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MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

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Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#101

Post by stripe_away »

sudosteph wrote: post #88

Meanwhile my main use cases for AI outside of work: - Learning how to solder - Learning how to use a multimeter - Learning to build basic circuits on breadboxes - learning about solar panels, mppt, battery management system, and different variations of li-on batteries - learning about LoRa band / meshtastic / how to build my own antenna And every single one of these things I've learned I've also applied practically t…

and to be blunt, I learned similar things building analog synths, before the dawn of LLMs.

Like you, I don't like watching videos. However, the web also has text, the same text used to train the LLMs that you used.

> When something doesn't work like I thought it would, AI helps me understand where I may have went wrong, I ask it a ton of questions, and I try again until I understand how it works and how to prove it.

Likewise, but I would have to ask either the real world or written docs.

I'm glad you've found a way to learn with LLMs. Just remember that people have been learning without LLMs for a long time, and it is not at all clear that LLMs are a better way to learn than other methods.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#102

Post by johnisgood »

footy wrote: post #57
johnisgood wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that is a misuse of LLMs. You are not supposed to outsource your thinking. You need to be part of the whole process, incl. the architectural design. I am, and I got far with LLMs (Claude mostly, not much with GPT). I use GPT for personal stuff or ramblings, not for coding. There will always be people who misuse something, but we should not hurt those who do not. Same with drugs. There are functional junkies who k…

sure, we may call that a misuse. But there are already people using them this way, and they're marketed this way, and I was not making a point about the correctness of using them this way---just observing that this is going to have far-reaching consequences.

I know, and it is huge problem that people use it this way, and that it is marketed this way.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#103

Post by quotemstr »

stego-tech wrote: post #41
quotemstr wrote: post #11

"Studies" like this bite at the ankles of every change in information technology. Victorians thought women reading too many magazines would rot their minds. Given that AI is literally just words on a monitor just like the rest of the internet, I have a strong prior it's not "reprogram[ming]" anyone's mind, at least not in some manner that, e.g. heavy Reddit use might.

That’s a pretty spicy take for first thing in the morning. The confidence with which you assert a repeatedly proven facile argument is…unenviable. “Fractal wrongness,” I’ve seen it called. We have decades of research - brain scans, studies, experiments, imaging, stimuli responses, etc - proving that when a human no longer has to think about performing a skill, that skill immediately begins to atrophy and the brain ad…

Learning and habit formation are not "reprogramming". If you define "reprogramming" as anything that updates neuron weights, the term encompasses all of life and becomes useless.

My point is that I don't see LLM's effect on the brain as being anything more than the normal experience we have of living and that the level of drama the headline suggests is unwarranted. I don't believe in infohazards.

Might they result in skill atrophy? For sure! But it's the same kind of atrophy we saw when, e.g. transitioning from paper maps to digital ones, or from memorizing phone numbers to handing out email addresses. We apply the neurons we save by no longer learning paper map navigation and such to other domains of life.

The process has been ongoing since homo erectus figured out that if you bang a rock hard enough, you get a knife. So what?

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#104

Post by Manik_agg »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #62

Personally, I don't think you should ever allow the LLM to write for you or to modify / update anything you're writing. You can use it to get feedback when editing, to explore an idea-space, and to find any topical gaps. But write everything yourself! It's just too easy to give in and slowly let the LLM take over your brain. This article is focused on essay writing, but I swear I've experienced cognitive decline when…

I agree. Asking LLM to write for you is being lazy and it also results in sub-par results (don't know about brain-rot).

I also like preparing a draft and using llm for critique, it helps me figure out some blind spots or ways to articulate better.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#105

Post by charlie-83 »

jajko wrote: post #81
bookofjoe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ship has sailed. >Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project. https://archive.ph/ZKZiY

Its as if somebody finds shocking the fact that people are generally lazy. Then you have the other extreme group, deniers. "I work more than ever!", "I ask even more questions!" and so on here and elsewhere. Sure you do, and maybe its really an actual benefit for ya. Not for most though. For young folks still going through education, this is devastating. If I didn't have kids I wouldn't care, less quality competition…

It feels like all this is because the point of school/college/university is just to get a piece of paper rather than to earn skills. Why wouldn't you get chatgpt to write your essay when your only goal is to get a passing grade.

My optimistic take is that the rise of AI in education could cause more workplaces to move away from "must have xyz degree" and actually determine if the candidate has the skills needed.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#106

Post by johnisgood »

jajko wrote: post #99
johnisgood wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that is a misuse of LLMs. You are not supposed to outsource your thinking. You need to be part of the whole process, incl. the architectural design. I am, and I got far with LLMs (Claude mostly, not much with GPT). I use GPT for personal stuff or ramblings, not for coding. There will always be people who misuse something, but we should not hurt those who do not. Same with drugs. There are functional junkies who k…

Misuse or not, who cares about labeling. Internet was supposed to be this wonderful free place with all information available and unbiased, not the cesspool of scams and tracking that makes 1984 look like a fairytale for children. Atomic energy was supposed to free mankind from everlasting struggle for energy dependency, end wars and whatnot. LLMs we supposed to be X and not Y and used as Z and not BBCCD. For what po…

It works for me, so I would rather not have it taken away from me. Take it away from people who misuse it.

