When everyone expects not having to work when we reach AGI, what did they think would happen? Didn’t need experts to tell us this. We are going in that direction.
jd5547561 on
The most alarming part isn’t the grades, it’s the cognitive atrophy. If you don’t use the mental muscles to analyze and solve problems, they just stop working. We’re trading long-term intelligence for short-term efficiency.
Appropriate1987 on
I’ve developed a bad habit of using it at the work place because that’s what management taught us. I feel more stupid every day.
crispyfunky on
Is this any surprise to anybody?
Ser0xus on
No shit.
Use it or lose it.
Glorified chat bots won’t replace us, being dumbed down won’t make us more efficient.
The inevitable crash will be glorious, lets hope it’s sooner rather than later, it’s also destroying the planet and causing other harms daily.
Thundechile on
It’s very surprising to those that haven’t given a thought about it.
Terrible-Piano-5437 on
You yes, me, no.
DonutConfident7733 on
I think they forget to mentiom the enshittification of websites with ads, popups, cookie prompts, subscription prompts, where it is tedious to search for any information.
For coding, you could spend hours on google searching for articles and posts describing your exact problem, some behind paywalls, many trying to sell you their product. Search does not work well based on just terms.
Remember broken links as major companies move their forums, knowledge bases, just to prevent you from finding similar reports in their websites, when they take out info about archived products?
Now that smarter search exists, it can synthesize the solution for you and it saves you a lot of time.
Of course the companies are not happy about it, but their websites were shit anyway, for many years.
AI can also understand which features work on which software version, try doing that when searching with google based on simple terms.
For these use cases you are not getting dumber, as you were not supposed yo use much brain power when searching for something on the internet, it can even help you learn much faster and better than before.
Remember generated coding references, with no examples? Those are shit. Nobody has time to read that and then cross reference with some examples or articles describing how to use them. AI does this work for you.
heath05 on
Frank Herbert’s Dune line on AI is proving true day by day.
– “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them,”
EndeLarsson on
AI is like DRS in F1. If your car is fast, you would benefit of DRS to win faster. If not then same s#!t.
TabootLlama on
Thanks for sharing the article. Even read the in-text links, which were also great.
I’m glad it’s being studied specifically in application to the field of education.
“Are these AI prompts damaging your thinking skills?” seems almost click-bait.
At-present trajectories, I don’t think there’s much doubt, at-least anecdotally among folks that evaluate thinking skills as a part of their job, that the issue is already unmissable and creating compounding challenges.
redditor_since_2005 on
It’s a labour saving device.
LegitimateCopy7 on
isn’t that the whole point?
stuffitystuff on
Yeahhhh I’m not spending hours trying to figure out the ffmpeg switches necessary to get a bunch of videos encoded with XviD to match another video so they work on my modern-but-ancient-codec-wise DVD/USB video player. I’m sending that request straight down the pneumatic tube to the AI department and that’s that.
Ok_Needleworker_6017 on
I use it to cut out some busy work at my job (e.g. digesting IOMs that I made in years prior and creating field troubleshooting checklists). It is wild however, how many times I’ve seen GPT go into a slop-loop; with each request for rollback or revision causing further degradation to the point of the whole request needing to be trashed.
Smooth_Tech33 on
The irony is that a lot of people aren’t reading this study very critically. It isn’t really about real-world AI use or AI “damaging your brain.” It looks at brain activity during a narrow writing task where some participants actively wrote, and others mostly sat there while the AI did the work. If you disengage from a task, brain activity going down is exactly what you’d expect. That isn’t unique to AI, and it isn’t evidence of cognitive decline. This paper keeps getting reused as a broader anti-AI talking point, but what it actually shows is something much simpler: if you don’t do the thinking, your brain isn’t very active in that moment. That’s not the same thing as your brain being harmed. What the study captures is task disengagement, not evidence that AI is somehow eroding cognition.
Top5hottest on
I’m ready for the wall-e chairs.
