relying on AI makes people stupid?
Who knew?
MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
Submitted 1 day ago by cypherpunks@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
DownToClown@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
The obvious AI-generated image and the generic name of the journal made me think that there was something off about this website/article and sure enough the writer of this article is on X claiming that covid 19 vaccines are not fit for humans and that there’s a clear link between vaccines and autism.
Neat.
tad_lispy@europe.pub 12 hours ago
Thanks for the warning. Here’s the link to the original study, so we don’t have to drive traffic to that guys website.
I haven’t got time to read it and now I wonder if it was represented accurately in the article.
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Thanks for pointing this out. Looking closer I see that this is not a publication I want to send traffic to, for a variety of reasons.
I edited the post to link to MIT instead, and added a note in the post body explaining.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Public health flat earthers
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
Anyone who doubts this should ask their parents how many phone numbers they used to remember.
In a few years there’ll be people who’ve forgotten how to have a conversation.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
The other day I saw someone ask ChatGPT how long it would take to perform 1.5 million instances of a given task, if each instance took one minute. Mfs cannot even divide 1.5 million minutes by 60 to get get 25,000 hours, then by 24 to get 1,041 days. Pretty soon these people will be incapable of writing a full sentence without ChatGPT’s input
pirat@lemmy.world 41 minutes ago
You forgot doing the years, which is a bit trickier if we take into account the leap years.
According to the Gregorian calendar, every fourth year is a leap year unless it’s divisible by 100 – except those divisible by 400 which are leap years anyway. Hence, the average length of one year (over 400 years) must be:
365 + 1⁄4 − 1⁄100 + 1⁄400 = 365.2425 days
So,
1041 / 365.2425 ≈ 2.85 years
Or 2 years and…
0.850161194275 × 365.2425 ≈ 310 days and…
0.514999999987 × 24 ≈ 12 hours and…
0.359999999688 × 60 ≈ 21 minutes and…
0.59999998128 × 60 ≈ 36 seconds
1041 days is just about 2y 310d 12h 21m 36s
Wtf, how did we go from 1041 whole days to fractions of a day? Damn leap years!
Had we not been accounting for them, we would have had 2 years and…
0.852054794521 × 365 = 311.000000000165 days
Or simply 2y 311d if we just ignore that tiny rounding error or use fewer decimals.
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
They’ll have forgotten how to remember anything.
zqps@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
I don’t see how that’s any indicator of cognitive decline.
Also people had notebooks for ages. The reason they remembered phone numbers wasn’t necessity, but that you had to manually dial them every time.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.
—a story told by Socrates, according to his student Plato
billwashere@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I still remember all my family’s phone numbers from when I was a kid growing up In WV in the 70s
I currently have my wife’s number memorized and that’s it. Not my mom, my kids, friends, anybody. I just don’t have to. It’s all in my phone.
But I’m also of the opinion that NOT having this info in my head has freed it up for more important things. Like memes and cat videos 🤣
But seriously, I don’t think this tool, and AI is just a tool, is dumbing me down. Yes I think about certain things less, but it allows me to ask different or better questions, and just learn differently. I don’t necessarily trust everything it spits out, I double check all code it produces, etc. It’s very good at explaining things or providing other examples. Since I’m older, I’ve heard similar arguments about TV and/or the Internet. LLMs are a very interesting tool that have good and bad uses. They are not intelligent, at least not yet, and are not the solution to everything technical. They are very resource intensive and should be used much more judiciously then the currently are.
Ultimately it boils down to if you’re lazy, this allows you to be more lazy. If you don’t want to continue learning and just rely on it, you are gonna have a bad time. Be skeptical, questioning, employee critical thinking, take in information from lots of sources, and in the end you will be fine. That is unless it becomes sentient and wipes us all out.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
That doesn’t require a few years, there are loads of people out there already who have forgotten how to have a conversation
Especially moderators, who typically are the polar opposite nog the word. You disagree with my factually incorrect statement? Ban. Problem solved. You disagree with my opinion? Ban.
Similarly I’ve seen loads of users on Lemmy (and before or reddit) that just ban anyone who asks questions or who disagrees.
It’s so nice and easy, living in a echo chamber, but it does break your brain
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
I could remember so many phone numbers nowadays I just click their names on my rectangle, the future sucks and is weakening us !
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I already have seen a massive decline personally and observationally (watching other people) in conversation skills.
Most people now to talk to each other like they are exchanging internet comments. They don’t ask questions, they don’t really engage… they just exchange declaratory sentences.
Most of our new employees the past year or two really struggle with any verbal communication and if you approach them physically to converse about something they emailed about they look massively uncomfortable and don’t really know how to think on their feet.
