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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

#191

Post by Akronymus »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #143
bowsamic wrote: post #123

Earlier 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…

> AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has the potential to be transformative in ways we can't imagine - in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News.

Wouldnt the endgame of externalized cognition be that humans essentially become cogs in the machine?

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

#192

Post by greggoB »

DocTomoe wrote: post #54
greggoB wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If the title of your study both makes a neurotoxin reference ("This is your brain on drugs", egg, pan, plus pearl-clutching) AND introduces a concept stolen and abused from IT and economics (cognitive debt? Implies repayment and 'refactoring', that is not what they mean, though) ... I expect a bit more than 'we tested this very obvious common sense thing, and lo and behold, it is just as a five year old would have pr…

I struggle to see how you're linking your complaint about the wording of the title to your issue with the obviousness of the result - these seem like two completely independent thought processes.

Also, re cognitive debt being stolen: I'm pretty sure this is actually a modification of sleep debt, which would be a medical/biological term [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_debt

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

#194

Post by UltraSane »

wisty wrote: post #160
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…

Instead of memorizing vasts amount of text modern people memorize the plots of vast amounts of books, moves, TV shows, and video games and pop culture.

Computers are much better at remembering text.

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

#195

Post by greggoB »

mannanj wrote: post #82
greggoB wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similar to the mass psychosis we were hearing about during COVID Can you be more specific and/or provide some references? The "demonstrating curiosity about controversial topics" part is sounding like vaccine skepticism, though I don't recall ever hearing that being referred to as any kind of "psychosis".

Noting that it is straw man to connect my argument with vaccine skepticism. The mass psychosis was that early on in the COVID response, we were hearing so much early advice from people that were ahead of CDC/FDA, things like: - Masks work (CDC/FDA discouraged, then flip-flopped and took credit for these things) despite it originating from Scott Alexander and skeptic communities like his, I also heard it from Tim Ferr…

> Noting that it is straw man to connect my argument with vaccine skepticism.

I don't think you know what a straw man is [0]

> Does that answer your question, and feel referential for you.

No, lol? I was asking for you to cite a reference to a reputable source, not go on a whole Covid misinformation rant. To add, you still haven't demonstrated where/how the word "psychosis" supposedly came into popular use for any of the cases you mentioned.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

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

#196

Post by Difwif »

thefaux wrote: post #179
vidarh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This feels like it conflates problem solving with the production of artifacts. It seems highly possible to me that the explosion of ai generated code is ultimately creating more problems than it is solving and that the friction of manual coding may ultimately prove to be a great virtue.

This statement feels like a farmer making a case for using their hands to tend the land instead of a tractor because it produces too many crops. Modern farming requires you to have an ecosystem of supporting tools to handle the scale and you need to learn new skills like being a diesel mechanic.

How we work changes and the extra complexity buys us productivity. The vast majority of software will be AI generated, tools will exist to continuously test/refine it, and hand written code will be for artists, hobbyists, and an ever shrinking set of hard problems where a human still wins.

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

#197

Post by cimi_ »

darkwater wrote: post #162
cimi_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The historical pattern suggests cognitive abilities shift rather than disappear. Shift to what? This? https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

What the hell have I just read (or at least skimmed)?? I cannot understand if the author is: a) serious, but we live on different planets b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony c) an ironic piece with some real idea d) he is mocking AI maximalists

There was discussion about this here a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458936

Steve Yegge's a famous developer, this is not a joke :) You could say he is an AI maximalist, from your options I'd go with (b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony.

It is exaggerated, but this is how he sees things ending up eventually. This is real software.

If things do end up in glorified kanban boards, what does it mean for us? That we can work less and use the spare time reading and doing yoga, or that we'll work the same hours with our attention even more fragmented and with no control over the outputs of these things (=> stress).

I'd really wish that people who think this is good for us and are pushing for this future do a bit better than:

1. More AI 2. ??? 3. Profit

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

#198

Post by discreteevent »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #189
wisty wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Brains are adaptive.

They are, but you go on to assume that they will adapt in a good way.

Bodies are adaptive too. That didn't work out well for a lot of people when their environment changed to be sedentary.

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

#199

Post by doublerabbit »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #189
wisty wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brains are adaptive and as we adapt we are turning more cognitive unbalanced. We're absorbing potentially bias information at a faster rate. GPT can give you information of X in seconds. Have you thought about it? Is that information correct? Information can easily be adapted to sound real while masking the real as false.

Launching a search engine and searching may spew incorrectness but it made you make judgement, think. You could have two different opinions one underneath each other; you saw both sides of the coin.

We are no longer critical thinking. We are taking information at face value, marking it as correct and not questioning is it afterwards.

The ability to evaluate critically and rationally is what's decaying. Who opens an physical encyclopedia nowadays? That itself requires resources, effort and time. Add in life complexity; that doesn't help us in evaluating and rejecting consumption of false information. The Wall-E view isn't wrong.

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

#200

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

> But letting it write the actual code was a mistake

I think you not asking questions about the code is the problem (in so far it still is a problem). But it certainly has gotten easy not to.

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