Technology

Yeah my first thought looking at the title was literally... But I'm doing an extremely hard task while the dumb slop machine is doing an entirely different task.

I'm not just sitting there waiting around not thinking.

So how is that causing me to lose the ability to persist at hard things.

The article after reading it raises some good points but that head line is nonsense.

Forgive me, but i’m not understanding why you find the headline to sensationalize or over state the actual findings of the study. The abstract of the paper directly says:

we provide causal evidence for two key consequences of AI assistance: reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance.

I’m struggling to discern a meaningful difference between “erodes your ability to persist at hard things” and “reduced persistence of unassisted performance”. Forgive me for not understanding but I would appreciate your explanation. The paper's very own conclusion actually uses the term erosion:

Here, we show that AI interaction can result in significant impairments in independent performance and persistence – capacities that are foundational to life-long learning. If brief exposure produces measurable erosion, the cumulative effects of daily AI use over months or years may be profound and difficult to reverse

I found a definition of erosion: "the gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process". Trust can erode and be rebuilt; soil can erode and be restored.

I agree that 10 mins of foundation model assistance likely doesn’t “permanently damage your brain or destroy your ability to think for yourself”. However, in my reading of the Berkeley news piece, I find no claim of this specific kind. Does the text of the press release explicitly claim the duration of effect is long-term or lasting? Does it explicitly claim the the erosion is permanent? Again, I find myself confused what you are arguing against.

"Using a compiler for ten minutes erodes your ability to write raw machine code"

"Students who cheat on their homework don't learn as much" is a better headline.

Agreed, I tend to get more interested in topics and learn more than I expected, for new neural networks. I think it's like any tool and using it right can be useful. Our brains can make new connections learning about different topics and how they are related, systems thinking and problem solving. We can search online and read the sources directly too, and verify more with increasing importance of the topic. For example, going to defend yourself in court, do a lot of research from quality sources and still reconsider lol. Just like large claims require large evidence, same idea for other resources including llms, and no need to avoid it like it's some new Witch panic. The energy people use daily mindlessly absorbing video streams is more than text based llm use and follow up confirmations.

Learning new things and recognizing connections between topics is beneficial for the brain, as it strengthens neural pathways and enhances understanding. This process, known as neuroplasticity, allows the brain to adapt and improve its ability to learn over time

Deferring all your work to anything or anyone would do the same thing.

That's not a llm unique problem but a byproduct of not engaging your mind or skills. You can still do that while also using an llm or taking on human help.

If you hired a human to do everything for you, you also end up becoming a potato.

The problem is that llms make it too easy for people to actively choose that route because of lack of self discipline or desire to improve.

But a lot of technology is like that and not just computer tech.

My managers seeming plenty eroded rn 😅

Now you need a human control. Provide a human assistant to do the same.

Is this a problem of AI or a problem of dependency.

Cause from my understanding of the topic this same phenomenon happens when people are given too much assistance of any kind form any source.

Not many people will actively drive themselves if given a solution with low barriers.

It's such a common thing it's been a trope among noble classes though out the ages. If you coddle someone they go full potato.

I wonder if this kind of test would show the same results if you compared people using calculators for math problems vs. those without. From the basic operations to doing trig and calculus, if you provide an easier way they're going to take it, and unfortunately not going to pick up on how the answer is obtained, which an LLM will usually tell in the process. Doing something yourself always teaches you better than watching it, or just being told the answer.

If the tests are implying or showing that people who already were proficient in doing these tests and would have done well without started declining after exposure to an LLM's help, and that persisted... that's a different problem and one that should be looked into. Losing skills you had because of help? That shouldn't happen.

Replace the AI tool with a calculator. You'd get the same results.

Correct. I used to be able to calculate square roots in my head, then they let us use calculators the next school year, and soon I was no longer able to do so.

The problem is that what calculators due to math LLMs do to thinking in general, causing much deeper and extensive damage to the brain.

Also, calculators are good at maths. They produce correct results.

LLMs aren't good at thinking (or even capable of doing it at all), they're very good at putting the most statistically likely (given the texts they were trained on) word in front of a sequence of words. They don't necessarily produce correct results, they produce results that wouldn't look out of place in their training set (unless you're an expert in whatever the text is about, in which case it's often absolute bullshit that sounds correct to a layman).

We're replacing working brains with autocomplete engines that (if they were capable of caring about anything, which they're not) couldn't care less about the correctness of their output, just that it looks correct.

And it remains to be seen if the people injured by this will ever be able to recover anything close to normal brain function. Personally, I doubt it. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Anecdotally, I have software I wrote entirely by hand, started by hand and ended with ai, and AI from the start. Anything I had ai touch in the last 6 months has caused this for me. I barely have the attention span to read what the agent is planning to do. I can only conceptually review at a high level and direct it that way. It gets worse every week.

I think part of it is me not spending enough time setting things up so it writes code like I would, so I am reading a strangers code really. But even then, I find myself reading it for no more than 10 seconds and being like "ugh just ask the AI".

I have caught myself a few times about to ask the AI to change something that I could easily do myself still.

I know that if I stopped using it for a week and sat down with the code I had generated, I would understand it, but the thought of doing so has somehow become exhausting. It's a real issue.

Yea, if you compare the post-AI test group data with the initial control group data before they had practiced, the AI test group literally did about the same as the non AI group. And you are very correct about the fact that yoinking the easy solving tool makes skipping jump because why would you do a thing that feels pointless and is harder then it was before? I hate the enviornmental and technofascist implications of AI, but people need to stop trying to make brain degradation from AI a thing, it is never going to be a thing. You just don't really learn from it if you don't want to y'all, like everything else. It's not that fucking complicated. This is just a technology witch hunt.

I am begging people to look at the ACTUAL studies and analyze the variables and results critically.