Technology

Thanks for smoking out more people to block.

This article is a perfect example of how legitimate research gets turned into sensationalist nonsense, and the post on Lemmy is making it worse.

The study involved 1,222 participants across three experiments. Researchers had people use AI to help with math and reading comprehension, then tested them when that assistance was removed. They found that participants were more likely to struggle with accuracy and persistence when they had to work independently.

That's an interesting finding. It's worth discussing.

But this whole fixation on "just 10 minutes" is ridiculous. Ten minutes of AI use under specific experimental conditions does not mean that ten minutes of ChatGPT permanently damages your brain or destroys your ability to think for yourself. The study did not demonstrate that.

There's a pretty significant difference between showing that people can become reliant on assistance and struggle when that assistance is suddenly taken away, and claiming that AI use fundamentally erodes your cognitive abilities. One is an experimental finding. The other is an exaggeration of what that finding actually means.

And this is where I have a problem with the article and the way it's being presented on Lemmy. The actual research is interesting enough without having to dress it up in sensationalist headlines. If the point is that people need to struggle with difficult problems to develop their skills, then make that argument. It's a perfectly reasonable one.

But "using AI for 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things" is a hell of a lot more dramatic than what the research actually establishes.

There's a difference between reporting scientific findings and manufacturing a narrative around them. We should be capable of discussing the potential downsides of AI without resorting to clickbait and misrepresenting what the research actually says.

It depends on what you're doing. I deal with lots of data entry and when there are corrections to be made, I had to scour through troves of information which could also cause data entry error when i am going through with it. In other words, it's "secretary work". AI had been helpful on that front to minimise the tedious work that does not add value or improve productivity.

AI is only good at secretary work. But for tasks that require critical thinking and analysis and creativity, don't rely on AI.

I don't use LLMs (especially now during nosloptober), but I'm also trying to apply this to web searching. Like instead of doing a search for "how many minutes in a month" I'll realise I have all the tools and information to figure it out and just do that.

Or checking with a local manual before searching online

Also, correlation does not equal causation. So the title is attributing AI to eroding your ability to persist, when in reality there was no prior test to ensure the individual could do the task at all. Which is almost like what they're proving is that AI gives people the ability to do things they otherwise would not be able to do with out it.

Giving someone a tool to start and then taking the tool away mid task isn't a good way to study the impact of the tool.

I was going to argue against this, but i don't feel like doing the research myself.

LLMs are a competency chipper and credibility solvent.

My observation from having to deal with entities which have engaged with LLMs, is any competency or credibility they may have had, is eroded proportionally to their level of exposure. It's analogous to experiencing a traumatic brain injury.

Losing cognitive ability is bad enough, but it's devastating when they never possessed it to begin with.

You're offloading your thought to an LLM there is no way you don't come out a bit dumber.

It is so sad that people always look for shorter means to a problem solution, I understand it is coded in our DNA to exhaust the least but over the long term it looks increasingly worrying.

Surely if I offload work tasks onto someone else then I would achieve the same effect? I don't think this is AI exclusive.

dont need a new study, 1 study already said people using AI during HS or COllege makes them inability perform at thier grade education level.

For the first experiment with 354 participants, one group was tasked with solving 15 basic fraction problems without help, while another had ChatGPT open on the side to use for assistance and to even ask for the answer. The group with AI access started off more accurate than the group without it. Then, after 12 problems, researchers took away the AI tool. Almost immediately, the people in that group stopped solving questions accurately.

A similar thing happened when they ran the experiment on a second, larger group of 667 participants. Whereas the AI users got answers wrong or gave up entirely when the AI assistance was withdrawn, the group without AI stuck with the task and were more successful at the end.

Researchers then ran a third experiment with 201 participants and an SAT reading comprehension prompt. The results echoed those from the fraction problems: When the AI tool was removed, persistence and accuracy dropped.

Jokes on you. I never persisted at doing hard things because I had no idea what I was doing. Now I get into all sorts of shenanigans because I do what ai tells me to do.

This study actually measured the impact of knowing that your job could be much easier on performance.

I don't agree with this study and I am not a fan of AI. Replace the AI tool that they used with a calculator. You'd get the same results. Here you are legally cheating on some task because you were told to do it - breezing right along thinking of something cool you are gonna do later and then ... WHAM ! Cheaty tool gets yoinked. Now fuck - I have to think ? I'd probably think fuck it, I'll give it a half asssed shot because fuck them for making it not fun.

Using a lighter for 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at starting a fire with two sticks to :)

Truth is in the middle somewhere. I can still fix/make the things I made 2 years ago, but i'm going to use AI tools to do things that it's passable at while the tokens cost me $20 a month.

My homelab went from bare minimum with not enough time to ansible jobs to deploy any product I want to play with in a week.

We all knew this was going to be the case. You look at the people around you feeding their entire lives to it, surrendering their will to it completely, you knew it was going to fry their brains extra fast.