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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

#151

Post by chairmansteve »

Archer6621 wrote: post #112
mcv wrote: post #98

This seems to confirm my feeling when using AI too much. It's easy to get started, but I can feel my brain engaging less with the problem than I'm used to. It can form a barrier to real understanding, and keeps me out of my flow. I recently worked on something very complex I don't think I would have been able to tackle as quickly without AI; a hierarchical graph layout algorithm based on the Sugiyama framework, using…

That's a nice anecdote, and I agree with the sentiment - skill development comes from practice. It's tempting to see using AI as free lunch, but it comes with a cost in the form of skill atrophy. I reckon this is even the case when using it as an interactive encyclopedia, where you may lose some skill in searching and aggregating information, but for many people the overall trade off in terms of time and energy savin…

"I reckon this is even the case when using it as an interactive encyclopedia".

Yes, that is my experience. I have done some C# projects recently, a language I am not familiar with. I used the interactive encylopedia method, "wrote" a decent amount of code myself, but several thousand lines of production code later, I don't I know C# any better than when I started.

OTOH, it seems that LLMs are very good at compiling pseudocode into C#. And I have always been good at reading code, even in unfamiliar languages, so it all works pretty well.

I think I have always worked in pseudocode inside my head. So with LLMs, I don't need to know any programming languages!

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

#152

Post by discreteevent »

ensocode wrote: post #94
carterschonwald wrote: post #86

idk, if anything I’m thinking more. The idea that I might be able to build everything I’ve ever planned out. At least the way I’m using them, it’s like the perfect assistive device for my flavor of ADHD — I get an interactive notebook I can talk through crazy stuff with. No panacea for sure, but I’m so much higher functioning it’s surreal. I’m not even using em in the volume many folks claim, more like pair programmi…

Maybe it’s not that we’re getting stupid because we don’t use our brains anymore. It’s more like having a reliable way to make fire — so we stop obsessing over sparks and start focusing on building something more important.

> Maybe it’s not that we’re getting stupid because we don’t use our brains anymore.

The study shows that the brain is not getting used. We will get stupid in the same way that people with office jobs get unhealthy if they don't deliberately exercise.

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

#153

Post by chairmansteve »

sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

"Socrates worried writing would destroy memory".

He may have been right... Maybe our minds work in a different way now.

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

#154

Post by discreteevent »

jack_pp wrote: post #135
ensocode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s not that we’re getting stupid because we don’t use our brains anymore. It’s more like having a reliable way to make fire — so we stop obsessing over sparks and start focusing on building something more important.

Instead of being the architect, engineer, plumber, electrician, carpenter you can (most of the time) just be the architect/planner. You for sure need to know how everything works in case LLMs mess the low level stuff up but it sure is nice not needing to lay bricks and dig ditches anymore and just build houses.

It won't turn most people into architects. It will turn them into PMs. The function of PMs is important but without engineers you are not going to build a sustainable system. And an LLM is not an engineer.

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

#155

Post by ReptileMan »

I have a whole phonebook of numbers I know by heart, all of them before my first mobile phone. Not a single one remember afterwards. A lot of stuff I remembered when there was no google, afterwards - remembering how to find it by using google. And so on.

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

#156

Post by booleandilemma »

forsakenharmony wrote: post #134
booleandilemma wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok this is just the next level of human evolution. We haven't needed to know how to do basic math since the calculator. Nowadays our AIs can read and write for us too. More obsolete skills. We can focus on higher level things now. No more focusing on sparks, we can focus on building something important. We don't have an attention span over 5 seconds anyway thanks to social media. If you don't get where I'm comin…

you need a spark to start a fire, if you offload everything to the LLM you won't understand the higher level things

Completely agree fwiw. My comment sarcastically paraphrased a few other AI slop lovers I've seen in this comment section.

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

#157

Post by internet_points »

probably_wrong wrote: post #120
blackqueeriroh wrote: post #79

I encourage folks to listen to brilliant psychologist for software teams Cat Hicks [1] and her wife, teaching neuroscientist Ashley Juavinett [2] on their excellent podcast, Change, Technically discussing the myriad problems with this study: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2396236/episodes/17378968 1: https://www.catharsisinsight.com 2: https://ashleyjuavinett.com

I'm not a fan of "TL;DR" but I think 52 minutes would qualify. I jumped to a random point of the transcript and found just platitudes, which didn't quite hook me into listening to all of it. How about some more info on what their main conclusions are?

It's a podcast, it goes back and forth between high and low density content. I tried listening to it while working and sometimes had to pause it because it got deep into e.g. explaining EEG, and then it's back to laughing at random stuff.

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

#158

Post by Quothling »

culi wrote: post #108

My friend works with people in their 20s. She recently brought up her struggles to do the math in her head for when to clock in/out for their lunches (30 minutes after an arbitrary time). The young coworker's response was "Oh I just put it into ChatGPT" The kids are using ChatGPT for simple maths...

That'll lead to interesting results. I used a couple of LLM's for my blood bowl statistics, and they get rather simple math wrong. Which makes sense, they aren't build for math after all. It's wild how wrong they can get results though, I'd add the same prompt to 6 different AI's and they'd all get it wrong in 6 different ways.

On a side note, the most hilarious part of it was when I asked gemini to do something for me in Google Sheets and it kept refering to it as Excel. Even after I corrected it.

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

#160

Post by wisty »

sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

Soapbox time.

They were arguably right. Pre literate peole could memorise vast texts (Homer's work, Australian Aboriginal songlines). Pre Gutenberg, memorising reasonably large texts was common. See, e.g. the book Memory Craft.

We're becoming increasingly like the Wall E people, too lazy and stupid to do anything without our machines doing it for us, as we offload increasing amounts onto them.

And it's not even that machines are always better, they only have to be barely competent. People will risk their life in a horribly janky self driving car if it means they can swipe on social media instead of watching the road - acceptance doesn't mean it's good.

We have about 30 years of the internet being widely adopted, which I think is roughly similar to AI in many ways (both give you access to data very quickly). Economists suggest we are in many ways no more productive now than when Homer Simpson could buy a house and raise a family on a single income - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

Yes, it's too early to be sure, but the internet, Google and Wikipedia arguably haven't made the world any better (overall).

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