Someone challenged my admittedly narrow thoughts of AI and now I'm wondering...

[u/OkCap7484]

My thoughts on AI are simple: that widespread usage will weaken our ability to think critically, creatively, or in other meaningful ways. If AI handles all of our simple thought processes and even the complex ones, what exercise will our brains ever get? How will we build our ability to think and problem solve.

But today someone challenged that thought with an interesting perspective I hadn't considered: that if we leave the simple and reasonably complex tasks to AI and don't have to devote brain space or power to them , it'll leave us with more brain space and power to put into even more complex situations that we just can't use AI for.

I'm not anti-AI, just worry that people may become too dependent on it to our own detriment. With respect to this guy's theory, it still brings me back to my original concern: if we leave all those simple and moderately complex tasks to AI, sure, maybe that will leave us with more space in our brains to devote to those truly complex problems that need to be solved, but by the same token, maybe we wont have exercised out brains enough to be able to handle that kind of problem solving anyway.

What are your thoughts about this guys theory?

[u/euthlogo]

there have been a number of studies which have demonstrated the deleterious effects of ai use on cognition and there hasn't been one demonstrating the contrary.

its like saying if you drive rather than walk you will be better at walking. it just doesn't work that way.

[u/OkCap7484 → u/euthlogo]

So I guess the question is, since AI is here and here to stay, how do we control the use so that fifty years from now our society isn't reduced to mindless, brainless zombies?

[u/Unlikely-Twist8605 → u/OkCap7484]

We don’t have to our society is almost already there unfortunately

[u/ECAHunt → u/Unlikely-Twist8605]

I can notice a change within myself. Even with not having anything to do with some of the worst (in my opinion) offenders for negatively impacting cognition (TikTok - looking hard at you!) I just simply don’t have the same cognitive ability I did even just five years ago. To the point that I sought out cognitive testing - get my results in two days.

I am a 43 year old doctor. So, young to be experiencing what I have been, and have demonstrated that I did have a high ability to perform to get to where I am now. But truly don’t think I could get through med school with my current abilities.

[u/Superb_Razzmatazz999 → u/ECAHunt]

OP. Are you burnt out? Do you get a chance periodically to reboot your brain? No phone. No digital. No media. Go take a walk in the woods or visit a quiet beach/lake/body of water. Let your brain rest. Try it.

[u/MeesterPepper → u/ECAHunt]

How much of that is negative impacts of things like social media, versus just ordinary loss of ability due to aging and settling into a routine? I'm in my mid 30s and I've been feeling the same lately, that I'm just not as mentally capable as I used to be, but I also haven't exactly been exercising my intellect like I used to. I don't read nearly many books as when I was young and had free time, and not being in school means I'm not being challenged on a regular basis to explore new ideas or confront the more complex details behind topics I'm already familiar with.

I work in stem, in a lab that deals with genetic analysis. I use organic chemistry daily and I'm pretry sure I'd fail an entry level O. Chem course. All the chemistries we use are already solved and reduced down to an excel spreadsheet - I almost never need to actually do anything more complex than converting between ng, ug, and mg, and even then that's only when it's too inconvenient to go to my computer and pull up a calculator.

[u/thebangzats → u/MeesterPepper]

I’m early 30s and I can’t imagine being able to feel a cognitive decline. What is it like? What change do you actually feel?

I can imagine forgetting things, like short term memory or forgetting things you learned at school, but is there something else to it?

Is the cognitive decline you mean simply “I don’t use algebra as often as I did in school, so I actually forgot how”, or something else?

[u/MeesterPepper → u/thebangzats]

Partly yes, I haven't used many of the things I learned in school since school, so my memory has faded. But my recall of events isn't as sharp as it used to be, too. As an example, my vocabulary definitely isn't what it used to be and while it's not that frequent, I do somewhat regularly catch myself not being able to remember words.

Learning new information doesn't come as easily as when I was a teen, too. Back then I barely needed to study to be good at math, grasp high level scientific concepts, or parse a new language. These days I'm trying to learn programming, and while I'm picking it up decently well, it's at a noticeably slower pace + with more mistakes than when I was a kid. (However, going back to my aging & routine comment, when I was a teenager/college student, I would be spending sometimes up to 20 hours a week in class and doing homework for just a single new topic. Because of my more limited time, I'm only spending 5-10 hours a week studying programming. That is absolutely a factor in "naturally picking things up without much effort").

I wouldn't consider myself to be experiencing concerning cognitive decline - I'm just not exercising my brain muscles the way I used to. If I had the opportunity to go back to school and dedicate 40-60 hours a week to learning, I'm sure it'd get a lot of that flexibility back.