Wojwo@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
Does this also explain what happens with middle and upper management? As people have moved up the ranks during the course of their careers, I swear they get dumber.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
That was my first reaction. Using LLMs is a lot like being a manager. You have to describe goals/tasks and delegate them, while usually not doing any of the tasks yourself.
sheogorath@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Fuck, this is why I’m feeling dumber myself after getting promoted to more senior positions and had only had to work in architectural level and on stuff that the more junior staffs can’t work on.
With LLMs basically my job is still the same.
rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
After being out of being a direct practitioner, I will say all my direct reports are “faster” in programs we use at work than I am, but I’m still waaaaaaaaaay more efficient than all of them (their inefficiencies drive me crazy actually), but I’ve also taken up a lot of development to keep my mind sharp. If I only had my team to manage and not my own personal projects, I could really see regressing a lot.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 15 hours ago
My dad around 1993 designed a cipher better than RC4 (I know it’s not a high mark now, but it kinda was then) at the time, which passed audit by a relevant service.
My dad around 2003 still was intelligent enough, he’d explain me and my sister some interesting mathematical problems and notice similarities to them and interesting things in real life.
My dad around 2005 was promoted to a management position and was already becoming kinda dumber.
My dad around 2010 was a fucking idiot, you’d think he’s mentally impaired.
My dad around 2015 apparently went to a fortuneteller to “heal me from autism”.
So yeah. I think it’s a bit similar to what happens to elderly people when they retire. Everything should be trained, and also real tasks give you feeling of life, giving orders and going to endless could-be-an-email meetings makes you both dumb and depressed.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
[deleted]Wojwo@lemmy.ml 31 minutes ago
Yeah, that’s part of it. But there is something more fundamental, it’s not just rising up the ranks but also time spent in management. It feels like someone can get promoted to middle management and be good at the job initially, but then as the job is more about telling others what to do and filtering data up the corporate structure there’s a certain amount of brain rot that sets in.
I had just attributed it to age, but this could also be a factor. I’m not sure it’s enough to warrant studies, but it’s interesting to me that just the act of managing work done by others could contribute to mental decline.
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
That’s the Peter Principle.
socphoenix@midwest.social 22 hours ago
I’d expect similar at least. When one doesn’t keep up to date on new information and lets their brain coast it atrophies like any other muscle would from disuse.
salty_chief@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I just asked ChatGPT if this is true. It told me no and to increase my usage of AI. So HA!
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
And using a calculator isn’t as engaging for your brain as manually working the problem. What’s your point?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Seems like you’ve made the point succinctly.
Don’t lean on a calculator if you want to develop your math skills. Don’t lean on an AI if you want to develop general cognition.
5C5C5C@programming.dev 6 hours ago
I don’t think this is a fair comparison because arithmetic is a very small and almost inconsequential skill to develop within the framework of mathematics. Any human that doesn’t have severe learning disabilities will be able to develop a sufficient baseline of arithmetic skills.
The really useful aspects of math are things like how to think quantitatively. How to formulate a problem mathematically. How to manipulate mathematical expressions in order to reach a solution. For the most part these are not things that calculators do for you. In some cases reaching for a calculator may actually be a distraction from making real progress on the problem. In other cases calculators can be a useful tool for learning and building your intuition - graphing calculators are especially useful for this.
The difference with LLMs is that we are being led to believe that LLMs are sufficient to solve your problems for you, from start to finish. In the past students who develop a reflex to reach for a calculator when they don’t know how to solve a problem were thwarted by the fact that the calculator won’t actually solve it for them. Nowadays students develop that reflex and reach for an LLM instead, and now they can walk away with the belief that the LLM is really solving their problems, which creates both a dependency and a misunderstanding of what LLMs are really suited to do for them.
I’d be a lot less bothered if LLMs were made to provide guidance to students, a la the Socratic method: posing leading questions to the students and helping them to think along the right tracks. That might also help mitigate the fact that LLMs don’t reliably know the answers: if the user is presented with a leading question instead of an answer then they’re still left with the responsibility of investigating and validating.
But that doesn’t leave users with a sense of immediate gratification which makes it less marketable and therefore less opportunity to profit…
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
It’s important to know these things as fact instead of vibes and hunched.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Sure, and it’s important to know how to perform math functions without a calculator. But once you learn it, and move on to something more advanced or day-to-day work, you use the calculator.
rumba@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Yeah, I went over there with ideas that it was grandiose and not peer-reviewed. Turns out it’s just a cherry-picked title.
If you use an AI assistant to write a paper, you don’t learn any more from the process than you do from reading someone else’s paper. You don’t think about it deeply and come up with your own points and principles. It’s pretty straightforward.
But just like calculators, once you understand the underlying math, unless math is your thing, you don’t generally go back and do it all by hand because it’s a waste of time.
