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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

#61

Post by rwnspace »

ceejayoz wrote: post #51
infecto wrote: post #46

Everyone is different. I don’t have a good grasp on the distribution of HN readers these days but I know for myself as a heavy user of LLMs, I am not sold on this for myself. I am asking more questions than ever. I use it for proof reading and editing. But I can see the risk as a software engineer. I really appreciate tools like cursor, I give it bite size chunks and review. Using tools like Claude code though. It be…

> I am asking more questions than ever. Wouldn't that be the expected result here? Less knowledge, more questions?

In my personal experience new knowledge tends to beget questions.

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

#62

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

Personally, I don't think you should ever allow the LLM to write for you or to modify / update anything you're writing. You can use it to get feedback when editing, to explore an idea-space, and to find any topical gaps. But write everything yourself! It's just too easy to give in and slowly let the LLM take over your brain.

This article is focused on essay writing, but I swear I've experienced cognitive decline when using AI tools a bit too much to help solve programming-related problems. When dealing with an unfamiliar programming ecosystem it feels so easy and magical to just keep copy / pasting error outputs until the problem is resolved. Previously solving the problem would've taken me longer but I would've also learned a lot more. Then again, LLMs also make it way easier to get started and feel like you're making significant progress, instead of getting stuck at the first hurdle. There's definitely a balance. It requires a lot of willpower to sit with a problem in order to try and work through it rather than praying to the LLM slot machine for an instant solution.

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

#63

Post by grim_io »

I have never used LLM's to write essays, so I can't comment on that.

What I can comment on is how valuable and energizing it is for me to cooperatively code with LLM's using agents.

I find it sad to hear when someone finds this experience disappointing, and I wonder what could go wrong to make it so.

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

#64

Post by Ekaros »

aurareturn wrote: post #24
jennyholzer wrote: post #10

> In post-task interviews: > 83.3% of LLM users were unable to quote even one sentence from the essay they had just written. > In contrast, 88.9% of Search and Brain-only users could quote accurately. > 0% of LLM users could produce a correct quote, while most Brain-only and Search users could. Reminds me of my coworkers who have literally no idea what Chat GPT put into their PR from last week.

Maybe we should question the value of essays in the ChatGPT world? Could a person, armed with ChatGPT, come up with a better solution in a real world problem than without ChatGPT? Maybe that's what actually matters.

Can they evaluate if the idea that came up with is better if they do not remember how it was stated? Isn't point of writing actually to formulate down the thoughts in communicable manner. And then possibly to be verified by others.

But how can they discuss any content if even the "writer" does not remember what they wrote.

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

#65

Post by bgwalter »

bookofjoe wrote: post #53
pjio wrote: post #17

First step out of this mess: Use AI only to proof read or get a second opinion, but not to write the whole thing.

That ship has sailed. >Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project. https://archive.ph/ZKZiY

Not in China:

https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/china-restricts-ai-...

"That’s because the Chinese Communist Party knows their youth learn less when they use artificial intelligence. Surely, President Xi Jinping is reveling in this leg up over American students, who are using AI as a crutch and missing out on valuable learning experiences as a result.

It’s just one of the ways China protects their youth, while we feed ours into the jaws of Big Tech in the name of progress."

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

#66

Post by abirch »

aurareturn wrote: post #24
jennyholzer wrote: post #10

> In post-task interviews: > 83.3% of LLM users were unable to quote even one sentence from the essay they had just written. > In contrast, 88.9% of Search and Brain-only users could quote accurately. > 0% of LLM users could produce a correct quote, while most Brain-only and Search users could. Reminds me of my coworkers who have literally no idea what Chat GPT put into their PR from last week.

Maybe we should question the value of essays in the ChatGPT world? Could a person, armed with ChatGPT, come up with a better solution in a real world problem than without ChatGPT? Maybe that's what actually matters.

College was transformed from an apprentice style institution of the 1500s to mass produced thing of the early 2000s (where a professor can "teach" 500 students in a class).

I think a return to the apprentice style of institution where people try to create the best real world solution as possible with LLMs, 3D printers, etc. Then use recorded college courses like our grandparents used books.

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

#67

Post by mnky9800n »

tomrod wrote: post #20

A few things to note. 1. This is arxiv - before publication or peer review. Grain of salt.[0] 2. 18 participants per cohort 3. 54 participants total Given the low N and the likelihood that this is drawn from 18-22 year olds attending MIT, one should expect an uphill battle for replication and for generalizability. Further, they are brain scanning during the experiment, which is an uncomfortable/out-of-the-norm experi…

I feel like saying papers pre peer review should be taken with a grain of salt should be stopped. Peer review is not some idealistic scientific endeavour it often leads to bullshit comments, slows down release, is free work for companies that have massive profit margins, etc. From my experience publishing 30+ papers I have received as many bad or useless comments as I have good ones. We should at least default to open peer review and editorial communication.

Science should become a marketplace of ideas. Your other criticisms are completely valid. Those should be what’s front and center. And I agree with you. The conclusions of the paper are premature and designed to grab headlines and get citations. Might as well be posting “first post” on slashdot. IMO we should not see the current standard of peer review as anything other than anachronistic.

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

#68

Post by babycheetahbite »

Does anyone have any suggestions for approaches they are taking to avoid the potential for this? Something I did recently in ChatGPT's 'Instructions' box (so far I have only used ChatGPT) is requesting it to "Make me think through the problem before just giving me the answer." and a few other similar notes.

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

#69

Post by gkilmain »

jennyholzer wrote: post #13
teekert wrote: post #8

Anybody 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.

I find this acceptable if your coworkers are checked out and looking for that next big thing

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

#70

Post by boesboes »

diddid wrote: post #33
DrNosferatu wrote: post #14

If 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.

This, I was allowed to use the grahpic mode to do integrals and differentials. It made high school easy, but in uni I had zero math skills it turned out. Had to switch studies..
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