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Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

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Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#41

Post by greggoB »

DocTomoe wrote: post #29
keithnz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, that isn't accurate. One of the key points is that those previously relying on the LLM still showed reduced cognitive engagement after switching back to unaided writing.

And how exactly is that surprising? If you wrote two essays, you have more 'cognitive engagement' on the clock as compared to the guy who wrote one essay. In other news: If you've been lifting in the gym for a week, you have more physical engagement than the guy who just came in and lifted for the first time.

> And how exactly is that surprising?

Isn't the point of a lot of science to empirically demonstrate results which we'd otherwise take for granted as intuitive/obvious? Maybe in AI-literature-land everything published is supposed to be novel/surprising, but that doesn't encompass all of research, last I checked.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#42

Post by pfannkuchen »

Talking to LLMs reminds me of arguing with a certain flavor of Russian. When you clarify based on a misunderstanding of theirs, they act like your clarification is a fresh claim which avoids them ever having to backpedal. It strikes me as intellectually dishonest in a way I find very grating. I do find it interesting though as the incentives that produce the behavior in both cases may be similar.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#43

Post by cluckindan »

tuckwat wrote: post #35
orliesaurus wrote: post #17

i think i can guess this article without reading it: ive never been on major drugs, even medically speaking yet using AI makes me feels like i am on some potent drug that eating my brain. what's state management? what's this hook? who cares, send it to claude or whatever

It's just a different way of writing code. Today you at least need to understand best practices to help steer towards a good architecture. In the near future there will be no developers needed at all for the majority of apps.

That just means the majority of apps don’t actually serve much of a purpose

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#44

Post by layman51 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #27
netsharc wrote: post #21

An obvious comparison is probably the habitual usage of GPS navigation. Some people blindly follow them and some seemingly don't even remember routes they routinely take.

I found a great fix for this was to lock my screen maps to North-Up. That teaches me the shape of the city and greatly enhances location/route/direction awareness. It’s cheap, easy, and quite effective to passively learn the maps over the course of time. My similar ‘hack’ for LLMs has been to try to “race” the AI. I’ll type out a detailed prompt, then go dive into solving the same problem myself while it chews throug…

That's a great tip, but I know some people hate that because there is some cognitive load if they rely more on visuals and have to think more about which way to turn or face when they first start the route, or have to make turns on unfamiliar routes.

I also wanted to mention that just spending some time looking at the maps and comparing differences in each services' suggested routes can be helpful for developing direction awareness of a place. I think this is analogous to not locking yourself into a particular LLM.

Lastly, I know that some apps might have an option to give you only alerts (traffic, weather, hazards) during your usual commute so that you're not relying on turn-by-turn instructions. I think this is interesting because I had heard that many years ago, Microsoft was making something called "Microsoft Soundscape" to help visually impaired users develop directional awareness.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#45

Post by tuckwat »

falloutx wrote: post #20

I think a lot more people, especially at the higher end of the pay scale, are in some kind of AI psychosis. I have heard people at work talk about how they are using chatGPT to quick health advice, some are asking it for gym advice and others are just saying they just dump entire research reports into it and get the summary.

What does using a chat agent have to do with psychosis? I assume this was also the case when people googled their health results, googled their gym advice and googled for research paper summaries?

As long as you're vetting your results just like you would any other piece of information on the internet then it's an evolution of data retrieval.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#46

Post by cluckindan »

yesco wrote: post #26
captain_coffee wrote: post #6

Curious what the long-term effects from the current LLM-based "AI" systems embedded in virtually everything and pushed aggressively will be in let's say 10 years, any strong opinions or predictions on this topic?

If we focus only on the impact on linguistics, I predict things will go something like this: As LLM use normalizes for essay writing (email, documentation, social media, etc), a pattern emerges where everyone uses an LLM as an editor. People only create rough drafts and then have their "editor" make it coherent. Interestingly, people might start using said editor prompts to express themselves, causing an increased ra…

>Human languages start to evolve in a direction that could be considered more coherent than before

Guttural vocalizations accompanied by frantic gesturing towards a mobile device, or just silence and showing of LLM output to others?

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#47

Post by joseangel_sc »

tuckwat wrote: post #35
orliesaurus wrote: post #17

i think i can guess this article without reading it: ive never been on major drugs, even medically speaking yet using AI makes me feels like i am on some potent drug that eating my brain. what's state management? what's this hook? who cares, send it to claude or whatever

It's just a different way of writing code. Today you at least need to understand best practices to help steer towards a good architecture. In the near future there will be no developers needed at all for the majority of apps.

this comment will age badly

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#48

Post by DocTomoe »

falloutx wrote: post #20

I think a lot more people, especially at the higher end of the pay scale, are in some kind of AI psychosis. I have heard people at work talk about how they are using chatGPT to quick health advice, some are asking it for gym advice and others are just saying they just dump entire research reports into it and get the summary.

Pathologising those who disagree with a current viewpoint follows a long and proud tradition. "Possessed by demons" of yesteryear, today it's "AI psychosis".

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#49

Post by uriegas »

foota wrote: post #19

Imo programming is fairly different between vibes based not looking at it at all and using AI to complete tasks. I still feel engaged when I'm more actively "working with" the AI as opposed to a more hands off "do X for me". I don't know that the same makes as much sense to evaluate in an essay context, because it's not really the same. I guess the equivalent would be having an existing essay (maybe written by yourse…

I find it very useful for code comprehension. For writing code it still struggles (at least codex) and sometimes I feel I could have written the code myself faster rather than correct it every time it does something wrong.

Jeremy Howard argues that we should use LLMs to help us learn, once you let it reason for you then things go bad and you start getting cognitive debt. I agree with this.

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