The future for humans worries me a lot. What evolutionary pressures will exist to keep us intelligent? We are already seeing IQ drop alarmingly across the world. Now AI comes in from the top rope with the steel chair?
MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
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Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#32“…our cognitive abilities and creative capacities appear poised to take a nosedive into oblivion.” Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell us how you really feel.
I think developers who use "AI" coding assistants are putting their careers at risk.
The future is increased productivity. If someone can outproduce you if they use AI, then they will take your job.
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#33If you blindly trust it instead of using it as an iterative tool, I guess… But didn’t pocket calculators present the same risk / panic?
Graphing calculators did, which is why in a lot of math classes they got banned. If your calculator can solve for x, you won’t spend time learning how to. The best math classes usually do without calculators focusing on concepts and skip numbers you’d need a calculator for.
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#34there's going to be an avalanche of dementia for the generations that outsource all their thinking to LLMs
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#35“…our cognitive abilities and creative capacities appear poised to take a nosedive into oblivion.” Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell us how you really feel.
I think developers who use "AI" coding assistants are putting their careers at risk.
fighter jet pilots who use the ejection seat are putting their careers at risk, but so are the ones who don't use it when they should.
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#36“…our cognitive abilities and creative capacities appear poised to take a nosedive into oblivion.” Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell us how you really feel.
I think developers who use "AI" coding assistants are putting their careers at risk.
Developers who don’t understand how the most basic aspects of systems they work on function are a dime a dozen already, I’m not sure LLMs change the scale of that problem.
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#37Anybody who has tried to shortcut themselves into a report on something using an LLM, and was then asked to defend the plans contained within it knows that writing is thinking. And if you outsource the writing, you do less thinking and with less thinking there is less understanding. Your mental model is less complete, less comprehensive. I wouldn't call it "cognitive decline", more "a less deep understanding of the s…
This dynamic is frustrating on the individual level, but it is poisonous on the organizational level. I am offended by coworkers who submit incompletely considered, visibly LLM generated code. These coworkers are dragging my team down.
On the bright side, if you are forced to write AI code, at least reviewing PRs of AI generated slop gives your brain an exercise, albeit a frustrating one.
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#38[deleted]
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#39Isn't intelligence -> asking the right questions?
Rather than coming up with the right answers?
Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
#40If you blindly trust it instead of using it as an iterative tool, I guess… But didn’t pocket calculators present the same risk / panic?
There’s a narrow band of math that’s amenable to pocket calculators. When used in that band, they can repeatably return the correct answer.