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MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline
(publichealthpolicyjournal.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
242 points (93.2% liked)
Fuck AI
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There are a million legit reasons to avoid and despise LLMs, their makers, and their pushers. I don't think this is one of them.
Literally every piece of technology introduced in the past thousand years has had this kind of hue and cry built up around it, beginning with the printing press and books in Europe. Every form of communication or information technology has had "studies" (or what passed for them in ages past) claiming that the new technology would ruin the minds and morals of people who used it. Remember when television would "rot kids' minds"? Remember when the Internet was going to end civilization as we know it?
This study is just more of the same. You'll find equivalent studies about television back in the '50s to even as late as the '70s.
There are (a myriad of) good arguments for despising LLMs. This (not yet peer-reviewed) MIT study is not one of them. (And I should point out that the actual paper instead of this summary of it has quite a bit more nuance than is reported in the linked article.)
The study itself is entirely benign, and I'd actually accept it as a reason to eschew AI in an educational context. Their conclusion is basically "if you use an LLM to write an essay you tend to not retain the information as well", which is... Downright boring in how reasonable it is. Particularly given the converse observation I wouldn't have expected: if you are already familiar with a subject then using an LLM to write an essay can strengthen your understanding.
The "journal" this summary of the study was shared in is quackery, so I'm not surprised they distorted the findings.
Nothing bad ever happens.
Oh, are we playing a game of non sequitur? OK. My move is:
炮二平五
Your move.
No, like, you're seemingly saying "new inventions never cause health problems"
Y'know, like asbestos. It was a wonder material! And then the health effects were uncovered.
Well played! This is going to take cunning to counter in our little non sequitur games.
Uh...
Oh, I know!
I've got new socks on!
I'm more concerned about degu infestation if I'm being honest. No one knows how to handle them here so it just turns into a whole mess.
An interesting fact about azure-winged magpies is that despite their strikingly similar appearance to Iberian magpies found in Spain and Portugal, the two populations are separated by over 5,000 miles, with genetic evidence showing they diverged thousands of years ago.
Yeah the anti-"AI" hype is just as much of a problem as the pro-"AI" hype. Both are based on the premise that "AI" actually exists and help to fuel the hype machine. That's that same reason why "AI" grifters "worry" about "AI" destroying the planet, etc. A bad delusion is better and more profitable than no delusion at all.
The ill-concieved printing press argument is a standard pro-AI trope.
Yeah, i don't know where you live but here in America our democracy is in shreds thanks to those things. They came true, just as they said it would. Environmental collapse is next, for those keeping score at home.
P.S. Characterizing my post as pro-AI is so utterly fucking stupid it speaks volumes as to the real source of your nation's tattered democracy. Just sayin'.
You had an enormously destructive civil war in the 19th century, but yes, go ahead and blame television and the Internet on your democracy being in tatters.
News flash, homey: your democracy was in tatters from the very outset. It has never not been in tatters.
Since you apparently don't live here, we'll leave it there then.
Saying knee jerk rejection of new technology is common is pro-ai?
If it's such a bad, ill-concieved notion, why don't you explain why it's wrong, instead of just saying that it's used by people you disagree with?
Maybe if an argument is used by both pro and anti AI people, it's less a "pro-ai" argument, and more a "let's keep in mind how often doom and gloom has been wrong and keep our criticism grounded"?
Again? No. Maybe someone else feels like explaining it this time.
My good dude, the sentient life on this planet is about to witness several extinction events in our lifetime because we ignored the grounded "doom and gloom" research. If you want to stand on the big red X this time while a loud whistling noise and billionaire cackling gets louder, that's up to you but as many people have tried to say before - it's a bad idea, don't do it.
Yeah, you're attacking people who agree with you, but disagree with your notion that we can ignore "reality" in describing why it's a bad idea.
Have fun with that.