MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by intended » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 9:12 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #543

intended wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah you are an old one. I was born later, and missed this phase of our history. This reminds me of back 11,500 years ago, when people used to worship the sharper or bigger pieces of obsidian. They felt the biggest piece would win them the biggest hunt. They forgot that the size of the tool mattered less than mastery of the hunt. Why the best hunter could take down a moving mattress with just the right words, string an…

On a more serious note, here in India most millennials/boomers remember taking a Engineering Drawing class in second semester Engineering courses. It would involve using a real drafter, real calculations and making real drawings. Isometric projects and all. I remember it took me like 4 nights of standing to make Isometric projections of a landing gear strut. I wondered if pursuing an Engineering degree was even worth…

CAD vs Hand drawing isometrics spotlights the labor and effort, but then ends up overshadowing the role of effort in developing mental models.

The issue is that its a homework exercise. It's goal is to help you practice thinking about the problem. The Indian system is clear proof that passing an exam is easier, than actually mastering the subject being tested.

However, this is not the cause of the jobs crisis. That is simply because there are not enough jobs which can provide income and social mobility. That is why we needed growth.

Some of those ladders have been removed because automation has removed low-skill labor roles. Now we are going to remove entry level roles.

To put it in a crude manner - humanity's "job" today, seems to be "growing" a generation of humans over a 20 year time span, to prepare them for the world that we face.

This means building systems that deliver timely nutrition, education, stimulation, healthcare, and support.

We could do this better.

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

#552

Post by tim333 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:54 AM UTC

Jimmc414 wrote: post #450

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 a…

Thank you for summarizing that. I guessed there must be some issues but didn't want to read the thing.

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

#553

Post by vrighter » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 12:38 PM UTC

KoolKat23 wrote: post #243

blibble wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can count the amount of times in my 20 year career that I've had to look at compiler generated assembly on one finger and I've never looked at the machine code produced by an assembler (other than when I wrote my own as a toy project) is the same true of LLM usage? absolutely not and it never will be, because it's not an abstraction

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…

I hate this "early stages" argument. It either works, or it doesn't. If it works sometimes that's called "alpha software" and should not be released and hyped as a finished product. The early stages of the GUI paradigm at release started with a fully working GUI. Windows didn't sometimes refuse to open. The OS didn't sometimes open the wrong program. The system didn't sometimes hallucinate a 2nd cursor. The system worked and then it was shipped.

The "early stages" argument means "not fit for production purposes" in any other case. It should also mean the same here. It's early stages because the product isn't finished (and can't be, at least with current knowledge)

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

#554

Post by Eawrig05 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 12:38 PM UTC

This study is so limited in scope that the title is really misleading - "AI Use Reprograms the Brain" is not really a fair assessment of the study. The study focuses on one question: what is the effect of relying on an LLM writing your essay. The answer: it makes you forget how to write a good essay. I mean, I think its obvious that if you rely on an LLM to write for you, you effectually lose the skill of writing. But what if you use an LLM to teach you a concept? Would this also lead to a cognitive decline? I don't know the answer, but I think that is a question that ought to be explored.

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

#555

Post by Eawrig05 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 12:48 PM UTC

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 think this is a fun problem: Say LLMs really do allow people to be 2X or 3X more productive. Then those people that understand concepts and rely on LLMs should be more successful and productive. But if those people slowly decline in ability they will become less successful in the long term. But how much societal damage is done in the meantime? Such as creating insecure software or laying off/not hiring junior developers.

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

#556

Post by rkagerer » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #189

benterix wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Good luck once you find out how impossible it is to maintain all that AI generated slop, over the long term.

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

#557

Post by impure-aqua » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 2:07 PM UTC

maltalex wrote: post #483

vidarh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Do you therefore argue programming languages aren't abstractions? Yes, and no. They’re abstractions in the sense of hiding the implementation details of the underlying assembly. Similarly, assembly hides the implementation details of the cpu, memory, and other hw components. However, except with programming languages you don’t need to know the details of the underlying layers except for very rare cases. The abstrac…

I do not think determinism of behaviour is the only thing that matters for evaluating the value of an abstraction - exposure to the output is also a consideration.

