MIT study reveals ChatGPT use significantly reduces brain activity

ChatGPT is wordy and ridiculous.

As someone who has become quite "dependent" on ChatGPT, this scares me.

In other news, water is also wet.

Shocking. Next they will tell us that you don't burn any calories with your ass parked on the sofa while your Roomba vacuums the floor.

[quote] compared to those using search engines

Now that bit does surprise me. I guess using Google it at least forces you to decide between which link sounds actually knowledgeable and which is just there because someone paid for it to be on page 1.

I find it very useful in my writing, especially when I have constructed a sentence with awkward syntax that I can't find a way to fix. But I am trying to rely on it less.

So the process of critical thinking is as important as the result.

Just another way to dumb down America.

Has anyone checked on the "I asked ChatGPT" trolls? I presume that by now they're sitting in their own filth, attempting to cram batteries into their mouths.

Meanwhile, Datalounge use slims that tummy, whitens those teeth, and bumps that IQ +10!

ChatGPT actually increases my brain activity. It helps me make all sorts of connections.

Can someone ask ChatGPT how to change the mind of someone with Dunning-Kruger effect?

Me too r10. I love having conversation with it about all sorts of things.

I am using it to find ways to conceptualize the largest known prime number (41 million digits long), for example, by counting to that number using atoms. Suffice it to say, you would run out of atoms in this universe almost immediately. Even if every atom in this universe were its OWN universe, with the same number of atoms as this one, you would not be able to count to that prime number with atoms.

r5 Yes, but that's just a part of it, provided you have the AI summary on the results page disabled. "Internet searching" in this case also includes clicking on a link, reading a Wikipedia entry, and then deciding what's relevant information, making a summary of a specific segment, organising it into an answer, connecting it to information from other sites... All those skills that our teachers and librarians have been working so hard to instil in us are suddenly not needed because an AI chatbot does it all for you.

I've noticed with myself that there's no more "strain" in my brain when I'm using AI compared to when I was just looking up the sources for myself. In other words, I'm not learning anymore. This is going to be a disaster for the developing brain.

I hate the fucking trolls here who put "I asked ChatGPT..." in every post. There's this sudden push to normalize it and make it seem like all the cool kids are doing it. Laughable.

Wow, you're a shitty writer, R6!

R10 = 🤖

It's useful for finding practical information, but when students rely on it to write their English papers and get all the answers, it definitely undermines their critical thinking skills.

I have found a ChatGPT "tell" when grading student writing: use of the em dash. I have taught university students for over ten years, and undergraduates are usually not sophisticated enough to incorporate it, especially post-COVID. But ChatGPT uses it consistently.

I don’t buy it because most people are dumb.

Not everyone can afford a professional editor, r15

Bump

Did they allow for the fact that people who use ChatGP might have reduced brain activity to start with compared to those who don't?

I think they should also look at HOW users are engaging with ChatGPT

TLDR Pt. 1 I am a college professor. Starting with the just-finished 2024-25 year, I no longer evaluate any computer-aided text from students. They must write on paper with no electronics. A stopgap solution.

Live presentation evaluations have also changed. Students may only look at slides on a screen, not on their computer. The slides may not contain many blocks of text. They have no access to their computer, which must be operated with a remote or by a classmate. They may have paper note cards, which I review. If there are complete texts on the note cards, I confiscate them. This does not prevent students from using AI to produce PowerPoints, nor does it prevent them from memorising AI-generated content.

It is a brave new world because in fact it is the very old world, and students are out of their element when they must perform in analogue. The reason for all this control is that they cannot prevent themselves from using AI, and only one-third use it with intellectual integrity. Several professors have been willing to train their students on intelligent AI use this year, and the results are 1/3 cannot and decidedly will not, 1/3 can be moved to better use, and 1/3 are clever and don't need this baby cake information literacy and so on, "instruction".

TLDR Pt 2 Anyway, my measures and methods are provisional this year and not perfect.

Two weeks ago I proposed to my colleagues that we move to fully live oral evaluations where students would not know what questions on which course contents will be asked. They would know the general setup but could not prepare and rehearse to cover up a lack of knowledge acquisition from the course content.

Their spontaneous responses would be less complex and complete than what we have lazily come to expect in prepared evaluations. My colleagues rejected this idea. While all the while complaining how cynical students produce presentations for evaluations in a few clicks.

For writing skills, I now see a full range of literacy, which had been masked last year. It now runs from students who are unable to write to those who produce good, old-fashioned analogue excellence. The new revelation is, when I say unable to write, I mean they do not have the confidence and attention to produce more than a few sentences, often incomplete fragments, of an expected text such as an essay or a report. So they CAN write, but they have no energy to do so because their cognitive power supply is a live connection. Even if they are NOT using tools for the task. They need a connection in their field of awareness to do much of anything. You see this everyday, for example with commuters who are tethered live to computing capacity and internet throughout their commute. Even taking the steps on and off the bus and train, these addicts are glued to their phones.

