How I Realized AI Was Making Me Stupid--and What I Do Now - WSJ
I first suspected artificial intelligence was eating my brain while writing an email about my son’s basketball coach.
I wanted to complain to the local rec center—in French—that the coach kept missing classes. As an American reporter living in Paris, I’ve come to speak French pretty well, but the task was still a pain. I described the situation, in English, to ChatGPT. Within seconds, the bot churned out a French email that sounded both resolute and polite. I changed a few words and sent it.
I soon tasked ChatGPT with drafting complex French emails to my kids’ school. I asked it to summarize long French financial documents. I even began asking it to dash off casual-sounding WhatsApp messages to French friends, emojis and all. After years of building up my ability to articulate nuanced ideas in French, AI had made this work optional. I felt my brain get a little rusty. I was surprised to find myself grasping for the right words to ask a friend for a favor over text. But life is busy. Why not choose the easy path?
AI developers have promised their tools will liberate humans from the drudgery of repetitive brain labor. It will unshackle our minds to think big. It will give us space to be more creative. But what if freeing our minds actually ends up making them lazy and weak? “With creativity, if you don’t use it, it starts to go away,” Robert Sternberg, a Cornell University professor of psychology, told me. Sternberg, who studies human creativity and intelligence, argues that AI has already taken a toll on both. Smartphones are already blamed for what some researchers call “digital dementia.” In study after study, scientists have shown that people who regularly rely on digital help for some tasks can lose capacity to do them alone.
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Like AI itself, research into its cognitive effects is in its infancy, but early results are inauspicious. A study published in January in the journal Societies found that frequent use of AI tools such as ChatGPT correlated with reduced critical thinking, particularly among younger users. In a new survey of knowledge workers, Microsoft researchers found that those with more confidence in generative AI engaged in less critical thinking when using it.
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Generative AI promises to boost our productivity further. Workers are increasingly using it to write emails, transcribe meetings or even—shhh—summarize those way-too-long documents your boss sends. By late last year, around a quarter of all corporate press releases were likely written with AI help, according to a preprint paper led by Stanford Ph.D. students.
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With the AI future on our doorsteps, what do scientists say we ought to do to keep our minds spry? The basic principle is use it or lose it. Writing is a good way to practice thinking and reasoning precisely because it is hard. “The question is what skills do we think are important and what skills do we want to relinquish to our tools,” said Hamsa Bastani, a professor at the Wharton School and an author of that study on the effects of AI on high-school math students. Bastani told me she uses AI to code, but makes sure to check its work and does some of her own coding too. “It’s like forcing yourself to take the stairs instead of taking the elevator.”
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