The behaviour of the = operator in Python is certainly deterministic and well-documented, but depending on context it can result in either a copy (2x memory consumption) or a pointer (+64bit memory consumption). Values that were previously pointers can also suddenly become copies following later permutation. Do you think this through every time you use =? The consequences of this can be significant (e.g. operating on a large file in memory); I have seen SWEs make errors in FastAPI multipart upload pipelines that have increased memory consumption by 2x, 3x, in this manner.

Meanwhile I can ask an LLM to generate me Rust code, and it is clearly obvious what impact the generated code has on memory consumption. If it is a reassignment (b = a) it will be a move, and future attempts to access the value of a would refuse to compile and be highlighted immediately in an IDE linter. If the LLM does b = &a, it is clearly borrowing, which has the size of a pointer (+64bits). If the LLM did b = a.clone(), I would clearly be able to see that we are duplicating this data structure in memory (2x consumption).

The LLM code certainly is non-deterministic; it will be different depending on the questions I asked (unlike a compiler). However, in this particular example, the chosen output format/language (Rust) directly exposes me to the underlying behaviour in a way that is both lower-level than Python (what I might choose to write quick code myself) yet also much, much more interpretable as a human than, say, a binary that GCC produces. I think this has significant value.

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

#558

Post by dahart » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

imchillyb wrote: post #213

hamburga wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socrates famously complained about literacy making us stupider in Phaedrus. Which I believe still does have a large grain of truth. These things can make us simultaneously dumber and smarter, depending on usage.

Socrates was correct. In his day memory was treasured. Memory was how ideas were linked, how quotes were attained, and how arguments were made. Writing leads to the rapid decline in memory function. Brains are lazy. Ever travel to a new place and the brain pipes up with: ‘this place is just like ___’? That the brain’s laziness showing itself. The brain says: ‘okay I solved that, go back to rest.’ The observation is n…

This is an interesting argument. I’m not convinced but I’m open to hearing more. Don’t we only know about Socrates because he was written about? What evidence do we have that writing reduces memory at all? Don’t studies of students show taking notes increases retention? Anecdotally, the writers I know tend to demonstrate the opposite of what you’re saying, they seem to read, think, converse, and remember more than people who aren’t writing regularly. What exactly have we given up to attain more learning? We still have people who can memorize long things today, is it any fewer than in Socrates’ day? How do we know? Do you subscribe to the idea that the printing press accelerated collective memory, which is far more important for technology and industrial development and general information keeping than personal memory? Most people in Socrates’ day, and before, and since, all forgot their family trees, but thankfully some people wrote them down so we still have some of it. Future generations won’t have the gaps in history we have today.

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

#559

Post by Mistletoe » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #123

Mistletoe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are referencing The Time Machine, I remember reading a neat comic book version of the book when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel we are quite close to having Eloi and Murlocks evolving already. >the gentle, childlike Eloi and the subterranean, predatory Morlocks. Seems like a nice metaphor for the current two political parties we are provided with.

> a neat comic book version Wikipedia lists several. Do you recall which you read? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine#Comics

I can't find them again and I have tried. It was these little books with black and white art and it was of classic novels, Frankenstein, etc. I can still see some of the images when I think of the books. It inspired a love in me for those stories that has lasted a lifetime.

My Mom was a special ed teacher and they were in her classroom as a set. I would go read them after school. Google Gemini suggested Classics Illustrated but I don't think that is it. These were black and white and cheaper than that. Something a teacher would have in their classroom.

Edit: Upon chiding Google Gemini and reminding it that it was black and white I think it found it!

Pocket Classics Comics From 1984.

https://gentlyhewstone.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/pocket-class...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/286295230816

Score one for AI because google search never found those for me.

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

#560

Post by lock1 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

maltalex wrote: post #483

vidarh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Do you therefore argue programming languages aren't abstractions? Yes, and no. They’re abstractions in the sense of hiding the implementation details of the underlying assembly. Similarly, assembly hides the implementation details of the cpu, memory, and other hw components. However, except with programming languages you don’t need to know the details of the underlying layers except for very rare cases. The abstrac…

Unrelated to the gp post, but isn't LLMs more like a deterministic chaotic system than a "non-deterministic" one? "Tiny changes to the input can change the output quite a lot" is similar to "extreme sensitivity to initial condition" property of a chaotic system.

I guess that could be a problematic behavior if you want reproducibility ala (relatively) reproducible abstraction like compilers. With LLMs, there are too many uncontrollable variables to precisely reproduce a result from the same input.