? That we were not remembering things anymore and we were relying on Google? And also with cellphones before that (even the big dummy brickphones), that we were not remembering phone numbers anymore.

Plato was already worried that the written word caused people to forget things (although his main complaint was that words cant answer like a person can in a dialogue).

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

#327

Wasn't THE SAME said when Google came out? That we were not remembering things anymore and we were relying on Google? And also with cellphones before that (even the big dummy brickphones), that we were not remembering phone numbers anymore.

And this is exactly what this study showed too.

"Brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support: the Brain‑only group exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging networks, Search Engine group showed intermediate engagement, and LLM assistance elicited the weakest overall coupling."

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

#328

One slightly unexpected side effect of using AI to do most of my coding now is that I find myself a lot less tired and can focus for longer periods. It's enabled me to get work done while faced with other distractions. Essentially, offload some mental capacity towards AI frees up capacity elsewhere.

I like to think of AI as cars: You can go to the Walmart outside town on foot. And carry your stuff back. But it is much faster - and less exhaustive - to use the car. Which means you can spend more quality time on things you enjoy.

You got it backwards, there wouldn't be a walmart outside of town if there were no cars, you'd walk to the local butcher/baker/whatever in <10min.

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

#329

One slightly unexpected side effect of using AI to do most of my coding now is that I find myself a lot less tired and can focus for longer periods. It's enabled me to get work done while faced with other distractions. Essentially, offload some mental capacity towards AI frees up capacity elsewhere.

I like to think of AI as cars: You can go to the Walmart outside town on foot. And carry your stuff back. But it is much faster - and less exhaustive - to use the car. Which means you can spend more quality time on things you enjoy.

And then you drive to the gym to run on a treadmill for two hours.

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

#330

As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places. It's no surprise that a tool like this, used for the purpose of outsourcing a task that our own brains would otherwise do, would result in a decline in the skills that would be trained if we were performing that task ourselves.

> As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places Can you point to a study to back this up? Otherwise, it's anecdata.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249442...

The first paragraph of the conclusions section is also stimulating and I think aptly applies to this discussion of using AI as a tool.

> it is important to mention the bidirectionality of the relationship between GPS use and navigation abilities: Individuals with poorer ability to learn spatial information and form environmental knowledge tend to use assisted navigation systems more frequently in daily life, thus weakening their navigation abilities. This intriguing link might suggest that individuals who have a weaker “internal” ability to use spatial knowledge to navigate their surroundings are also more prone to rely on “external” devices or systems to navigate successfully. Therefore, other psychological factors (e.g., self-efficacy; Miola et al., 2023) might moderate this bidirectional relationship, and researchers need to further elucidate it.

Post reply on HN