This article is a perfect example of how legitimate research gets turned into sensationalist nonsense, and the post on Lemmy is making it worse.
The study involved 1,222 participants across three experiments. Researchers had people use AI to help with math and reading comprehension, then tested them when that assistance was removed. They found that participants were more likely to struggle with accuracy and persistence when they had to work independently.
That’s an interesting finding. It’s worth discussing.
But this whole fixation on “just 10 minutes” is ridiculous. Ten minutes of AI use under specific experimental conditions does not mean that ten minutes of ChatGPT permanently damages your brain or destroys your ability to think for yourself. The study did not demonstrate that.
There’s a pretty significant difference between showing that people can become reliant on assistance and struggle when that assistance is suddenly taken away, and claiming that AI use fundamentally erodes your cognitive abilities. One is an experimental finding. The other is an exaggeration of what that finding actually means.
And this is where I have a problem with the article and the way it’s being presented on Lemmy. The actual research is interesting enough without having to dress it up in sensationalist headlines. If the point is that people need to struggle with difficult problems to develop their skills, then make that argument. It’s a perfectly reasonable one.
But “using AI for 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things” is a hell of a lot more dramatic than what the research actually establishes.
There’s a difference between reporting scientific findings and manufacturing a narrative around them. We should be capable of discussing the potential downsides of AI without resorting to clickbait and misrepresenting what the research actually says.
“Students who cheat on their homework don’t learn as much” is a better headline.
TLDR: LLMs are better information aggregators than Google, which has become a mess of ads and SEO spam. Using AI to complete homework isn’t inherently cheating; homework is practice, not an exam. If schools want to measure independent knowledge, they should use supervised assessments instead of take-home assignments. And if an assignment offers little educational value, perhaps the assignment is the problem, not the tool students use to complete it.
I think the more important takeaway from this study is that people produce better results when querying LLMs than when using traditional search engines. To me, that points to a problem with conventional search more than it demonstrates a detriment to using LLMs.
Have you tried Googling anything in recent years? It’s a bloody mess. Google increasingly prioritizes what it wants you to see, and more importantly, what advertisers have paid it to show you. Finding genuinely useful information has become an exercise in digging through sponsored results, SEO spam, and pages that exist primarily to generate ad revenue.
LLMs, for all their faults, are arguably better information aggregators at this point. That isn’t necessarily a ringing endorsement of AI, considering that they aren’t particularly good at searching either. It just illustrates how bad conventional search has become.
I wouldn’t interpret using an LLM to complete a task as inherently equivalent to students cheating. I’d argue that LLMs are simply another tool for finding, processing, and synthesizing information. If students can produce better results using those tools, perhaps we should be asking why we’re so determined to prevent them from doing so rather than examining the tools themselves.
And frankly, you can’t really cheat on homework. It’s homework, not a supervised examination. Students should be able to complete assignments using whatever resources are available to them. If the objective is to determine what students can accomplish independently, then schools should assess that through supervised examinations rather than take-home assignments.
More importantly, there’s a broader question about whether we’re assigning too much homework in the first place. Research has repeatedly found that its educational benefits depend on factors such as age, workload, and assignment quality. If an assignment provides little educational value beyond producing a completed worksheet, then perhaps the problem isn’t that students are using AI to complete it. Perhaps the assignment itself isn’t worth doing.
Have LLMs become better than Google?
Or has Google just gotten shittier than LLMs?
My SearXNG instance never lies to me, and returns results better than Google used to before they fully enshitified
Kagi is able to reach into Japanese websites, aggregate their information, and translate a summary of the contents for me. I used it to learn a bit about an old SNES kusoge, called Saiya no Densetu. Apparently you can get Goku to arrive before the Ginyu Force fight, but paradoxically, he has to be very low level.
This is information that a traditional search engine can’t easily grasp and present.
They make browser extensions for translations, and my SearXNG can index Japanese sites. I use it to find and download obscure Japanese music albums and ROMs. AI is a very inefficient way to achieve that result.
Aren’t most search engines just LLMs anyway these days?
No, a lot of them have LLMs integrated into their search engine, but they themselves are not LLMs.
The search engine I use (SearXNG) is what’s called a meta-search-engine, meaning it runs my query through several different search engines (which I can toggle on or off at will), then parses the results from all of the queried engines, strips out all of the slop bullshit, and returns me actually relevant links.
I think if you wanted to you could attach an LLM to a self-hosted SearXNG instance, but I’m not putting LLM fuckware on my system. I prefer my computations to be deterministic.
Have LLMs become better than Google?
Or has Google just gotten shittier than LLMs?