If it is a human nature issue (with which I agree), then we are in a deep shit and this is why we cannot have nice things.

Educate, and if that fails, then punish those who "misuse" it. I do not have a better idea. It works for me quite well for coding, and it will continue to work as long as it is not going to get nerfed.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#107

Post by infecto »

charlie-83 wrote: post #84
xnorswap wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am asking more questions than ever. I don't have a dog in this fight, but "asking more questions" could be evidence of cognitive decline if you're having to ask more questions than ever! It's easy to twist evidence to fit biases, which is why I'd hold judgement to better evidence comes through.

Not OP but there's a difference between needing to ask more questions and asking more questions because its easier now. Personally, I find myself often asking AI about things I wouldn't have been bothered to find out about before. For example I've always these funny little grates on the outside of houses near me and wondered what they are. Googling "little grates outside houses" doesn't help at all. Give AI a vagueis…

Haha you nailed it. Walking around and experiencing the world I can now ask a vague question and usually find an answer.

Maybe there is a movie in the back of my head or a song. Typical search engine queries would never find it. I can give super vague references to a LLM and with search enabled get an answer that’s correct often enough.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#108

Post by chaps »

mnky9800n wrote: post #67
tomrod wrote: post #20

A few things to note. 1. This is arxiv - before publication or peer review. Grain of salt.[0] 2. 18 participants per cohort 3. 54 participants total Given the low N and the likelihood that this is drawn from 18-22 year olds attending MIT, one should expect an uphill battle for replication and for generalizability. Further, they are brain scanning during the experiment, which is an uncomfortable/out-of-the-norm experi…

I feel like saying papers pre peer review should be taken with a grain of salt should be stopped. Peer review is not some idealistic scientific endeavour it often leads to bullshit comments, slows down release, is free work for companies that have massive profit margins, etc. From my experience publishing 30+ papers I have received as many bad or useless comments as I have good ones. We should at least default to ope…

Please no. Remember that room temperature superconductor nonsense that went on for way too long? Let's please collectively try to avoid that..

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#109

Post by lazide »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #62

Personally, I don't think you should ever allow the LLM to write for you or to modify / update anything you're writing. You can use it to get feedback when editing, to explore an idea-space, and to find any topical gaps. But write everything yourself! It's just too easy to give in and slowly let the LLM take over your brain. This article is focused on essay writing, but I swear I've experienced cognitive decline when…

I’d consider it similar to always using a GPS/Google Maps/Apple Maps to get somewhere without thinking about it first.

It’s really convenient. It also similarly rots the parts of the brain required for spatial reasoning and memory for a geographic area. It can also lead to brain rot with decision making.

Usually it’s good enough. Sometimes it leads to really ridiculous outcomes (especially if you never double check actual addresses and just put in a business name or whatever). In many edge cases depending on the use case, it leads to being stuck, because the maps data is wrong, or doesn’t have updated locations, or can’t consider weather conditions, etc. especially if we’re talking in the mountains or outside of major cities.

Doing it blindly has led to numerous people dying by stupidly getting themselves into more and more dumb situations.

People still got stuck using paper maps. Sometimes they even died. It was much rarer and people were more aware they were lost, instead of persisting thinking they weren’t. So different failure modes.

Paper maps were very inconvenient, so dealt with it using more human interaction and adding more buffer time. Which had it’s own costs.

In areas where there are active bad actors (Eastern Europe now a days, many other areas in that region sometimes) it leads to actively pathological outcomes.

It is now rare for anyone outside of conflict zones to use paper maps except for specific commercial and gov’t uses, and even then they often use digitized ‘paper’ maps.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#110

Post by giancarlostoro »

tomrod wrote: post #20

A few things to note. 1. This is arxiv - before publication or peer review. Grain of salt.[0] 2. 18 participants per cohort 3. 54 participants total Given the low N and the likelihood that this is drawn from 18-22 year olds attending MIT, one should expect an uphill battle for replication and for generalizability. Further, they are brain scanning during the experiment, which is an uncomfortable/out-of-the-norm experi…

The other thing to note is "AI" is being used in place of LLMs. AI is a lot of things, I would be surprised to find out that generating images, video and audio would lead to cognitive decline. What I think LLMs might lead to is intellectual laziness, why memorize or remember something if the LLM can remember it type of thing.
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