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Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

arxiv.org

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Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#281

Post by je42 »

einrealist wrote: post #252
je42 wrote: post #240

> All participants were then reassured that though 20 minutes might be a rather short time to write an essay, they were encouraged to do their best. Given that the task has been under time pressure, I am not sure this study helps gauging the impact of LLMs in other contexts. When my goal is to produce the result for a specific short term task - I maximize tool usage. When my goal is to improve my personal skills - I…

"I"? You should treat yourself as an anecdotal exception. You are reading on HN. You are probably more aware about the advantages and shortcomings of LLMs. You are not a casual user. And that's the problem with our echo chamber here.

However, I believe it is quite an assumption that a setup with time pressure reflects "normal" usage of a LLM.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#283

Post by fercircularbuf »

As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places. It's no surprise that a tool like this, used for the purpose of outsourcing a task that our own brains would otherwise do, would result in a decline in the skills that would be trained if we were performing that task ourselves.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#287

Post by bootsmann »

theodric wrote: post #280
aniketsaurav18 wrote: post #277

I wonder what LLMs will do to us in the long term.

My guess, based on what's been found about somewhat better cognitive outcomes in aging in people who make an effort to remain fit and stimulated[1], is that we could see slightly worse cognitive outcomes in people that spent their lives steering an LLM to do the "cognitive cardio" rather than putting in the miles themselves. On the other hand, maybe abacuses and written language won't be the downfall of humanity, des…

> On the other hand, maybe abacuses and written language won't be the downfall of humanity, destroying our ability to hold numbers and memorize long passages of narrative, after all

The abacus, the calculator and the book don't randomly get stuff wrong in 15% of cases though. We rely on calculators because they eclipse us in _any_ calculation, we rely on books because they store the stories permanently, but if I use chatGPT to write all my easy SQL I will still have to write the hard SQL by hand because it cannot do that properly (and if I rely on chatGPT to much I will not be able to do that either because of attrition in my brain).

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#288

Post by dig1 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #282

Also ever since we invented the written word it has been eating our brains by killing our memory

Quite the opposite, it was shown that reading improves memory and cognitive abilities for children [1] and older adults [2].

[1] https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/reading-for-pleasure-ear...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482376

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#289

Post by darkwater »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #255
NilMostChill wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shallow take. Your analogies only work if you don't take in to account there are different degrees of utility/quality/usefulness of the product. People absolutely crusade against dangerous food, or even just food that has no nutritious benefit. The parent analogy also only holds up on your happy path.

You've just framed your own argument. In order to be intellectually consistent, you can't crusade against AI in general, but rather bad uses of AI, which (even as an AI supporter) is all I've asked anti-AI folks to do all along.

Computing and AI should be used to do what is humanly impossible, like calculate all the possible paths a hurricane will follow or sequence the human DNA. That would be healthy, cooked food (that wasn't possible until we harnessed fire). If it's just making you lazy and taking away the important part of the thought process, it's junk food. And yeah, LLM unleashed on the bigger population are totally going to make us overall lazier. They will act as "rocket fuel" for the ones that are already wanting to learn and improve, and will tank all the rest, the "normal" people.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#290

Post by uludag »

llamasushi wrote: post #279

Socrates: "And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the…

Or you could compare LLMs to a technology like social media. At the beginning, concerns about social media were widely disregarded as moral panic, but with time its become widely acknowledged that this technology does indeed have harms: political disinformation, loneliness, distraction and inability to focus, etc.

Things like ChatGPT have much more in common with social media technologies like Facebook than they do with like writing.

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