It's a specific case of the general symptoms of "your brain on lazy shortcuts"
Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
181–190 of 529 posts
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they've always been wrong before Were they? It seems that often the fears came true, even Socrates’
Writing didn't destroy memory, it externalised it and made it stable and shareable. That was absolutely transformative, and far more useful than being able to re-improvise a once-upon-a-time heroic poem from memory. It hugely enhanced synthetic and contextual memory, which was a huge development. AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has t…
> in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News.
Perhaps he could. If there’s an argument to be made against writing, social media (including HN) is a valid one.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#183This 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…
My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems. Writing code has just typically been how I've needed to solve those problems. That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code and focusing on the architecture and domain models. I get to spend more time on my actual job.
> My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems.
Yes, and there's often a benefit to having a human have an understanding of the concrete details of the system when you're trying to solve problems.
> That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code
It takes longer to read code than to write code if you're trying to get the same level of understanding. You're gaining time by building up an understanding deficit. That works for a while, but at some point you have to go burn the time to understand it.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#184Please take this to top.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#185I 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?
Summary using Claude 3.7 Sonnet:
"Your Brain On Chat GPT" Paper Analysis
In this transcript, neuroscientist Ashley and psychologist Cat critically analyze a controversial paper titled "Your Brain On Chat GPT" that claims to show negative brain effects from using large language models (LLMs).
Key Issues With the Paper:
Misleading EEG Analysis:
The paper uses EEG (electroencephalography) to claim it measures "brain connectivity" but misuses technical methods EEG is a blunt instrument that measures thousands of neurons simultaneously, not direct neural connections The paper confuses correlation of brain activity with actual physical connectivity Poor Research Design:
Small sample size (54 participants with many dropouts) Unclear time intervals between sessions Vague instructions to participants Controlled conditions don't represent real-world LLM use Overstated Claims:
Invented terms like "cognitive debt" without defining them Makes alarmist conclusions not supported by data Jumps from limited lab findings to broad claims about learning and cognition Methodological Problems:
Methods section includes unnecessary equations but lacks crucial details Contains basic errors like incorrect filter settings Fails to cite relevant established research on memory and learning No clear research questions or framework The Experts' Conclusion:
"These are questions worth asking... I do really want to know whether LLMs change the way my students think about problems. I do want to know if the offloading of cognitive tasks changes my own brain and my own cognition... We need to know these things as a society, but to pretend like this paper answers those questions is just completely wrong."
The experts emphasize that the paper appears designed to generate headlines rather than provide sound scientific insights, with potential conflicts of interest among authors who are associated with competing products.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#186My 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...
Are you sure the coworker wasn't joking? Because if somebody confessed to me they struggle to add half an hour to a time point, my first reaction would definitely be to laugh it off.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to I got scared by how awfully my juniour (middle? 5-11) school mathematics had slipped when helping my 9 year old boy with his homework yesterday. I literally couldn't remember how to carry the 1 when doing subtractions of 3 digit numbers! Felt literally idiotic having to ask an…
On my part, I don't use that carry method at ll. When I have to substract, I substract by chunks that my brain can easily subtract. For example 1233 - 718, I'll do 1233 - 700 = 533 then 533 - 20 = 513 then 513 + 2 = 515. It's completely instinctive (and thus I can't explain to my children :-) ) What I have asked my children to do very often is back-of-the-envelope multiplications and other computations. That really h…
I have a two year old and often worry that I'll teach him some intuitive arithmetic technique, then school will later force a different method and mark him down despite getting the right answer. What if it ends up making him hate school, maths, or both?
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If the computer was the bicycle for the mind, then perhaps AI is the electric scooter for the mind? Gets you there, but doesn't necessarily help build the best healthy habits. Trade offs around "room to do more of other things" are an interesting and recurring theme of these conversations. Like two opposites of a spectrum. On one end the ideal process oriented artisan taking the long way to mastery, on the other end…
Maybe it was always about where you are going and how fast you can get there? And AI might be a few mph faster than a bicycle, and still accelerating.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#189This 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…
Brains are adaptive. We're not getting dumber, we're just adapting to a new environment. Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse.
As for the productivity paradox, this discounts the reality that we wouldn't even be able to scale the institutions we're scaling without the tech. Whether that scaling is a good thing is debatable.
Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you already are an engineer it frees you up to be an architect.
If you aren't, then sure you'll be a PM with a lackluster team of engineers.
LLMs can engineer small well defined functions / scripts rather well in my experience. Of course it helps to be able to understand what it outputs and prod it to engineer it just the way you want it. Still faster than me writing it from scratch, most of the time. And even if it's the same time as me doing it from scratch it feels easier so I can do more without getting tired.