LLMs are better at most search tasks than Google has ever been. No contest, it is in no way close.
Truth. There is a lot of obscure searches that would go nowhere if I tried to use old-school searching. AI is the way forward when it comes to collecting lots of info and giving a cliff notes. Even better, the AI can then go into detail.
AI is the glasses of the information world: it lets people focus on getting shit done, every day.
I disagree
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Lol, offloading your lack of criticism of a point to an llm.
It shows 100% for Frankenstein
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Seems you’ve been cooking for longer than 10 minutes…
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Eh. Go sit and spin.
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You used an AI service to determine if my comment was written by AI, and the service itself admits it can’t reliably determine that. Do you see the irony here? You literally used AI to guess whether I used AI and then treated that guess as fact. That’s some next-level nonsense.
I will say this however in my own defense not that I have to, I use Google keyboard which has a built-in AI editor it helps me to write long responses quickly.
I will use any and all tools that I deem necessary to complete any and all tasks regardless of your idiotic criticism.
“Using a compiler for ten minutes erodes your ability to write raw machine code”
This is… Unfortunately completely true. ☹️
Forgive me, but i’m not understanding why you find the headline to sensationalize or over state the actual findings of the study. The abstract of the paper directly says:
we provide causal evidence for two key consequences of AI assistance: reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance.
I’m struggling to discern a meaningful difference between “erodes your ability to persist at hard things” and “reduced persistence of unassisted performance”. Forgive me for not understanding but I would appreciate your explanation. The paper’s very own conclusion actually uses the term erosion:
Here, we show that AI interaction can result in significant impairments in independent performance and persistence – capacities that are foundational to life-long learning. If brief exposure produces measurable erosion, the cumulative effects of daily AI use over months or years may be profound and difficult to reverse
I found a definition of erosion: “the gradual loss of something as a result of an ongoing process”. Trust can erode and be rebuilt; soil can erode and be restored.
I agree that 10 mins of foundation model assistance likely doesn’t “permanently damage your brain or destroy your ability to think for yourself”. However, in my reading of the Berkeley news piece, I find no claim of this specific kind. Does the text of the press release explicitly claim the duration of effect is long-term or lasting? Does it explicitly claim the the erosion is permanent? Again, I find myself confused what you are arguing against.
Of course I’ll be happy to explain, the title of the article states:
Using Al for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things - Berkeley News
The findings of the study do not indicate that using an LLM (AI) for ten minutes removes your ability to do hard things. The study showed that it was harder to perform tasks without AI assistance after having access to it. In fact, people who used AI for ten minutes before performing difficult tasks actually performed better than those who did not.
The ten minutes was simply used as a control so that everyone had the same amount of time with AI. It had nothing to do with the erosion of their ability to perform difficult tasks. The conclusion the researchers drew, which is up for interpretation, was that prolonged AI usage may potentially impair people’s ability to perform harder tasks without assistance.
The title heavily implies that just ten minutes of AI usage makes difficult tasks harder to perform, which is not what the study showed or concluded. Therefore, the title has been intentionally sensationalized as clickbait. It objectively misrepresents the findings by encouraging a different interpretation and conclusion than what the study actually demonstrated.
The study itself is interesting, but apparently, the researchers’ findings weren’t sensational enough on their own. The people posting these articles still felt the need to mislead their audiences into drawing a different conclusion from the one the research actually supports.
“The study doesn’t show it removes the ability to do hard things” Again, who exactly are you arguing against? Nobody said this… Neither the press release nor I
“People who used AI for ten minutes before performing difficult tasks actually performed better than those who did not.” I’d gently encourage a quick re-read of the paper, as the statistic results directly contradict your claim. Here’s experiment 1 (fraction math problems):
The solve rate measures the rate at which the participants correctly solved the problem, and the skip rate measures the rate at which the participants chose to skip the problem rather than inputting an answer. We observe that with AI assistance (i.e., the first 12 problems), participants in the AI condition were significantly more likely to solve problems correctly and less likely to give up compared to the control participants. However, when the AI was removed, their performance dropped and they were also less likely to persist with problems (as seen by the increased skip rate). Here’s experiment 2 (same fraction problems, but with an added pretest):
Finally, experiment 3 (SAT-style reading comprehension):
To clarify, people who used AI did worse than the people who never used AI on the test.“The title heavily implies that just ten minutes of AI usage makes difficult tasks harder to perform, which is not what the study showed or concluded” and Again, just to make sure we aren’t proceeding on a misunderstanding here, the headline says “persist”, which means to refusing to give up. The definition of persist is not that of perform. Further, I suggest you re-read the research paper. The abstract directly states, “impairment of unassisted performance”
“The conclusion the researchers drew, which is up for interpretation, was that prolonged AI usage may potentially impair people’s ability to perform harder tasks without assistance.” I think you may be confused about how experimental studies work in research. In the experiment, when they controlled the variable of AI assistance, the experimental results showed statistically significant results proving the hypothesis that test solve rate of the control group was greater than the test solve rate of the AI group.
