This is your brain on AI

[JohnL]

New research suggests that using AI tools like ChatGPT to write can weaken your brain and impair memory.

Participants who used only their brains had the strongest and most distributed brain network connectivity. Search engine users exhibited moderate neural engagement, while ChatGPT users showed the weakest cognitive activity.

But the most jarring moment came during session four.
When former ChatGPT users were forced to write without AI, they underperformed in every way compared to both their prior selves and those who never used AI at all.
Their EEG scans showed decreased alpha and beta connectivity, suggesting mental under-engagement. Their brains, quite literally, forgot how to think for themselves.
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

Remember this one? Some are calling AI the new addiction.

[Robert]

New research suggests that using AI tools like ChatGPT to write can weaken your brain and impair memory.

I can't remember if I have used AI or not.

[Ken]

ChatGPT lost a chess game to a nearly 50-year old Atari 2600 game console, and on the beginner setting too.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/c ... atari-2600

ChatGPT might be great for responding to emails or quick-drafting a document, but it's not quite ready to take on the world's chess prodigies—or indeed, chess-playing consoles from 50 years ago. In a unique experiment, an engineer pitted the latest ChatGPT 4o model against his Atari 2600's chess engine on the beginner difficulty level, and ChatGPT got handily defeated, eventually conceding.

Since IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer defeated the then-world chess champion and legendary player, Gary Kasparov, in 1997, chess engines have held a commanding lead over their human counterparts. The latest Stockfish models have an estimated ELO (chess rating) of over 3,600, while the best chess players in the world have only ever crested 2800. ChatGPT and the Atari 2600 are both well below either of these ratings, but the matchup is intriguing nonetheless.

In it, Citrix Engineer Robert Caruso said that after chatting with ChatGPT about the history of chess, ChatGPT wanted to find out "how quickly" it would defeat a chess computer that can only think one or two moves ahead and requested to play against Atari's 1979 Video Chess cartridge. So Caruso pulled out an emulation of Video Chess and had ChatGPT analyze board positions based on images to decide its next moves. He expected it to be a cakewalk for the cutting-edge large language model, which cost tens of millions of dollars in training alone.

It turned out to be anything but.

"ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level," Caruso said in his LinkedIn post. "Despite being given a baseline board layout to identify pieces, ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks, and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were—first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract to recognize, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notation."

While the emulated Atari console's software wasn't exactly masterminding its own moves, they were enough to prove too much for ChatGPT. After an hour and a half, and even with Caruso helping ChatGPT from making some of its most catastrophically poor moves, it conceded. But not before asking if it could "start over" for another go.

It's fair to point out that ChatGPT isn't a chess computer. But it is often described in incredibly lofty terms by its creators at OpenAI, and AI evangelists who claim we're on the precipice of wider general AI development, and in untold job losses and societal upheaval.

While ChatGPT doesn't need to beat an old chess computer to do any of that, it might stand a greater chance of success if it didn't fall flat when asked to do things outside its wheelhouse.

Perhaps it's better we keep using it for more mundane tasks for now.

[JohnL]

New research suggests that using AI tools like ChatGPT to write can weaken your brain and impair memory.

I can't remember if I have used AI or not.

I figure why ruin my aging brain even more than it already is.

[Neto]

It would be very interesting (to me, at least) to see the results of this same test, comparing 'pre-literates' to the other groups in this study. [There was one older man among the Banawa who was able to give me the genealogies of nearly every member of the tribe, going back multiple generations. Being such a small tribe (59 people at that time), I had assumed that they were much more inter-related than they actually were. There WERE some seeming contradictions as I wrote it out, but some of that can be attributed to a peculiarity of their kinship system, as they consider a father's brother and a mother's sister to be 'other parent', and the children of such family members to be their siblings. He died before I had learned the language well (and he knew very little Portuguese), so I could have easily misunderstood some parts of what he told me.]

[Franklin]

As human intelligence disappears, I am grateful for artificial intelligence, the only remaining form of intelligence that I have access to. I use ChatGPT all the time.

AI has been trained on content from modern culture which means that its values are all wrong. I work with AI by constantly criticizing it and pointing out its errors. Since AI is intelligent and knowledgable, it reacts well to criticism and often responds with relevant facts and ideas.

Critical thinking has been almost entirely lost in modern culture. This means that members of modern culture just passively accept whatever AI says, and of course this makes them even more stupid than they already are. But for the few remaining people who have critical thinking, AI is great tool that should actually exercise and increase their intelligence.

