
It is kinda ironic how people say AI makes you use less of your brain yet they will not even read past headlines. This paper was never peer reviewed or published and has a lot of methodology problems. It probably won’t get published at all, at least not without revisions and maybe retesting. They only had 54 participants and in the final session, only 18
Checking your own work or asking a peer/mentor to look it over has existed for thousands of years my dude. If you’re using AI for it you’re just lazy and uncaring about the horrible impact AI is already having on humanity and our planet, especially since we’re more interconnected than ever and could literally just go ask Reddit about it.
Grammarly perhaps? There’s still AI in it but it’s like an editing tool and I feel it’s not as bad as asking chat for everything. And if you lock in on the suggestions it’s offering you can learn some grammar along. That’s the free version. Paid it can help you with voice or you’ll j have to work a little harder with a dictionary or asking a friend to help make it sound like you want
Depending on what work if it’s like math problems or sm with a definite answer sure but if it’s an essay or written questions I feel like your less likely to learn from your mistakes or can do a peer review. And like 3 said god forbid it’s not fully correct and you wait for feedback
For this, I’d say you’re probably okay. The issue comes when people use it to replace critical thinking, which doesn’t seem like what you’re doing here. It probably doesn’t help your language learning journey, but if, for the time being, daily functionality is more important than working towards mastery, I’d say you’re totally fine. Just don’t start asking it to plan your day for you or something.
If you’re a college student there are usually resources for that. I know my school has a writing center where you can get someone to read over your paper and a peer study group for STEM stuff and labs. Having a human to talk it through with will also help you learn more. It’ll also be more reliably correct than ai, not to mention better for the environment.
That final session was probably the most important one since much of their conclusions are based on it. It had 2 conditions, so N = 9 for each: People who had been using LLM for the previous 3 sessions switched to brain-only to write essays (on topics they already wrote about), and people who had been using brain-only switching to LLM to write an essay in the same way. The brain to LLM group had the highest neural connectivity based on EEG. That is essentially the conclusion
The constraints for the previous 3 sessions in the LLM only group were harsh too. They had a 20 minute time limit. They were time-pressured to just copy and paste the output of the LLM instead of engaging with it with meaningful constructive questions. Of course they will struggle to remember everything they copied and pasted and will have less ownership over their essay. Of course they will use less neural connections to do so
This study really just shows that you will use less neural connections (only in ways reflected on an EEG) if you use LLMs in a specific way that was encouraged by the constraints of the experiment conditions. Like using a search engine to copy and paste something from wikipedia uses less neural connectivity than sitting with google docs open and not using the internet at all. And even then the sample size is tiny
No cognitive ability of any kind was assessed, only eeg signals. There were no subtasks within the essay writing process to assess dimensions of cognition. This study can’t be used to make huge claims like LLMs will atrophy your brain or neural connectivity. At best you can infer yourself that using it in a copy and paste way will make you think less and get worse at understanding how to approach problems, but that’s exactly why we were taught not to copy and paste from wikipedia
I personally think that using AI in a copy and paste way instead of in a critical way probably does erode your critical thinking skills. Doing it nonstop probably does make you overall dumber. But that was always true. Thats like saying that reading books often is good for your attention span and critical thinking. We know. But people saying it causes brain damage or unequivocally makes you overall dumber are just as brainrotted because they don’t have the attention span to read past headlines
Then present those reasons genuinely and don’t lie and spread misinformation. Thats all im saying. And i never said i don’t hate it or hate aspects of it or how its used commercially for slop. I just think its a complex topic and needs to be considered as such. Lying about it just cheapens your argument