We're offloading mental tasks to AI. It could be making us stupid

[marmar]

We're offloading mental tasks to AI. It could be making us stupid
Whether we lose some of the skills artificial intelligence performs for us largely depends on how we use this tech

By Elizabeth Hlavinka
Staff Writer
Published June 8, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Koen Van Belle, a test automation engineer who codes for a living, had been using the artificial intelligence large language model Copilot for about six months when one day the internet went down. Forced to return to his traditional means of work using his memory and what he had decades of experience doing, he struggled to remember some of the syntax he coded with.

“I couldn’t remember how it works,” Van Belle, who manages a computer programming business in Belgium, told Salon in a video call. “I became way too reliant on AI … so I had to turn it off and re-learn some skills.”

....(snip)....

Since AI models like Copilot and ChatGPT came online in 2022, they have exploded in popularity, with one survey conducted in January estimating that more than half of Americans have used Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Research examining how these programs affect users is limited because they are so new, but some early studies suggest they are already impacting our brains.

“In some sense, these models are like brain control interfaces or implants — they're that powerful,” said Kanaka Rajan, a computational neuroscientist and founding faculty member at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. “In some sense, they're changing the input streams to the networks that live in our brains.”

In a February study conducted by researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, groups of people working with data worked more efficiently with the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT — but used less critical thinking than a comparator group of workers who didn't use these tools. In fact, the more that workers reported trusting AI’s ability to perform tasks for them, the more their critical thinking was reduced. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/08/were-offloading-mental-tasks-to-ai-it-could-be-making-us-stupid/

[chouchou]

1. No understand. Me have friend Alice. She like DU.

Seriously, I do use AI for several things. Writing letters/Email is much easier when I give AI the broad thinking and let AI
do the rest. Writing to companies to either praise them or tell-then-off is also much quicker.
Yeah My typing pretty much sucks

[highplainsdem]

2. Yes, it's easier. But you are dumbing yourself down, even using AI for email like that. It might take you

a while to notice it, and it might take being separated from your favorite AI mental crutch. But you are gradually crippling yourself as you use AI.

[chouchou]

7. You're probably correct. I'd like to come up with a good excuse but, unfortunately...I can't think of one.

[Skittles]

8. maybe AI will give you one

[chouchou]

9. I'm not sure of all those idioms in this modern world. I mean, I ask AI to help me out.

It/he said FU. I thought that was nice ..it must mean Friends Universally.

[patphil]

3. That's been one of my major concerns with AI.

The more you rely on AI to do your critical thinking, the less you will actually know.
At some point, whatever AI tells you will become accepted as the truth, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
Intellectual curiosity will take a big hit as more and more people decide not to do their own research on a subject...let AI do the "hard" work so you can skip right to the result.
Is this how Idiocracy begins?

[highplainsdem]

4. I read the John Warner piece the article mentions when it was published. And I first read about AI use

interfering with thinking before that, in very early 2023, when I read about a self-published writer who was promoting AI use for writing fiction, but who'd already discovered it was interfering with her own creativity. It was as if her own ideas and subconscious shut down, and she was basically just directing the AI tool to write. She was still using it but had cut back. She'd already become addicted to it.

The AI bros and the venture capitalists funding them have made no secret of the fact that they want people to be dependent on AI.

At which point they plan to dramatically increase the price for AI users. I've seen a monthly subscription price of $1,000 mentioned as a possibility.

Generative AI requires so much computing power that these companies are currently losing money with every use. Sam Altman of OpenAI has complained that they lose money even with $200/mo subscriptions. It's a bubble, and they're kept afloat only by investors still hoping for a bonanza, while in the meantime their AI tools are doing incredible damage.

[anciano]

5. I have found AI to be very useful and time efficient...

IMO, AI is a game changing innovation that will continue to improve in its practical applications as it evolves and will play an increasingly important role in our lives as we continue the inevitable transition into a futuristic cybernetic era. I believe that it will eventually become a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, just like the Internet has.

[highplainsdem]

6. Those tools are completely unethical to use because they were illegally trained on stolen intellectual

property. You're giving a thumbs-up to that theft every time you use them.

Generative AI is also badly flawed - hallucinates - and the newer models hallucinate even more.

It dumbs down and deskills users, harms the natural environment and our information ecosystem, is useful primarily for fraud, and increases wealth and power inequality.

[Arizona78]

10. As far as I know

they only rely on major sources. But that's not how science works, which is why they sometimes get things wrong.

[FakeNoose]

11. This goes hand-in-hand with "I'm doing doing my own research"

... which is how the MAGAs claim they "know" everything.

[Aristus]

12. I'm not sure I agree 100%.

Every advance in information technology has led to assurances of the doom of intellectualism. Socrates thought that writing things down, or reading one's lessons, instead of taking them verbally (the Socratic method) would create a race of imbeciles. Now we think of reading and writing as hallmarks of learning and intellectual progress.

Shifts in information technology simply lead to shifts in how we consume and process information. Some people will continue to advance intellectually, and some won't. We have already seen how people who don't read and write for academic advancement *koff* Trumpsters *koff* fail to add anything substantive to human progress. And of course, they can cause a great deal of damage with their bull-in-a-china-shop way of doing everything.

But true advancement will remain with those who stretch themselves, by whatever medium available to them, intellectually, academically, and socially.