Objective_Ebb6898 on
Welcome to Costco, I Love You
STurbulenT on
Sounds less like an AI problem and more like a habits problem.
Foe117 on
remember when you had to remember streets and highways for directions? Remember when you had to remember phone numbers?
harlotstoast on
What about calculators? We don’t complain that they make our brains work less.
thelawenforcer on
Did calculators make us stupid or did they just enable us to tackle bigger problems?
BobbyTime100 on
This is true. I’ve seen a big shift here. Whenever you state something factually in say a sports debate so many are starting to demand that I explain my views but it’s sports. The team with the most points win the league. It’s fairly obvious stuff. The only explanation is that I’m chatting to a moron who expects things online to gargle his balls and feed him.
FriendlyKillerCroc on
Is this not normal when there are technologies developed that help with cognitive tasks?
8hotsteamydumplings on
Does that mean we live longer? 😁
Gloobloomoo on
Work less or work differently?
I don’t want to waste cognitive energy writing a fucking email example? I’d rather use that energy elsewhere
Context, nuance, task type etc matter I guess. I personally feel I’m able to do more complicated (for me) tasks than before, approach things I would not previously have
neo69 on
That’s the fucking point.
Sys32768 on
The same experts that made AI now say it’s bad.
Damn you all to hell
gaeruot on
Well… duh? In what world does having a machine think for you do anything but make you dumber? Turns out the brain is a muscle and you have to actually use it if you don’t want it to atrophy.
painteroftheword on
I often say it’ll just infantilise people.
They’re outsourcing their thinking and it usually doesn’t even do a very good job either.
It will have an even worse impact on younger generations who’ll not develop basic skills because they’ll just ask a LLM.
Small_Dog_8699 on
Idiocracy is coming for sure
lordphoenix81 on
This is why I only use AI for deterministic outputs & avoid it’s probabilistic outputs
StuChenko on
Good, my mental check engine light has been on for some time now
ragerevel on
Critical thinking was already on hard decline. Let’s escalate it!
POOTDISPENSER on
Well the Industrial Revolution didn’t make workloads easier either. Workers get paid less to do more.
_ECMO_ on
Every single piece of technology so far has made us worse at the things the tech does. And that’s okay if it’s things like remembering random facts but very bad when it’s the thinking itself. In fact I cannot think of anything AI could provide that would make this trade worth it.
I have yet to hear of any reason why AI wouldn’t have that effect. People often say “you must use to it complement you.” but that will never happen in the long-term. It’s also possible to use Google to see and learn more random facts or use calculators to get better at quick maths by instantly checking your results but no one does that.
KomeaKrokotiili on
Yeah, No shit Sherlock!
iolmao on
Right, but this isn’t alway a bad thing.
Remember that at work our brain is used to do very idiotic tasks (I’m talking about office jobs).
Or jobs more often than not are ALREADY making us dumb because they aren’t challenging and won’t spark creativity.
Using AI to help me with that struggle so I have more mental energy to do creative stuff is the way AI should be used.
exalted985451 on
Not much of a concern when you consider that AI enthusiasts were functionally retarged to begin with.
guitareatsman on
It’s making my brain work marginally harder, simply by the expedient of figuring out how to turn it off in every goddamn app it’s being added to.
Crackalacking_Z on
Critical thinking, soon to be a subscription*.
(*free will not included and sold separately).
CelebrationFit8548 on
Mobile phones do the same thing. For example, studies show over reliance on their maps can erode a persons geospatial capacity.
Significant_Bench_19 on
Experts?! I’m sorry, but why the hell do you need to be an expert, or are only expert opinions valid when determining STUPID shit like this? “Experts warn” lol
Experts warn that eating 365 massive chocolate cakes per year could make you fat.
Experts suggest that riding a bike is quicker than walking.
This is like the Simcity 3000 news ticker! Haha.