At some point, we’ll need to stop using long-form papers to gauge someone’s acumen in a particular subject. I suspect you’ll be given questions in real time and need to respond to them on video with your best guesses to prove you’re not just reading it from a prompt.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
You better not read audiobooks or learn form videos either. That’s pure brianrot. Too easy.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Look at this lazy fucker learning trig from someone else, instead of creating it from scratch!
unpossum@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
So if someone else writes your essays for you, you don’t learn anything?
canadaduane@lemmy.ca 20 hours ago
I wonder what social media does.
radix@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
QuadDamage@kbin.earth 22 hours ago
Microsoft reported the same findings earlier this year, spooky to see a more academic institution report the same results.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf
Abstract for those too lazy to readThe rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises
questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices.
We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and
how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using
GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so.
Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work
tasks. Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific
factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in
GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and
the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks. Specifically, higher
confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while
higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking.
Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward
information verification, response integration, and task stewardship.
Our insights reveal new design challenges and opportunities for
developing GenAI tools for knowledge work.sqgl@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Why is it referring to GenAI? It doesn’t exist.
felsiq@piefed.zip 21 hours ago
GenAI is short for generative AI in this context
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
I haven’t read the paper but they might mean “Generative AI”
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 14 hours ago
What a ridiculous study. People who got AI to write their essay can’t remember quotes from their AI written essay? You don’t say?! Those same people also didn’t feel much pride over their essay that they didn’t write? Hold the phone!!! Groundbreaking!!!
Academics are a joke these days.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I see you skipped that part of academia where they taught that, in science, there are steps between hypothesis and conclusion even if you already think you know the answer.
manefraim@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Or one could entirely skip the part where they read the study beyond the headline.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
No wonder Republicans like it so much
Korkki@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
You write essay with AI your learning suffers.
One of these papers that are basically “water is wet, researches discover”.
BussyGyatt@feddit.org 4 hours ago
16 hours after posting it I am editing this post (as well as the two other cross-posts I made of it) to link to MIT’s page about the study instead.
Better late than never. Good catch.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
cognitive decline.
Another reason for refusing those so-called tools… it could turn one into another tool.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
It’s a clickbait title. Using AI doesn’t actually cause cognitive decline. They’re saying using AI isn’t as engaging for your brain as the manual work, and then broadly linking that to the widely understood concept that you need to engage your brain to stay sharp. Not exactly groundbreaking.
mika_mika@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Sir this is Lemmy & I’m afraid I have to downvote you for defending AI which is always bad. /s
drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
More like it would cause you to need the tool in order to be the tool that you are already mandated to be.
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
But does it cause when when used exclusively for RP gooning sessions?
svc@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 22 hours ago
Somebody fund this scholar’s research immediately
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I think we can get federal funding, let me run it by Director Big Balls
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
To date, after having gooned once (ongoing since September 2023), my core executive functions, my cognitive abilities and my behaviors have not suffered in the least. In fact, potato.
suddenlyme@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
Its so disturbing. Especially the bit about your brain activity not returning to normal afterwards. They are teaching the kids to use it in elementary schools.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
it’s not any different than eating fast/processed food vs eating healthy.
it warps your expectations
hisao@ani.social 20 hours ago
I think they meant it doesn’t return to non-AI-user levels when you do the same task on your own immediately afterwards. But if you keep doing the task on your own for some time, I’d expect it to return to those levels rather fast. If not then research would have been titled something like “AI causes permanent brain damage”.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 15 hours ago
That’s probably true, but it sure can be hard to motivate yourself to do things yourself when that AI dice roll is right there to give you an immediate dopamine hit. I’m starting to see things like vibecoding being as addictive as gambling. Personally I don’t use AI because I see all the subtle ways it’s wrong when programming, and the more I pay attention to things like AI search results, it seems like there’s almost always something misrepresented or subtly incorrect in the output, and for any topics I’m not already fluent in, I likely won’t notice these things until it’s already causing issues
trashgarbage78@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
what should we do then? just abandon LLM use entirely or use it in moderation? i find it useful to ask trivial questions and sort of as a replacement for wikipedia. also what should we do to the people who are developing this ‘rat poison’ and feeding it to young people’s brains?
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
you should stop using it and use wikipedia
orrk@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Thing is, that “trivial question asking” is part of what causes this phenomenon
Hackworth@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
sudo_shinespark@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Heyyy, now I get to enjoy some copium for being such a dinosaur and resisting to use it as often as I can
Tracaine@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I don’t refute the findings but I would like to mention: without AI, I wasn’t going to be writing anything at all. I’d have let it go and dealt with the consequences. This way at least I’m doing something rather than nothing.
I’m not advocating for academic dishonesty of course, I’m only saying it doesn’t look like they bothered to look at the issue from the angle of:
“What if the subject was planning on doing nothing at all and the AI enabled the them to expend the bare minimum of effort they otherwise would have avoided?”
theneverfox@pawb.social 17 hours ago
Ok, if the ai knows
veebee@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
I mean, that’s not surprising.
simplejack@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Don’t worry scro
Reygle@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 minutes ago
Isn’t that the same guy that plays Michael Bolton in Office Space?
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 minutes ago
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