Will an overreliance on Copilot and ChatGPT make you dumb? A new Microsoft study says AI 'atrophies' critical thinking: "I already feel like I hav...

[Windows Central]

Microsoft researchers say an overdependency and reliance on AI tools like Copilot may negatively impact a person's critical thinking, leading to the deterioration of cognitive faculties.

Will an overreliance on Copilot and ChatGPT make you dumb? A new Microsoft study says AI 'atrophies' critical thinking: "I already feel like I hav... : Read more

 

[GraniteStateColin]

If the purpose of the AI is to answer questions and find information, I think that's fine and helpful to the human mind -- as the Doctor said in Doctor Who, "The answers are easy. It's asking the right questions that's hard." But if you're using AI to create work and not using your human imagination to create, then that does seem destructive. Just my opinion.

 

[Abaddon]

I made an account just to correct this ignorance
You feel dumb when using A.I because you are < it increases what's already there and makes up for lack of ability
90 % of you are in made up echo chambers that congratulate you and others for doing absolutely nothing at all

 

[ValleyForge]

Microsoft researchers say an overdependency and reliance on AI tools like Copilot may negatively impact a person's critical thinking, leading to the deterioration of cognitive faculties.

Will an overreliance on Copilot and ChatGPT make you dumb? A new Microsoft study says AI 'atrophies' critical thinking: "I already feel like I hav... : Read more

Current AI models are, and designed to be your own personal librarian where the library is filled with books of dubious providence while under the umbrella of the builders overly nice ideology.

They consistently get everything wrong and are about as reliable as asking a random drunk in the pub.

I use it as a tool to help creative writing, editing, and on occasion generating ideas when I hit a wall. Even then I constantly correct It, and use other tools including the Mark I human brain. It is also reasonably useful for research. But, that is only because I have a broad background in STEM, I can pick out the nonsense it comes up with.

I've read published works, on kindle for example, created by humans but authored exclusively by AI and they are not particularly good.

Thus, if you feel AI is making you 'dumb' then chances are you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway.

I haven't read the papers, so pinch of salt with this opinion, but I have doubts on this research. They only way you could say for sure is to measure users before and after use. Which seems unlikely and even then, difficult to do since measuring intelligence is hard at the best of times. It is very likely the people using AI more often, are using it specifically because they were lacking in confidence, experience or to be harsher, brain power.

 

[Arun Topez]

Current AI models are, and designed to be your own personal librarian where the library is filled with books of dubious providence while under the umbrella of the builders overly nice ideology.

They consistently get everything wrong and are about as reliable as asking a random drunk in the pub.

I use it as a tool to help creative writing, editing, and on occasion generating ideas when I hit a wall. Even then I constantly correct It, and use other tools including the Mark I human brain. It is also reasonably useful for research. But, that is only because I have a broad background in STEM, I can pick out the nonsense it comes up with.

I've read published works, on kindle for example, created by humans but authored exclusively by AI and they are not particularly good.

Thus, if you feel AI is making you 'dumb' then chances are you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway.

I haven't read the papers, so pinch of salt with this opinion, but I have doubts on this research. They only way you could say for sure is to measure users before and after use. Which seems unlikely and even then, difficult to do since measuring intelligence is hard at the best of times. It is very likely the people using AI more often, are using it specifically because they were lacking in confidence, experience or to be harsher, brain power.

I don't recall any librarians writing content, doing analytics, generating creative, or creating presentations for me? It sounds more like you're referring to earlier virtual Assistants that simply consolidated and presented information from the web (like a librarian), and not AI which has the ability to create content and replace jobs, including writing in the tones of it's users, creating full videos, presentations, and manage project timelines. It can make people dumber if they're solely relying on it to do everything, and not continuing to grow themselves. If you don't actively use your brain, you will get dumber. If you're using AI to do redundant things for you that don't require thinking and take up your time, then that's where AI can be helpful. The problem is these companies aren't building it that way and building it to eventually replace everything to make people dumber (watch Wall-E).

 

[naddy69]

I am already losing brain cells just reading all of the absurd hype about "AI".

 

[Abaddon]

Current AI models are, and designed to be your own personal librarian where the library is filled with books of dubious providence while under the umbrella of the builders overly nice ideology.

They consistently get everything wrong and are about as reliable as asking a random drunk in the pub.

I use it as a tool to help creative writing, editing, and on occasion generating ideas when I hit a wall. Even then I constantly correct It, and use other tools including the Mark I human brain. It is also reasonably useful for research. But, that is only because I have a broad background in STEM, I can pick out the nonsense it comes up with.

I've read published works, on kindle for example, created by humans but authored exclusively by AI and they are not particularly good.

Thus, if you feel AI is making you 'dumb' then chances are you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway.

I haven't read the papers, so pinch of salt with this opinion, but I have doubts on this research. They only way you could say for sure is to measure users before and after use. Which seems unlikely and even then, difficult to do since measuring intelligence is hard at the best of times. It is very likely the people using AI more often, are using it specifically because they were lacking in confidence, experience or to be harsher, brain power.

If you're too ignorant and uninspired to use properly just say so
It only gets "things wrong" if you genuinely don't know what you're talking about. (Or don't like the truth)

 

[Abaddon]

If you're too ignorant and uninspired to use properly just say so
It only gets "things wrong" if you genuinely don't know what you're talking about. (Or don't like the truth)

I use it to a degree you can only imagine. It amplifies
That's a fact.

 

[GraniteStateColin]

If you're too ignorant and uninspired to use properly just say so
It only gets "things wrong" if you genuinely don't know what you're talking about. (Or don't like the truth)

I ask Copilot questions many times every day, so I'm a user and a bit of a fan, but it absolutely gets things wrong too. Where it's great and where it's weak is somewhat predictable: if the information is broad based, it's very, very good, especially at combining things across disciplines. That's something it can answer in seconds that might otherwise take hours of research many different sites. But if the information only exists in a few opinion posts, the AI is going to reflect those opinions and, if those posts were wrong, the AI will provide the wrong information too.

Even if you ask the AI to create code, something that one might expect a computer to do well, it's often wrong because it's largely an amalgam of code fragments posted by various human users. If you ask AI to write text, it's often gibberish. If you ask AI to draw a picture of a person, that person may have 3 arms or fingers on a hand (or 8). I'm sure it will get better as some of these things that human brains do automatically get hard-coded into the systems, but to say that AI "only gets things wrong if you genuinely don't know what you're talking about" is simply incorrect.