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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

#341

Post by KoolKat23 »

const_cast wrote: post #304
LandR wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I saw a post yesterday showing Brave browser's new tab using 70mb of RAM in the background. I'm very sure there's code there that can be optimized, but who gives a shit. I do. This sort of attitude is how we have machines more powerful than ever yet everything still seems to run like shit.

This is barely related but I bet that the extra 70 mb of ram isn't even waste - it's probably an optimization. Its possible they're spinning up a JS VM preemptively so when you do navigate you have a hot interpreter for the inevitable script. Maybe they allocate memory for the DOM too.

Probably the case, I felt bad using this as an example as I don't know the specifics, but thought it is an easy way to convey my point (sorry if so Brave developers).

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#342

Post by daveguy »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #294
beepbooptheory wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the thing that language itself abstracts?

Your thought's I'd say, but it's more of a two way street than what I think of as abstraction.

Okay, language was the original vehicle for abstraction if everyone wants to get pedantic about it. And yes, abstraction of thought. Only in computerland (programming, mathematics and physics) do you even have the opportunity to have leak-free functional abstractions. That is not the norm. LLM-like leaky abstractions are the norm.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#343

Post by daveguy »

robenkleene wrote: post #320
daveguy wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An abstraction is a deterministic, pure function, than when given A always returns B. That is just not correct. There is no rule that says an abstraction is strictly functional or deterministic. In fact, the original abstraction was likely language, which is clearly neither. The cleanest and easiest abstractions to deal with have those properties, but they are not required.

This is such a funny example because language is the main way that we communicate with LLMs. Which means you can make tie both of your points together in the same example: If you take a scene and describe it in words, then have an LLM reconstruct the scene from the description, you'd likely get a scene that looks very different then the original source. This simultaneous makes both your point and the person you're re…

Yes, most abstractions are not as clean as leak free functional abstractions. Most abstractions in the world are leaky and lossy. Abstraction was around long before computers were invented.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#344

Post by benterix »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #274
e3bc54b2 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the other comment said, LLMs are not an abstraction. An abstraction is a deterministic, pure function, than when given A always returns B. This allows the consumer to rely on the abstraction. This reliance frees up the consumer from having to implement the A->B, thus allowing it to move up the ladder. LLMs, by their very nature are probabilistic. Probabilistic is NOT deterministic. Which means the consumer is neve…

"LLMs, by their very nature are probabilistic." So are humans and yet people pay other people to write code for them.

Yeah but in spite of that if you ask me take a Jira ticket and do it properly, there is a much higher chance that I'll do it reliably and the rest of my team will be satisfied, whereas if I bring an LLM into the equation it will wreak havoc (I've witnessed a few cases and some people got fired, not really for using LLMs but for not reviewing their output properly - which I can even understand somehow as reviewing code is much less fun than creating it).

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#345

Post by eikenberry »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #228
CuriouslyC wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're just moving up the abstraction ladder, like we did with compilers. I don't care about the individual lines of code, I care about architecture, code structure, rigorous automated e2e tests, contracts with comprehensive validation, etc. Rather than waste a bunch of time pouring over agent PRs I just make them jump over extremely high static/analytic hurdles that guarantee functionality, then my only job is to ide…

As the other comment said, LLMs are not an abstraction. An abstraction is a deterministic, pure function, than when given A always returns B. This allows the consumer to rely on the abstraction. This reliance frees up the consumer from having to implement the A->B, thus allowing it to move up the ladder. LLMs, by their very nature are probabilistic. Probabilistic is NOT deterministic. Which means the consumer is neve…

Local models can be deterministic and that is one of the reasons why they will win out over service based models once the hardware becomes available.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#346

Post by [deleted] »

Mtinie wrote: post #335
rafterydj wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills or misunderstanding you. Shouldn't it matter that they are using 70mb of RAM more or less totally wastefully? Maybe not a deal breaker for Brave, sure, but waste is waste. I understand the world is about compromises, but all the gains of essentially every computer program ever could be summed up by accumulation of small optimizations. Likewise, the accumulation of small wastes kills…

