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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

#571

Post by tuesdaynight »

Jensson wrote: post #330
tuesdaynight wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the bluntness, but you sound like you have a lot of opinions about LLM performance for someone who says that doesn't use them. It's okay if you are against them, but if have used them 3 years ago, you have no idea if there were improvements or not.

You can see what people built with LLM 3 years ago and what they build with LLM today and compare the two. That is a very natural and efficient way to do it, and also more reliable than using your own experience since you are just a single data point with feelings. You don't have to drive a car to see where cars were 20 years ago, see where cars are today, and say: "it doesn't look like cars will start flying anytime…

Fair, but what about saying that cars didn't improve in 20 years (the last time you drove one) because they are still not flying?

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

#572

Post by efreak »

sudosteph wrote: post #310
nancyminusone wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does these things, I am curious to know how and why you would choose AI. Working these from text seems to be the hardest way I could think to learn them. I've yet to encounter a written description as to what it feels like to solder, what a good/bad job actually looks like, etc. A well shot video is much better at showing you what you need to do (although finding one is getting more and more difficult)

I just process text information better. Videos are kind of overstimulating and often have unrelated content, and I hate having to rewind back to a part I need while I'm in the middle of something. With LLMs I can get a broad overview of what I'm doing, tell it what materials I already have on hand and get specific ideas for how to practice. Soldering is probably one of the harder ones to learn by text, but the descri…

> I just process text information better. Videos are kind of overstimulating and often have unrelated content, and I hate having to rewind back to a part I need while I'm in the middle of something.

Rant:

I _hate_ video tutorials. With a passion. If you can't be bothered to show pictures of how to use your product with a labeled diagram/drawing/photo of the buttons or connections, then I either won't buy it or I'll return it. I hate video reviews. I hate video repair instructions. I hate spending 15 minutes jumping back and forth between two segments of a YouTube video, trying to find the exact correct frame each time so I can see what button the person is touching while listening to their blather so I don't miss the keyword I heard last time, just so I can see what two different sections when I could have had two pictures on screen at the same time (if I was on desktop, this would be a trivial fix, but not so much on mobile). I hate having VPNs and other products being advertised at me in ways that actively disrupt my chain of thought (vs static instead that I can ignore/scroll past). I hate not being able to just copy and paste a few simple instructions and an image for procedures that I'll have to repeat weekly. It would have taken you less effort to create, and I'd be more likely to pay you for your time.

YouTube videos are like flash-based banner ads, but worse. Avoid them like the plague.

End rant.

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

#573

Post by daveguy »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #488
daveguy wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is clearly not true. For example, the Pythagorean theorem is an old, completely leak free, abstraction with no computer required. Sorry for being pedantic, I was just curious what you mean at all. Language as abstraction of thought implies that thought is always somehow more "general" than language, right? But if that was the case, how could I read a novel that brings me to tears? Is not my thought in this case…

Psst. Mathematics didn't come before language.

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

#574

Post by glitchc »

davidrupp wrote: post #337
glitchc wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs, by their very nature are probabilistic. Probabilistic is NOT deterministic. Although I'm on the side of getting my hands dirty, I'm not sure if the difference is that different . A modern compiler embeds a considerable degree of probabilistic behaviour.

> A modern compiler embeds a considerable degree of probabilistic behaviour. Can you give some examples?

Any time the language specification is undefined, the compiler behaviour will be probabilistic at best. Here's an example for C:

https://wordsandbuttons.online/so_you_think_you_know_c.html

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

#575

Post by glitchc »

ModernMech wrote: post #421
davidrupp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A modern compiler embeds a considerable degree of probabilistic behaviour. Can you give some examples?

It’s not that they embed probabilistic behavior per se. But more like they are chaotic systems, in that a slight change of input can drastically change the output. But ideally, good compiler design is idempotent — given the same input, the output should always be the same. If that were not generally true, programming would be much harder than it is.

No, it can also vary on the input. The -ffast-math flag in gcc is a good example.

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

#576

Post by r_singh »

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 doubt anyone who cannot get their hands dirty with code can gain any value from prompt engineering or using LLMs...

Code with LLMs gets large pretty quickly and would have anyone who isn't practiced spinning their head pretty soon, don't you think?

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

#577

Post by senectus1 »

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 there is a third split as well, those that use the tool to learn. No vibe coding, asking it questions to explain things to you. Then switching to manual tasks, cutting back to help decipher error messages etc.

Its like having a your own personal on tap tutor (for free in most cases!).

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

#578

Post by Cthulhu_ »

theptip wrote: post #281
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…

Just beware the “real programmers hand-write assembly” fallacy. It was said that compilers would produce a generation of programmers unable to understand the workings of their programs. In some sense, this is true! But, almost nobody thinks it really matters for the actual project of building things. If you stop thinking, then of course you will learn less. If instead you think about the next level of abstraction up,…

I think the real fear is that AI will generate code that is subtly broken, but people will lose the skills to understand why it's broken; a fear that it's too much abstraction. And the other difference is that code to assembly is a 'hard' conversion, extensively tested, verified, predictable, etc, while prompt-to-code is a 'loose' conversion, where repeating the same prompt in the same agent will cause different outcomes every time.

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

#579

Post by Cthulhu_ »

PhantomHour wrote: post #368
theptip wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just beware the “real programmers hand-write assembly” fallacy. It was said that compilers would produce a generation of programmers unable to understand the workings of their programs. In some sense, this is true! But, almost nobody thinks it really matters for the actual project of building things. If you stop thinking, then of course you will learn less. If instead you think about the next level of abstraction up,…

> Just beware the “real programmers hand-write assembly” fallacy. It was said that compilers would produce a generation of programmers unable to understand the workings of their programs. In some sense, this is true! But, almost nobody thinks it really matters for the actual project of building things. One of the other replies alludes to it, but I want to say it explicitly: The key difference is that you can generall…

The other one is that code to assembly is exact and repeatable. Code will (well, should, lmao) behave the same way, every time. A prompt to generate code won't.

Some prompts / AI agents will write all the validations and security concerns when prompted to write an API endpoint (or whatever). Others may not, because you didn't specify it.

But if someone who doesn't actually know about security just trusts that the AI will just do it for you - like how a developer using framework might - you'll run into issues fast.

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

#580

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nitwit005 wrote: post #456
theptip wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just beware the “real programmers hand-write assembly” fallacy. It was said that compilers would produce a generation of programmers unable to understand the workings of their programs. In some sense, this is true! But, almost nobody thinks it really matters for the actual project of building things. If you stop thinking, then of course you will learn less. If instead you think about the next level of abstraction up,…

I'd caution that the people not familiar with working at the low level are often missing a bunch of associated knowledge which is useful in the day to day. You run into Python/Javascript/etc programers who have no concept of what operations might execute quickly or slowly. There isn't a mental model of what the interpreter is doing. We're often insulated from the problem because the older generation often used fairly…

Depends on the operation tbh, and whether the one or the other is a micro-optimization or actually significant. It's better to focus on high-level optimizations, core architecture decisions and the right algorithms than on an operation level. Unless those operations are executed billions of times and the difference becomes statistically significant, of course.
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