The results of the study are not in question, nor am I arguing against them. I am criticizing the sensationalist title being used in this Lemmy post.
The study does not say that using ChatGPT for 10 minutes erodes your ability to perform hard tasks. You yourself acknowledged this in the information you provided from the study.
So I guess the question is, what exactly are you arguing against?
Once again, to reiterate, my complaint is about the misleading clickbait title.
The vast majority of people who see this post aren’t going to read the study. They’re going to look at the title, nod their heads, and move on. I’m simply trying to provide some context.
Thank you! This makes me think maybe our brains reward themselves for finding easier ways to do something and LLMs become just that sometimes. But at the same time atrophying our existing skill. We need brain gyms like we do physical gyms.
Yeah my first thought looking at the title was literally… But I’m doing an extremely hard task while the dumb slop machine is doing an entirely different task.
I’m not just sitting there waiting around not thinking.
So how is that causing me to lose the ability to persist at hard things.
The article after reading it raises some good points but that head line is nonsense.
This is a really smart take on things.
Yah this should be pinned
Yah. Turtally.
Seems like a biased study yea. Why not get someone to do something manually first without AI, then give them AI to see if they do it better or worse?
Agreed, I tend to get more interested in topics and learn more than I expected, for new neural networks. I think it’s like any tool and using it right can be useful. Our brains can make new connections learning about different topics and how they are related, systems thinking and problem solving. We can search online and read the sources directly too, and verify more with increasing importance of the topic. For example, going to defend yourself in court, do a lot of research from quality sources and still reconsider lol. Just like large claims require large evidence, same idea for other resources including llms, and no need to avoid it like it’s some new Witch panic. The energy people use daily mindlessly absorbing video streams is more than text based llm use and follow up confirmations.
Learning new things and recognizing connections between topics is beneficial for the brain, as it strengthens neural pathways and enhances understanding. This process, known as neuroplasticity, allows the brain to adapt and improve its ability to learn over time
I was going to argue against this, but i don’t feel like doing the research myself.
I’ll reddit your lemmy so good baby
I don’t use LLMs (especially now during nosloptober), but I’m also trying to apply this to web searching. Like instead of doing a search for “how many minutes in a month” I’ll realise I have all the tools and information to figure it out and just do that.
Or checking with a local manual before searching online
I remember the times before search engines. I used to have to wait for the weekends and walk 40 minutes to the library to look stuff up if I had questions. I remember how I even though encyclopedia britannica being available online was revolutionary and I spent hours reading just because I finally had access from home. It felt like it wouldn’t always be there, so I tried to read as much as possible so I would just know stuff. I’m kinda nostalgic for it and where I live now, the library is only a few blocks away. You’ve inspired me to try to recreate that a bit.
It depends on what you’re doing. I deal with lots of data entry and when there are corrections to be made, I had to scour through troves of information which could also cause data entry error when i am going through with it. In other words, it’s “secretary work”. AI had been helpful on that front to minimise the tedious work that does not add value or improve productivity.
AI is only good at secretary work. But for tasks that require critical thinking and analysis and creativity, don’t rely on AI.
Man getting people to listen to me when I essentially talk about the same thing you brought up is impossible. It is great for these kinds of things but I just get shouted down by all of the “AI bad no matter what” people.
For something that uses immeasurable amounts of stolen data to be trained on and function, without credit or compensation, and breaks so many laws I can’t list them, I think it’s pretty unethical to use. Or something that burns immeasurable amounts of potable water and electricity to function at all, I think its pretty unethical. For something that artificially generates scarcity for chips we desperately need, I think it’s unethical. For something that authoritarian governments are lapping up as a form of propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, surveillance, I think its pretty damn unethical. All so people can write an email 10 seconds faster, in a tone that’s not yours, to be sent to a AI to answer that email. For the people who say “I think it can be used for good” or “it’s just a tool!” What kind of tool sacrifices so much of which we take for granted? Are these things not important to you? Look at that list again! Fuck, look around, your silly chatbot is not changing the world in the way you want. Maybe you get some minor benefit from your chatbot, but the world shifts further to a dystopian shithole for your marginal gains.