It could matter but what isn't clear to me is if 70MB is wasteful in this specific context. Maybe? Maybe not? Flagging something as potentially problematic is useful but without additional information related to the tradeoffs being made this may be an optimized way to do whatever Brave is doing which requires the 70MB of RAM. Perhaps the non-optimal way it was previously doing it required 250MB of RAM and this is a s…

[deleted]

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#347

Post by mooreds »

benterix wrote: post #173
goalieca wrote: post #164

Anecdote here, but when I was in grad school, I was talking to a PhD student i respected a lot. Whenever he read a paper, he would try to write the code out and get it working. I would take a couple of months but he could whip it up in a few days. He explained to me that it was just practice and the more you practice the better you become. He not only coded things quickly, he started analyzing papers quicker too and…

We are literally witnessing the skills split right in front of our eyes: (1) people who are able to understand the concepts deeply, build a mental model of it and implement them in code at any level, and (2) people who outsource it to a machine and slowly, slowly lose that capability. For now the difference between these two populations is not that pronounced yet but give it a couple of years.

I've posted this Asimov short story before, but this comment inspires me to post it again.

http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...

"Somewhere there must be men and women with capacity for original thought."

He wrote that in 1957. 1957!

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#348

Post by stocksinsmocks »

benterix wrote: post #173
goalieca wrote: post #164

Anecdote here, but when I was in grad school, I was talking to a PhD student i respected a lot. Whenever he read a paper, he would try to write the code out and get it working. I would take a couple of months but he could whip it up in a few days. He explained to me that it was just practice and the more you practice the better you become. He not only coded things quickly, he started analyzing papers quicker too and…

We are literally witnessing the skills split right in front of our eyes: (1) people who are able to understand the concepts deeply, build a mental model of it and implement them in code at any level, and (2) people who outsource it to a machine and slowly, slowly lose that capability. For now the difference between these two populations is not that pronounced yet but give it a couple of years.

(3) people who never had that capability.

Remember we aren’t all above average. You shouldn’t worry. Now that we have widespread literacy, nobody needs to and few even could recite Norse Sagas or the Illiad from memory. Basically nobody has useful skills for nomadic survival.

We’re about to move on to more interesting problems, and our collective abilities and motivation will still be stratified as it always has been and must be.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#349

Post by KoolKat23 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #313
KoolKat23 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still early stages, that is why. It is not yet good enough or there is not yet sufficient trust. Also there are still resources allocated to checking the code. I saw a post yesterday showing Brave browser's new tab using 70mb of RAM in the background. I'm very sure there's code there that can be optimized, but who gives a shit. It's splitting hairs and our computers are powerful enough now that it doesn't matter…

> It's still early stages, that is why. I have been hearing (reading?) this for a solid two years now, and LLMs were not invented two years ago: they are ostensibly the same tech as they were back in 2017, with larger training pools and some optimizations along the way. How many more hundreds of billions of dollars is reasonable to throw at a technology that has never once exceeded the lofty heights of "fine"? At thi…

I know from my own use case, it went from Gemini 1.5 being unusable to Gemini 2.0 being useable. So 2 years makes a big difference. It's out there right now being used in business making money. This is tangible.

I suspect there's a lot more use out there generating money than you realize, there's no moat in using it, so I'm pretty sure it's kept on the downlow for fear of competitors catching up (which is quick and cheap to do).

How far can one extrapolate? I defer to the experts actually making these things and to those putting money on the line.

Re: MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

#350

Post by skydhash »

threatofrain wrote: post #322
const_cast wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but we don't call humans abstractions. A software engineer isn't an abstraction over code.

No, but depending on your governance structure, we have software engineers abstract over domains. And then we draw boxes and arrows around the works of your colleagues without looking inside the box.

You wish! Bus factor risk is why you don’t do this. Having siloed knowledge is one of the first steps towards engineering, unless someone else code is proven bug free, you don’t usually rely on that. You just have someone to throw bug tickets at.
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