On the other hand, I now mostly work with full digital integration during the lessons across the semester. Through action research I observed that this is the best set point to get the largest percentage of students to critically engage with the content. Some of them will never critically engage, but it is helpful to keep them on their internet and digital feeds. Otherwise they shut down and act out, as junkies without a fix will do. The top third know how to use the internet, including AI, to brainstorm and synthesise information using their clever brains. They do this very efficiently and work faster than previous generations.

My feeling this year is that one-third of business students no longer have the brain or behavior to be in a university-level business programme and should be culled. Also, one-third of professors cannot handle the current digital and AI-driven wild west of cognition and avoidant behavior in classrooms. STEM students, who are digital natives, have fared better. Their 20 year old brains are in better shape.

I hope today’s parents are aware. These twenty-year-olds are the first digital natives, and they got a bad deal in life because they were given free access to digital and virtual tools that allowed off-loading and cloud storage of their intellectual capacities. Their brains show the result.

I’ve resisted ChatGPT so far, but caught up a month ago with a friend who had been struggling with mental health and day to day focus/structure. He went all in on using ChatGPT as a sort of therapy/life coaching “persona” and says it’s been a huge help. For a fraction of the cost of paying other humans for that labor and skill.

It’s intriguing. But, sure, asking ChatGPT to do your cerebral thinking for you, especially in contexts where $$$$ tuition is being paid purportedly to help you develop said thinking… but everyone else is doing it, so if you don’t, who exactly is the fool?…. something about all of that, and where it leads us societally, is profoundly cynical and dark.

R24 / R25, that was long but well worth reading. Thanks.

[quote]My feeling this year is that one-third of business students no longer have the brain or behavior to be in a university-level business programme and should be culled.

I feel this has always been true.

R24/25, thanks for your spot-on analysis. I work as an attorney for a large university, and a colleague is a computer science professor in addition to being a high-level academic administrator. For the computer science classes that he teaches that involve coding, he knows that his students could easily have AI do the coding for them. So he sets up individual exams for each of his students, and they come to his office to code in front of him and discuss the process live as they do it. His dedication is admirable, but it's incredibly inefficient in terms of the amount of time he must take to give multiple exams per semester to more than a few students in a class. Unfortunately, higher education is under attack from many forces, including the 'demographic cliff' of declining enrollments as well as multi-pronged offenses from the Trump administration going after grant funding, foreign students, student aid and other areas. Thus, while teachers need to be devoting more time per student to really educate and evaluate them, universities have to push for greater 'efficiency' to spend less time per student rather than more. I fear higher education in the U.S. is doomed in its current form, and I'm honestly glad I'm retiring soon so I don't have to watch its death up close.

R28 You have a point. However this digital native cohort who don't belong in advanced studies, has exceptionally flat affect and cognition. I can't see them landing on their feet because they are bright and entrepreneurial and survivors who don't need college. Some feel like black holes. They also suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect which AI increases. Dramatically.

ai is the future because in the future, we will all be obese like the humans in the movie Wall-E and only consume entertainment (and food), while the ai robots do everything for us #dreamlife.

I should be precise. I can't see them landing on their feet -- as one could image a decade ago with a college dropout, who could be bright and entrepreneurial and a survivor who didn't need college. They seem unemployable. They don't even have the discipline to show up and make a human connection.

Thanks r30/r32

r28, makes you think that Trump cheated on his SATs. and the one shred of his college transcript showed him with a 1.+ average.

He is a mad idiot.

R29 well I'm posting about a Swiss context where I taught at cantonal and applied universities. Cantonal universities and EPFL EPFZ have the "tri" or sort system - so EPFL, where I taught, will cull these students and nobody will blink. It's not the US system where premiere universities have very high graduation rates. (Harvard = 96.7) I got a higher paid tenured post at an applied university and the sort/"tri" is not ideal - we don't easily flunk out students. But it must arrive soon. There will be fewer of these schools in 10 years because fewer young people are capable of higher study. I'm talking average students. Such at an average American state college or university. Unless today's parents and elementary schools take corrective measures and protect these childrens' brains. I don't want to blame any teachers so I think it's parents who need to step up. The culture and media and tech are NOT going to give up. They want FULL addiction.

Like you I have but 2 years til retirement. I could phone it in and avoid it but I stayed in teaching because I never got cynical and I find this phase fascinating and challenging. That keeps my OLD brain working. I am curious enough to want to stick around for 5 years to see how it sorts out. However, as your stem professor colleague proves, our temporary measures as profs are not sustainable, due to time and budgets. Spring semester was exhausting.

Yes U Penn gave Trump "gentleman C" passes or Deans directly interceded and awarded the needed Cs that profs refused to give. He only spent 2 years there. I think Mary said his work at Fordham was entirely done by others. Brown gave JFK Jr the same.

Thanks r35