Of course if you’re outsourcing your creativity, obviously you’re not exercising your brain. It’s akin to getting someone else to do your homework, you’ll not learn the thing! If you’re always letting other people do things for you, you’ll become incompetent. Same thing.
Regularly do your own thinking. Learn the skill of thinking. Shock horror!
Regularly practice drawing, become proficient in artistic skill. Surprising!
Wodentinot on
My mind works a lot in the process of avoiding AI.
rbetterkids on
Don’t think so.
Chatgpt keeps giving me wrong answers sounding like it was a matter of fact.
China’s Ai keeps giving me chicken shit answers and telling me to ask a professional.
45 Comments
When everyone expects not having to work when we reach AGI, what did they think would happen? Didn’t need experts to tell us this. We are going in that direction.
The most alarming part isn’t the grades, it’s the cognitive atrophy. If you don’t use the mental muscles to analyze and solve problems, they just stop working. We’re trading long-term intelligence for short-term efficiency.
I’ve developed a bad habit of using it at the work place because that’s what management taught us. I feel more stupid every day.
Is this any surprise to anybody?
No shit.
Use it or lose it.
Glorified chat bots won’t replace us, being dumbed down won’t make us more efficient.
The inevitable crash will be glorious, lets hope it’s sooner rather than later, it’s also destroying the planet and causing other harms daily.
It’s very surprising to those that haven’t given a thought about it.
You yes, me, no.
I think they forget to mentiom the enshittification of websites with ads, popups, cookie prompts, subscription prompts, where it is tedious to search for any information.
For coding, you could spend hours on google searching for articles and posts describing your exact problem, some behind paywalls, many trying to sell you their product. Search does not work well based on just terms.
Remember broken links as major companies move their forums, knowledge bases, just to prevent you from finding similar reports in their websites, when they take out info about archived products?
Now that smarter search exists, it can synthesize the solution for you and it saves you a lot of time.
Of course the companies are not happy about it, but their websites were shit anyway, for many years.
AI can also understand which features work on which software version, try doing that when searching with google based on simple terms.
For these use cases you are not getting dumber, as you were not supposed yo use much brain power when searching for something on the internet, it can even help you learn much faster and better than before.
Remember generated coding references, with no examples? Those are shit. Nobody has time to read that and then cross reference with some examples or articles describing how to use them. AI does this work for you.
Frank Herbert’s Dune line on AI is proving true day by day.
– “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them,”
AI is like DRS in F1. If your car is fast, you would benefit of DRS to win faster. If not then same s#!t.
Thanks for sharing the article. Even read the in-text links, which were also great.
I’m glad it’s being studied specifically in application to the field of education.
“Are these AI prompts damaging your thinking skills?” seems almost click-bait.
At-present trajectories, I don’t think there’s much doubt, at-least anecdotally among folks that evaluate thinking skills as a part of their job, that the issue is already unmissable and creating compounding challenges.
It’s a labour saving device.
isn’t that the whole point?
Yeahhhh I’m not spending hours trying to figure out the ffmpeg switches necessary to get a bunch of videos encoded with XviD to match another video so they work on my modern-but-ancient-codec-wise DVD/USB video player. I’m sending that request straight down the pneumatic tube to the AI department and that’s that.
I use it to cut out some busy work at my job (e.g. digesting IOMs that I made in years prior and creating field troubleshooting checklists). It is wild however, how many times I’ve seen GPT go into a slop-loop; with each request for rollback or revision causing further degradation to the point of the whole request needing to be trashed.
The irony is that a lot of people aren’t reading this study very critically. It isn’t really about real-world AI use or AI “damaging your brain.” It looks at brain activity during a narrow writing task where some participants actively wrote, and others mostly sat there while the AI did the work. If you disengage from a task, brain activity going down is exactly what you’d expect. That isn’t unique to AI, and it isn’t evidence of cognitive decline. This paper keeps getting reused as a broader anti-AI talking point, but what it actually shows is something much simpler: if you don’t do the thinking, your brain isn’t very active in that moment. That’s not the same thing as your brain being harmed. What the study captures is task disengagement, not evidence that AI is somehow eroding cognition.
