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Posted by cainxinth 9/3/2025

MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline(publichealthpolicyjournal.com)
615 points | 566 commentspage 8
tsoukase 9/3/2025|
Cognitive decline in already grown up brains. Decline in intelligence in growing brains, so the reverse Flynn effect carry on for a few more years.
bentt 9/3/2025||
I believe this just based on my experience. I've also noticed that the rewards I feel from programming are stolen, and there's this conflicting feeling of accomplishment without the process. It's maybe a bit like taking mind-altering drugs in that they create reward artificially.

Much of what keeps me going with work is the reward loop. This changes it fundamentally and it's a bit frightening how compelling the actual productivity is, versus the psychological tradeoff of not getting the reward through the typical process of problem solving.

ChrisArchitect 9/3/2025||
Paper from June.

Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44286277

shironandonon_ 9/3/2025||
aren’t those with higher intellect at greater risk of depression?

I’m going to use 2x the amount of AI that I was planning to use today.

Kuinox 9/3/2025||
Remember, they only measured that the less time you spend on a task, the less you remember it.
lawlessone 9/3/2025||
Counterpoint: I just asked chatgpt and it says i'm the smrtest boy and very handsome
WalterBright 9/3/2025||
The same thing with your body. Use a car instead of walking, and your body declines.
nperez 9/3/2025||
I feel like this sort of thing will be referenced for comic relief in future talks about hysteria at the dawn of the AI era.

The article actually contains the sentence "The machines aren’t just taking over our work—they’re taking over our minds." which reminds me more of Reefer Madness than an honest critique of modern tech.

amelius 9/3/2025||
Isn't intelligence -> asking the right questions?

Rather than coming up with the right answers?

tiborsaas 9/3/2025|
It's both and they form a feedback loop. You come up with a problem (question) and you solve the problem which might lead to more questions. So problem solving and reflecting back on it are both building blocks of intelligence.
rozab 9/3/2025|
This study itself and also the media coverage of it are shockingly bad. I wrote a bunch about it at the time and I don't really want to do that again but here is the low down:

- This is not a longitudinal study. Each partipant did 4 20 minute sessions. It just happens that the total study took 4 months. - The paper does not imply long term harm of any kind, they just measured brain connectivity during the short tasks. - It is not surprising that when asked to use an LLM to write an essay, partipants don't remember it. They didn't write it. - It is not surprising they showed less brain activity. They were delegating the task to something else. They were asked to. - I think the authors of the paper deliberately attempted to obscure this. Q7 on p30 is "LLM group: If you copied from ChatGPT, was it copy/pasted, or did you edit it afterwards?" This has been removed from the results section entirely, and other parts of the results do not match the supposed methodology. - The whole paper is extremely sloppy, with grammar mistakes, inconsistencies, and nonsensical charts. Check out Figure 29...

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