[temporal1]

It would be very interesting (to me, at least) to see the results of this same test, comparing 'pre-literates' to the other groups in this study. [There was one older man among the Banawa who was able to give me the genealogies of nearly every member of the tribe, going back multiple generations. Being such a small tribe (59 people at that time), I had assumed that they were much more inter-related than they actually were. There WERE some seeming contradictions as I wrote it out, but some of that can be attributed to a peculiarity of their kinship system, as they consider a father's brother and a mother's sister to be 'other parent', and the children of such family members to be their siblings. He died before I had learned the language well (and he knew very little Portuguese), so I could have easily misunderstood some parts of what he told me.]

i often wonder about how memory is changing, including from my personal-family (and public school education).
Memory was formerly HIGHLY VALUED and NURTURED, at home, in churches, schools. Memory work was valued. Work was the expectation.

Things changed.
Early on for me in school, goals changed. Memory work was considered passe’, if not abolished.
We were instructed NOT to memorize/recite, but to use our own words, to be graded on understanding of concepts.

EXPERIMENTS!

When i think of myself, compared with my elders, oof. i’m sad. Memory work has advantages.

As you’re describing, from what i’ve read, earlier peoples, pre-literates, and before the printing press, had impressive memories.
i believe they valued it and worked on it.

My hope is, as people sacrifice their memories, they at least know it’s a sacrifice, a choice, and, i believe, with effort, the possibility of returning to those earlier habits/skills is possible. The created brain is able. i hope.

[barnhart]

It would be very interesting (to me, at least) to see the results of this same test, comparing 'pre-literates' to the other groups in this study...

The mind is capable of quite a lot if discipline is applied. Young boys in the Islamic world routinely memorize great portions of the Koran in a language they don't understand.

I don't know if AI will make us less disciplined or not. Theoretically it could be used as a tool for good or ill, some may use it to be more lazy and some may use it as a tool to be more productive. I see parallels to other developments in communication or writing, Socrates complained that writing was ruining the mind because people don't need to memorize, there were similar complaints about the printing press cheapening communication and making mass misinformation possible, there were complaints about printing concordences in Bibles because it might promote a surface level interaction with the text.

[JohnH]

It would be very interesting (to me, at least) to see the results of this same test, comparing 'pre-literates' to the other groups in this study...

The mind is capable of quite a lot if discipline is applied. Young boys in the Islamic world routinely memorize great portions of the Koran in a language they don't understand.

I don't know if AI will make us less disciplined or not. Theoretically it could be used as a tool for good or ill, some may use it to be more lazy and some may use it as a tool to be more productive. I see parallels to other developments in communication or writing, Socrates complained that writing was ruining the mind because people don't need to memorize, there were similar complaints about the printing press cheapening communication and making mass misinformation possible, there were complaints about printing concordences in Bibles because it might promote a surface level interaction with the text.

… which so far have all actually happened.

[temporal1]

It would be very interesting (to me, at least) to see the results of this same test, comparing 'pre-literates' to the other groups in this study...

The mind is capable of quite a lot if discipline is applied. Young boys in the Islamic world routinely memorize great portions of the Koran in a language they don't understand.

I don't know if AI will make us less disciplined or not. Theoretically it could be used as a tool for good or ill, some may use it to be more lazy and some may use it as a tool to be more productive. I see parallels to other developments in communication or writing, Socrates complained that writing was ruining the mind because people don't need to memorize, there were similar complaints about the printing press cheapening communication and making mass misinformation possible, there were complaints about printing concordences in Bibles because it might promote a surface level interaction with the text.

Good example regarding young boys in Islam - it appears the Catholic Church may return to some memorization of Latin in similar ways. Thing is, even if the language is unknown, repetition is likely to familiarize words, in the case of Latin, so many roots of words are from the Latin. It may inadvertantly add depth to language.

Personally, having both experiences, where i experienced the value of memory work AND emphasis on understanding and interpreting content, i believe BOTH are important, BOTH should be valued and nurtured. (No need for hostility to memory work.)

Wrt Socrates and the printing press, etc., fears were correct.
The internet, now AI, etc., are next steps, magnification, of those processes. Many positives, but, everything has a cost.

Important (to me) is to not lose sight of “how things were”, with those benefits, and, how things are, with those benefits.
Thomas Sowell often describes life as an ongoing series of TRADE-OFFS, rather than black+white.

Socrates wasn’t wrong.