MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by hamburga » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #139

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…

This comment reminds me of the so called Dunning Kruger Effect. That paper had pretty close to the same participation size, and participants were pulled from a single school (Cornell). It also has major methodology problems, and has had an uphill battle for replication and generalizability, actually losing the battle in some cases. And yet, we have a famous term for it that people love to use, often and incorrectly,…

Socrates famously complained about literacy making us stupider in Phaedrus.

Which I believe still does have a large grain of truth.

These things can make us simultaneously dumber and smarter, depending on usage.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by chaps » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

physarum_salad wrote: post #142

chaps wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That paper was debunked as a result of the open peer review enabled by preprints! Its astonishing how many people miss that and assume that closed peer review even performs that function well in the first place. For the absolute top journals or those with really motivated editors closed peer review is good. However, often it's worse...way worse (i.e. reams of correct seeming and surface level research without proper…

To be clear, I'm not saying that peer review is bad!! Quite the opposite.

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

#154

Post by mooxie » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #92

dguest wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I'm wondering if I'm putting my career at risk by not trying them out. Probably both are true: you should try them out and then use them where they are useful, not for everything.

HN is full of people who say LLMs aren't good at coding and don't "really" produce productivity gains. None of my professional life reflects that whatsoever. When used well, LLMs are exceptional and putting out large amounts of code of sufficient quality. My peers have switched entire engineering departments to LLM-first development and are reporting that the whole org is moving 2x as fast even after they fired the 5…

Agreed. I work for a tiny startup where I wear multiple hats, and one of them is DevOps. I manage our cloud infra with Terraform, and anyone who's scaled cloud infrastructure out of the It used to take me days or even multiple sprints to complete large-scale infrastructure projects, largely because of having to repeatedly reference Terraform cloud provider docs for every step along the way.

Now I use Claude Code daily. I use an .md to describe what I want in as much detail as possible and with whatever idiosyncrasies or caveats I know are important from a career of doing this stuff, and then I go make coffee and come back to 99% working code (sometimes there are syntax errors due to provider / API updates).

I love learning, and I love coding. But I am hired to get things done, and to succeed (both personally and in my role, which is directly tied to our organization's security, compliance, and scalability) I can't spend two weeks on my pet projects for self-edification. I also have to worry about the million things that Claude CAN'T do for me yet, so whatever it can take off of my plate is priceless.

I say the same things to my non-tech friends: don't worry about it 'coming for your job' yet - just consider that your output and perceived worth as an employee could benefit greatly from it. If it comes down to two awesome people but one can produce even 2x the amount of work using AI, the choice is obvious.

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

#155

Post by perrygeo » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

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…

There's two questions at play. First, does the research pass the most rigorous criteria to become widely-accepted scientific fact? Second, does the research present enough evidence to tip your priors and change your personal decisions?

So it's possible to be both skeptical of how well these results generalize (and call for further research), but also heed the warning: AI usage does appear to change something fundamental about our congnitive processes, enough to give any reasonable person pause.

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

#156

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

jajko wrote: post #125

johnisgood wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody is taking it away from you, but as we seem to agree that ship has sailed for some deep waters, nobody is backpedaling back. Well cheers to even bigger gap between elite who can afford good education and upbringing and cheap crappy rest. Number of scifi novels come to mind where poor semi-mindless masses are governed by 'educated' elites. I always thought how such society must have screwed up badly in the past…

It is just crazy that people still believe in the "think of the children" narratives, or "it is for your own safety". I think these seemingly good intentions (which are not actually good intentions, just seem so) are a huge problem, and lack of resistance because if you resist, their rebuttal is "you don't want our kids to be safe?!" and so forth, appealing to emotions and shame.

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

#157

Post by tomrod » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #139

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…

This comment reminds me of the so called Dunning Kruger Effect. That paper had pretty close to the same participation size, and participants were pulled from a single school (Cornell). It also has major methodology problems, and has had an uphill battle for replication and generalizability, actually losing the battle in some cases. And yet, we have a famous term for it that people love to use, often and incorrectly,…

> The problem is that a headline that people want to believe is a very powerful force that can override replication and sample size and methodology problems. AI rots your brain follows behind social media rots your brain, which came after video games rot your brain, which preceded TV rots your brain. I’m sure TV wasn’t even the first. There’s a long tradition of publicly worrying about machines making us stupider.

Your comment reminded me of this (possibly spurious) quote:

>> An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”[0]

Same as it ever was. [1]

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8

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

#158

Post by Bluecobra » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #94

pjio wrote: post #17

First step out of this mess: Use AI only to proof read or get a second opinion, but not to write the whole thing.

Depends on who you are and what you want. Let's say I'm a writer of no skill who still wants attention. I could spend years learning to write better, but I still might not get any attention. Or I could use AI to write something today. It won't be all that interesting, because AI still can't write all that well, but it may be better than I can do on my own, and I can get attention today . If you care about your own gr…

This is exactly how I use AI at work—-to quickly generate funny meme images/inside jokes for a quick chuckle. I’m no artist and probably will never be one. My digital art skills amount to drawing stick figures in MS Paint.

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

#159

Post by TYPE_FASTER » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

I used to know a bunch of phone numbers by heart. I haven't done that since I got a cellphone. Has that had an impact on my ability to memorize things? I have no idea.

I have recently been finding it noticeably more difficult to come up with the word I'm thinking of. Is this because I've been spending more time scrolling than reading? I have no idea.

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

#160

Post by Bender » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

stonemetal12 wrote: post #120

mnky9800n wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rather given the reproducibility crisis, how much salt does peer review nock off that grain? How often does peer review catch fraud or just bad science?

I would also add, how often are peer reviews the same group of buddy-bro back-scratchers that know if they help that person with a positive peer review that person will return the favor. How many peer reviewers actually reproduce the results? How many peer reviewers would approve a paper if their credentials were on the line?

Ironically, I am waiting for AI to start automating the process of teasing apart obvious pencil whipping, back scratching, buddy-bro behavior. Some believe its in the 1% range of falsified papers and pencil whipped reviews. I expect it to be significantly higher based on reading NIH papers for a long time in the attempt to actually learn things. I've reported the obvious shenanigans and sometimes papers are taken down but there are so many bad incentives in this process I predict it will only get worse.