I’m ready for the wall-e chairs.
Welcome to Costco, I Love You
Sounds less like an AI problem and more like a habits problem.
remember when you had to remember streets and highways for directions? Remember when you had to remember phone numbers?
What about calculators? We don’t complain that they make our brains work less.
Did calculators make us stupid or did they just enable us to tackle bigger problems?
This is true. I’ve seen a big shift here. Whenever you state something factually in say a sports debate so many are starting to demand that I explain my views but it’s sports. The team with the most points win the league. It’s fairly obvious stuff. The only explanation is that I’m chatting to a moron who expects things online to gargle his balls and feed him.
Is this not normal when there are technologies developed that help with cognitive tasks?
Does that mean we live longer? 😁
Work less or work differently?
I don’t want to waste cognitive energy writing a fucking email example? I’d rather use that energy elsewhere
Context, nuance, task type etc matter I guess. I personally feel I’m able to do more complicated (for me) tasks than before, approach things I would not previously have
That’s the fucking point.
The same experts that made AI now say it’s bad.
Damn you all to hell
Well… duh? In what world does having a machine think for you do anything but make you dumber? Turns out the brain is a muscle and you have to actually use it if you don’t want it to atrophy.
I often say it’ll just infantilise people.
They’re outsourcing their thinking and it usually doesn’t even do a very good job either.
It will have an even worse impact on younger generations who’ll not develop basic skills because they’ll just ask a LLM.
Idiocracy is coming for sure
This is why I only use AI for deterministic outputs & avoid it’s probabilistic outputs
Good, my mental check engine light has been on for some time now
Critical thinking was already on hard decline. Let’s escalate it!
Well the Industrial Revolution didn’t make workloads easier either. Workers get paid less to do more.
Every single piece of technology so far has made us worse at the things the tech does. And that’s okay if it’s things like remembering random facts but very bad when it’s the thinking itself. In fact I cannot think of anything AI could provide that would make this trade worth it.
I have yet to hear of any reason why AI wouldn’t have that effect. People often say “you must use to it complement you.” but that will never happen in the long-term. It’s also possible to use Google to see and learn more random facts or use calculators to get better at quick maths by instantly checking your results but no one does that.
Yeah, No shit Sherlock!
Right, but this isn’t alway a bad thing.
Remember that at work our brain is used to do very idiotic tasks (I’m talking about office jobs).
Or jobs more often than not are ALREADY making us dumb because they aren’t challenging and won’t spark creativity.
Using AI to help me with that struggle so I have more mental energy to do creative stuff is the way AI should be used.
Not much of a concern when you consider that AI enthusiasts were functionally retarged to begin with.
It’s making my brain work marginally harder, simply by the expedient of figuring out how to turn it off in every goddamn app it’s being added to.
Critical thinking, soon to be a subscription*.
(*free will not included and sold separately).
Mobile phones do the same thing. For example, studies show over reliance on their maps can erode a persons geospatial capacity.
Experts?! I’m sorry, but why the hell do you need to be an expert, or are only expert opinions valid when determining STUPID shit like this? “Experts warn” lol
Experts warn that eating 365 massive chocolate cakes per year could make you fat.
Experts suggest that riding a bike is quicker than walking.
This is like the Simcity 3000 news ticker! Haha.
Of course if you’re outsourcing your creativity, obviously you’re not exercising your brain. It’s akin to getting someone else to do your homework, you’ll not learn the thing! If you’re always letting other people do things for you, you’ll become incompetent. Same thing.
Regularly do your own thinking. Learn the skill of thinking. Shock horror!
Regularly practice drawing, become proficient in artistic skill. Surprising!
My mind works a lot in the process of avoiding AI.
Don’t think so.
Chatgpt keeps giving me wrong answers sounding like it was a matter of fact.
China’s Ai keeps giving me chicken shit answers and telling me to ask a professional.