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

media.mit.edu

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

#261

Post by WarmWash »

albumen wrote: post #180
probably_wrong wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They view the framing of the MIT paper not just as bad science, but as a dangerous social tool that uses brain data to "consign people" to being less worthy or "stupid" for using cognitive aids. It flags the paper's alarmist findings as "pseudoscience" designed to provoke fear rather than provide rigorous insight. They highlight several "red flags" in the study's design: lack of a coherent scientific framework, metho…

Similar to the media, I've picked up on vibes from academia that have a baseline AI negative tilt.

In my own (classic) engineering work, AI has become so phenomenally powerful that I can only imagine that if I was still in college, I'd be mostly checked out during those boring lectures/bad teacher classes, and then learning on my own with the textbook and LLMs by night. Which begs the question, what do we need the professor for?

I'd be interested to see stats on "office hours" visitation time over the last 4 years (although admittedly its the best tool for gaining a professor's favor, AI doesn't grant that)

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

#262

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

> 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.

What do you mean? All of them were 100% right. Novels are brain softening, TV is an idiot box, and writing destroys memory. AI will destroy the minds of people who use it much.

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

#263

Post by wiseowise »

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.

> Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse.

It literally does. If your brain shuts down the moment you can't access your LLM overlord then you're objectively worse.

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

#264

Post by saberience »

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…

It did destroy memory though. I would bet any amount of money that our memories in 2026 are far, far worse than they were in 1950 or 1900.

In fact, I can feel my memory is easily worse now than from before ChatGPT's release, because we are doing less hard cognitive work. The less we use our brain's the dumber we get, and we are definitely using our brains less now.

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

#265

Post by rom16384 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #225
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…

Interesting. I feel like it makes my ADHD worse. If I code “manually” then I can enter hyperfocus/flow and it’s relaxing. If I use AI to code then I have to sit around waiting for it to respond and I get distracted and start something else, forgetting what I was doing before. Maybe there’s a better workflow for me though.

I don't have ADHD but I've set Codex CLI to send me a push notification via PushOver when it ends its turn and it helps a lot.

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

#266

Post by player1234 »

sothatsit wrote: post #114
isolli wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors my experience exactly. We have to learn how to tame the beast.

I think we all just need to avoid the trap of using AI to circumvent understanding. I think that’s where most problems with AI lie. If I understand a problem and AI is just helping me write or refactor code, that’s all good. If I don’t understand a problem and I’m using AI to help me investigate the codebase or help me debug, that’s okay too. But if I ever just let the AI do its thing without understanding what it’s…

[dead]

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

#267

Post by deuplonicus »

jack_pp wrote: post #190
discreteevent wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And if you are already an architect - you are likely planning to start a business

It just feels like AI upskills everyone a little.

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

#268

Post by TaupeRanger »

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.

> Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse.

You think it's likely that we offload cognitive difficulty and complexity to machines, and our brains don't get worse at difficult, complex problems?

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

#269

Post by vidarh »

mythical_39 wrote: post #245
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.

wait, did you see the part where the person you are replying to said that writing the code themself was essential to correctly solving the problem? Because they didn't understand the architecture or the domain models otherwise. Perhaps in your case you do have strong hands-on experience with the domain models, which may indeed have shifted you job requirements to supervising those implementing the actual models. I do…

I saw that part and I disagreed with the very notion, hence why I wrote what I did.

> Because they didn't understand the architecture or the domain models otherwise.

My point is that requiring or expecting an in-depth understanding of all the algorithms you rely on is not a productive use of developer time, because outside narrow niches it is not what we're being paid for.

It is also not something the vast majority of us do now, or have done for several decades. I started with assembler, but most developers have never-ever worked less than a couple of abstractions up, often more, and leaned heavily on heaps of code they do not understand because it is not necessary.

Sometimes it is. But for the vast majority of us pretending it is necessary all the time or even much of the time is a folly.

> I do wonder, however, how much of your actual job also entails ensuring that whoever is doing the implementation is also growing in their understanding of the domain models. Are you developing the people under you? Is that part of your job?

Growing the people under me involves teaching them to solve problems, and already long before AI that typically involved teaching developers to stop obsessing over details with low ROI for the work they were actually doing in favour of understanding and solving the problems of the business. Often that meant making them draw a line between what actually served the needs they were paid to solve rather than the ones that were personally fun to them (I've been guilty of diving into complex low-level problems I find fun rather than what solves the highest ROI problems too - ask me about my compilers, my editor, my terminal - I'm excellent at yak shaving, but I work hard to keep that away from my work)

> If it is an AI that is reporting to you, how are you doing this? Are you writing "skills" files? How are you verifying that it is following them? How are you verifying that it understands them the same way that you intended it to?

For AI use: Tests. Tests. More tests. And, yes, skills and agents. Not primarily even to verify that it understands the specs, but to create harnesses to run them in agent loops without having to babysit them every step of the way. If you use AI and spend your time babysitting them, you've become a glorified assistant to the machine.

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

#270

Post by vidarh »

Kamq wrote: post #183
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.

> 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 understan…

> 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.

This is true whether an AI wrote the code or a co-worker, except the AI is always on hand to answer detailed questions about the code, do detailed analysis, and run extensive tests to validate assumptions.

It is very rarely productive any more to dig into low level code manually.

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