New research says that the use of AI is reducing brain activity – but no, that does not mean that it makes us more stupid
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In the midst of all debates about how AI, science, the environment and everything else influence, there is a matter of how large language models influence the people they use directly.
A New study The MIT Media Lab implies that the use of AI tools reduces brain activity in some ways, which is understandably alarming. But I think that is only part of the story. How we use AI, just like any other piece of technology, is what really matters.
This is what the researchers did to test the effect of AI on the brain: they asked 54 students to write essays using one of the three methods: their own brains, a search engine or an AI assistant, especially chatgpt.
For three sessions, the students got stuck to their assigned tools. They then exchanged, with the AI users who are tool-free, and the non-tool users who use AI.
EEG -headsets measured their brain activity everywhere, and a group of people, plus a specially trained AI, scored the resulting essays. Researchers also interviewed every student about their experience.
As you would expect, the group that trusted on their brains showed the most involvement, best memory and the most sense of ownership about their work, as evidenced by how much they could quote from them.
Those who used AI initially had less impressive recall and brain connectivity, and often could not even quote their own essays after a few minutes. When writing manual in the last test, they still performed behind.
The authors point out that the study has not yet been assessed. It was limited in size, aimed at writing essays, no other cognitive activity. And the EEG, although fascinating, is better at measuring the general trends than determining exact brain functions. Despite all this reserved, the message that most people remove is that the use of AI might make you more stupid.
But I would reformulate that to consider if AI might not be so much dumbled as to refrain from thinking. Maybe the problem is not the tool, but how we use it.
Ai -brain
If you use AI, think about how you used it. Did you get it to write a letter, or maybe brainstorming on some ideas? Has it replaced or supported your thinking? There is a huge difference between outsourcing an essay and the use of an AI to help organize a messy idea.
Part of the problem is that “AI” as we refer to it, is not literally intelligent, only a very advanced parrot with a huge library in his memory. But this study did not ask the participants to think about that distinction.
The LLM use group was encouraged to use the AI as they saw the fit, which probably did not conceive and judiciary, just copying without reading, and therefore context is for it.
Because the “cognitive costs” of AI can be less connected to his presence and more to his goal. If I use AI to rewrite an e -mail from boiler plates, I will not reduce my intelligence. Instead, I make bandwidth free for things that actually require my thinking and creativity, such as coming up with this idea for an article or planning my weekend.
Of course, if I use AI to generate ideas that I never bother to understand or do it, then my brain probably takes a nap, but if I use it to streamline annoying chores, I have more brain power for when it matters.
Think about it that way. When I grew up, I had dozens of telephone numbers, addresses, birthdays and other details of my friends and family. I had written most of them somewhere, but I rarely had to consult it for those I was closest to. But I have not remembered a number for almost a decade.
I don’t even know my own regular number. Is that a sign that I get more stupid, or just proof that I have had a mobile phone for a long time and had to remember?
We have certain types of recall for our devices, so that we can concentrate on different types of thinking. The skill is not remembered, it is knowing how to find, filter and apply information when we need it. It is sometimes called ‘Extelligence’, but it is really only applying brain power where it is needed.
That does not mean that memory no longer matters. But the emphasis has changed. Just as we do not let students practice a long division by hand as soon as they understand the concept, we can one day decide that it is more important to know what a good form letter looks like and how you can ask an AI to write one than to say it regularly.
People always redefine intelligence. There are many ways to be smart and know how to use tools and technology is an important measure of Smarts. At some point, SMART meant his knowing how to make Flint, make Latin tips or work a slide rule.
Nowadays it can mean that they can collaborate with machines without having them think all the way for you. Different tools give priority to different cognitive skills. And every time a new tool comes, some people panic that it will ruin or replace us.
The printing press. The calculator. The internet. All of them were accused of having people made lazy thinkers. Everything turned out to be a great blessing for civilization (well, the jury is still on the internet).
With AI in the mix we probably lean harder in synthesis, discernment and emotional intelligence – are the human parts of people. We do not need the kind of scribes who are only good at writing down what people say; We need people who know how to ask better questions.
Knowing when you have to trust a model and when you have to check a double mark. It means a tool to turn that is able to do the work in an active that helps you to do better.
But none of it works if you treat the AI as a vending machine for intelligence. Do you have a prompt in, wait until the shining falls out? No, it doesn’t work that way. And if that is all you do with it, you don’t get any more stupid, you just never learned how to stay in contact with your own thoughts.
In the study, the lower essay -property of the LLM group was not just about memory. It was about engagement. They did not feel connected to what they wrote because they were not the ones who did the writing. That is not about AI. This is about the use of a tool to skip the hard part, which means that learning to skip.
However, the study is important. It reminds us that tools are thinking. It encourages us when we use AI tools to expand our brains or to prevent them from being used. But to claim that AI use makes people less intelligent, the same is the same as saying that calculators have made us bad in mathematics. If we want to keep our brains sharp, the answer may not be to avoid AI, but to be thinking to use it.
The future is not a human brain versus AI. It’s about people who know how to think with AI and any other tool, and avoiding someone who doesn’t bother at all to think. And that is a test that I still want to pass.
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