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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

#441

Post by amlib »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #244
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…

> These days, I'm fairly senior and don't touch code much anymore but I find it really really instructive to get my hands dirty and struggle through new code and ideas. I think the "just tweak the prompts bro" people are missing out on learning. If you just use prompts and don't actually read the output, and figure out why it worked, and why it works, you will never get better. But if you take the time to understand…

If that held true, than reading lots of source code from random FOSS projects would make you into an amazing coder. But clearly that's not enough to internalize and learn all that knowledge, you need to experiment with it, see it running, debug it, write some, extend it, fix bugs and so on. Just reading it with very little context for the rest of the project is a recipe for mediocrity.

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

#442

Post by strix_varius »

vidarh wrote: post #326
robenkleene wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One argument for abstraction being different from delegation, is when a programmer uses an abstraction, I'd expect the programmer to be able to work without the abstraction, if necessary, and also be able to build their own abstractions. I wouldn't have that expectation with delegation.

The vast majority of programmers don't know assembly, so can in fact not work without all the abstractions they rely on. Do you therefore argue programming languages aren't abstractions?

This is a tautology. At some level, nobody can work at a lower level of abstraction. A programmer who knows assembly probably could not physically build the machine it runs on. A programmer who could do that probably could not smelt the metals required to make that machine. etc.

However, the specific discussion here is about delegating the work of writing to an LLM, vs abstracting the work of writing via deterministic systems like libraries, frameworks, modules, etc. It is specifically not about abstracting the work of compiling, constructing, or smelting.

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

#443

Post by GeoAtreides »

causal wrote: post #286
LocalPCGuy wrote: post #211

This is a bad and sloppy regurgitation of a previous (and more original) source[1] and the headline and article explicitly ignore the paper authors' plea[2] to avoid using the paper to try to draw the exact conclusions this article saying the paper draws. The comments (some, not all) are also a great example of how cognitive bias can cause folks to accept information without doing a lot of due diligence into the actu…

Yeah I feel like HN is being Reddit-ified with the amount of reposted clickbait that keeps making the front page :( This study in particular has made the rounds several times as you said. The study measures impact of 18 people using ChatGPT just four times over four months. I'm sorry but there is no way that is controlling for noise. I'm sympathetic to the idea that overusing AI causes atrophy but this is just clickb…

>I feel like HN is being Reddit-ified

It's september and september never ends

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

#445

Post by WalterBright »

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…

I learned this in college long before AI. If I didn't do the work to solve the homework problems, I didn't learn the material, no matter how much I imagined I understood it.

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

#446

Post by marcofloriano »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #306

The coverage of this has been so bad that the authors have had to put up an FAQ[1] on their website, where the first question is the following: Is it safe to say that LLMs are, in essence, making us "dumber"? No! Please do not use the words like “stupid”, “dumb”, “brain rot”, "harm", "damage", "brain damage", "passivity", "trimming" , "collapse" and so on. It does a huge disservice to this work, as we did not use thi…

It's actually so safe to say that such a small study like that can point out clearly the fact. But of course, as it is a very sensitive topic, 'the language' and 'the narrative' should be carefully chosen, or you can be 'banned'. Off course we wont see new studies like that anytime soon.

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

#447

Post by LocalPCGuy »

marcofloriano wrote: post #429
LocalPCGuy wrote: post #211

This is a bad and sloppy regurgitation of a previous (and more original) source[1] and the headline and article explicitly ignore the paper authors' plea[2] to avoid using the paper to try to draw the exact conclusions this article saying the paper draws. The comments (some, not all) are also a great example of how cognitive bias can cause folks to accept information without doing a lot of due diligence into the actu…

> Is it safe to say that LLMs are, in essence, making us "dumber"? > No! Please do not use the words like “stupid”, “dumb”, “brain rot”, "harm", "damage", "passivity", "trimming" and so on. It does a huge disservice to this work, as we did not use this vocabulary in the paper, especially if you are a journalist reporting on it Maybe it's not safe so far, but it has been my experience using chatGPT for eight months to…

You are referencing your own personal experience, and while that is an entirely valid opinion for you to have personally about your usage, it's not possible to extrapolate that across an entire population of people. Whether or not you're doing that, part of the point I was making was how people who "think it makes sense" will often then not critically analyze something because it already agrees with their preconceived notion. Super common, I'm just calling it out cause we can all do better.

All we can say right now is "we don't really know how it affects our brains", and we won't until we get some studies (which is what the underlying paper was calling for, more research).

Personally I do think we'll get more studies, but the quality is the question for me - it's really hard to do a study right when by the time it's done, there's been 2 new generations of LLMs released making the study data potentially obsolete. So researchers are going to be tempted to go faster, use less people, be less rigid overall, which in turn may make for bad results.

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

#448

Post by rajap »

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…

with proper testing you can make suer that given A the returned value is B

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

#450

Post by Jimmc414 »

Considerable amount of methodology issues here for a study with this much traction. Only 54 participants split three ways into groups of 18, with just 9 people per condition in the crossover. Far too small for claims about "brain reprogramming."

The study shows different brain patterns during AI-assisted writing, not permanent damage. Lower EEG activity when using a tool is expected just as showing less mental math activity when using a calculator.

The study translates temporary, task-specific neural patterns into "cognitive decline" and "severe cognitive harm." The actual study measured brain activity during essay writing, not lasting changes.

Plus, surface electrical measurements can't diagnose "cognitive debt" or deep brain changes. The authors even acknowledge this. Also, "83.3% couldn't quote their essay" equates to 15 out of 18 people?

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