If you're not embracing AI
You just may be smarter than you think
A June MIT study said that (no big surprise here) reliance on OpenAI’s ChatGPT may make you stupid.
Those are my words. Researchers say it better.
Fifty-four participants were divided into three groups — LLMs (large-language models), search engine, and brain-only (no machine assistance) — to complete tasks around essay-writing. Each member of each group was eventually assigned to other groups, and researchers found that among the LLM users “cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use.”
Over four months of study, “LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” With subsequent use, according to this Time story, ChatGPT users got lazier and lazier.
In other words, from the study, AI users lost cognitive abilities, which, according to the survey, raises “concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning.”
Indeed. I have a strict no-AI policy in my classes. Watching people try to fold AI into their curriculum strikes me as something similar to what happened with social media. We treated the new technology like a new, shiny toy and look what we got for it.
AI is the second big sell. It depends on the earlier one, so successful that it is almost unrecognized: that education is the acquisition and expansion of a Stack o’ Facts, and that creation is reshuffling and redealing a Stack o’ Facts.
Never been a fan of AI or used it. I think perfectly fine on my own. And I also keep tabs on my checkbook register including my debit card use. Frankly, remembering how to add and subtract is a vital resource. Not everything that makes life easier, is better.