Edit: There’s a blog post on the failings of the study and the communication around it: Clickbait Neuroscience: Lessons from “Your Brain on ChatGPT” – Mind Brain Education
EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use.
Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.
The medium is the massage, more true than ever.
This lines up with my completely unscientific observation that the people who have started relying heavily on AI are dumbasses.
also lines up with my observation on how my cognitive skills declined while using it. it just stops you still thinking on your own.
But, but, that Nvidia guy said they are cognitive amplifier tools. :|
maybe he calls his net worth “cognition”
I mean this feels like an obvious result. Are we thinking this is ground breaking?
Like comparing 3 ways of making a table, hand tools, power tools or paying someone to make it for you. Then asking which required the most effort.
I mean I know it’s important to confirm even expected results but this feels so intuitive.
It seems intuitive but also 2000 years ago people thought that for example the eye emitting some sort of substance that interacts with the surrounding environment to be an intuitive explanation for how vision works, so intuitions need to be tested.
Damnit. Eye lasers would have been so much cooler though.
No it’s more complex than that. In the final session, participants were swapped between the LLM and Brain groups, and the effects persisted to some extent.
So it’s worse than “using an LLM doesn’t engage your brain”, it’s more like “using an LLM actually makes you dumber.”
It is obvious, but we have so many liars lying to everyone and each other about AI that they get away with it. Skilled bullshitters shitting up clouds of smoke and using every manipulation tactic in the world.
Some hard evidence makes it easier to prevent their damage.
It’s so easy to pontificate instead of actually doing studies, right?
That’s a great observation!..
Fuck yeah. Lets do it!
I bet my connectivity would be off the charts with activity because anytime I see results from it, I get enraged and wonder how something can be so stupid
I only prompt questions for things I already know… more of a confirmation thingand more often then not, it’s wrong
I am an awful proofreader. My problem has always been that I am blind to the mistakes. I mean grammar and usage type things. I really though an LLM would help me with that but it causes more problems than it fixes so I quit using it.
This study is almost 6 months old. Why post it now?
Because I found it now and searching didn’t show anyone posting it before…
