Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task – MIT Media Lab
www.media.mit.edu
This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and …

Note: this lemmy post was originally titled MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline and linked to this article, which I cross-posted from this post in [email protected].

Someone pointed out that the “Science, Public Health Policy and the Law” website which published this click-bait summary of the MIT study is not a reputable publication deserving of traffic, so, 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.

The actual paper is here and was previously posted on [email protected] and other lemmy communities here.

Note that the study with its original title got far less upvotes than the click-bait summary did 🤡

  • ImWaitingForRetcons@lemmy.world
    33·
    2 days ago

    I’m not surprised. When writing was invented, the affected societies saw a decline in brain volume as memory was outsourced to some extent to written records; now, we’ll see a reduction in brain volume as we outsource thinking to AI.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
      2·
      2 days ago

      Humans have used other things to act as reminders of things and, more importantly, as recorders for numbers, so I really doubt “decline in brain volume” happened because of writing. Not only that, literacy was low throughout most of human history and usually confined to small groups, which rarely included the nobles, by the way - they would just have a servant that could read/write for them.

      It’s deliciously ironic that we only know about those ancient greek snobs who despised writing thanks to their words being written.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      62·
      2 days ago

      It’s more problematic now, though. Writing something down recorded exactly what was inscribed; LLMs don’t actually think, but rather guess, far too frequently with disastrous results.

      Writing things down to extend our secondary memory gave us more time to think; losing the ability to think defeats the entire purpose.