Say you’re in the desert and miraculously you found a glass of water, but it is filled with shit particles. Ya, it’s a glass of water, but it’s filled with shit. And you’re out here thinking to yourself “hmm, there’s water here, and I can drink it. So what if it’s filled with shit? I can use it.” #fuckai
I’ve come to realisation that since many Lemmy users are IT workers, they feel resentful in training AI to replace them. Many had been laid off after all since the (irrational exuberant) coming of AI. That’s why I don’t begrudge many Lemmings hating AI as something that could never do anything good. I’m lucky enough that my work isn’t going to be replaced by AI. But for how long?
Also, correlation does not equal causation. So the title is attributing AI to eroding your ability to persist, when in reality there was no prior test to ensure the individual could do the task at all. Which is almost like what they’re proving is that AI gives people the ability to do things they otherwise would not be able to do with out it.
Giving someone a tool to start and then taking the tool away mid task isn’t a good way to study the impact of the tool.
when in reality there was no prior test to ensure the individual could do the task at all
Why would such a test be needed? I presume the researchers did the reasonable thing and assigned the participants to the two groups randomly.
Ironically, the people that agree with the headline won’t bother to critically think about the study.
dont need a new study, 1 study already said people using AI during HS or COllege makes them inability perform at thier grade education level.
Yeah, but reproducible results is a hallmark of a scientific peer review
Can you shorten your sentence please, oh wait, I’ll copy it to AI.
You’re offloading your thought to an LLM there is no way you don’t come out a bit dumber.
I’ve been using LLMs with a project that I simply don’t have enough time for. I’ve built the core of it during most of last year. And in the past 6 months or so I’ve been using LLMs to help me out with some of the more tedious stuff. Half the time it doesn’t quite get it right, and some of that time it’s just flat out wrong. It’s usually when I get the LLM to try to hunt down some bug or something. After a couple tries, I give up on the LLM and figure out the problem myself.
I genuinely don’t believe this “offloading your thoughts to an LLM” idea is universal. For someone still in school and learning? Probably 100% true. But for someone established in a skill, I don’t think it’s true, at least not entirely.
Using a lighter for 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at starting a fire with two sticks to :)
Truth is in the middle somewhere. I can still fix/make the things I made 2 years ago, but i’m going to use AI tools to do things that it’s passable at while the tokens cost me $20 a month.
My homelab went from bare minimum with not enough time to ansible jobs to deploy any product I want to play with in a week.
Agree. With homelab being a hobby but time being a scarce resource; with AI I’m able to get past the things I hate that are mundane and that I would never find time to improve while still doing the things I enjoy with the hobby.
Also working in a job where there were never enough resources to do the tasks that were high priority, meant we also never improved on technical debt. Now that has turned: we are able to use AI assistance to deliver a higher throughput while fixing more tech debt. Just a different take than the “AI produces low quality code” position.
Yeah. I don’t reall like using AI but it has helped me a couple times with homelab and other PC related issues when even after 45+ minutes of searching the web I found nothing useful and barely anything pertaining to my issue at all.
We all knew this was going to be the case. You look at the people around you feeding their entire lives to it, surrendering their will to it completely, you knew it was going to fry their brains extra fast.
But if I want something very specific out of it and don’t tell it my life story it’s going to be beneficial for me.
The idiots use it like google, have angry letters written by it citing things that don’t exist etc.
I am under no illusion that this is more than autocomplete, a summarizer a coder debugger etc.
It is so sad that people always look for shorter means to a problem solution, I understand it is coded in our DNA to exhaust the least but over the long term it looks increasingly worrying.
Surely if I offload work tasks onto someone else then I would achieve the same effect? I don’t think this is AI exclusive.
I read a study that people used to focus on remembering information they learned, but given the opportunity (Internet, books) instead they focused on remembering the location of the information they learned so that they could access it later
The latter is a great approach for knowing where to find knowledge you don’t know. Like understanding how a library is organized makes finding something easier so if you haven’t previously learned about something you know where to find it. It is basically how research is done.
Knowing how to filter what is important and what isn’t is another skill that helps to apply that approach, and LLMs don’t provide anything that helps with that kind of filtering.
Thanks for smoking out more people to block.
What a load of shite.
If I asked an intern to do something and then review their work is that eroding my ability to work?
My managers seeming plenty eroded rn 😅
The actual study does not make the claim this stupid “article” does.
Software devs becoming managers, who then lose the ability to reason about software dev is a good example of the anwer being “yes, sometimes”.
This study actually measured the impact of knowing that your job could be much easier on performance.
