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Tyler Lacoma
Editor / Home Security
For more than 10 years Tyler has used his experience in smart home tech to craft how-to guides, explainers, and recommendations for technology of all kinds. From using his home in beautiful Bend, OR as a testing zone for the latest security products to digging into the nuts and bolts of the best data privacy guidelines, Tyler has experience in all aspects of protecting your home and belongings. With a BA in Writing from George Fox and certification in Technical Writing from Oregon State University, he's ready to get you the details you need to make the best decisions for your home. On off hours, you can find Tyler exploring the Cascade trails, finding the latest brew in town with some friends, or trying a new recipe in the kitchen!
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Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
ChatGPT could be silently rewiring your brain as experts urge caution for long-term use
Using ChatGPT on a long-term basis could have negative effects on brain function. That's according to a study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which found that using a large language model (LLM) to write multiple essays over a four-month period could hamper cognitive abilities. In the study, 54 participants were divided into three groups. Woman Says Chatgpt Saved Her Life By Helping Detect Cancer, Which Doctors Missed One group used ChatGPT, an LLM product made by OpenAI, to write an essay. The second group used only a search engine, and the third group used only their own brains, according to a press release from MIT. Read On The Fox News App The participants underwent three sessions where they completed the same assignment. Then, in the fourth session, the LLM group was asked to write an essay without any tools, and the "brain-only" group was asked to use an LLM for assistance. During each session, the researchers recorded the participants' brain activity using an EEG monitor to assess their "cognitive engagement and cognitive load" and to determine their neural activity, the release stated. Brain Implant Breakthrough Allows Paralyzed Patients To 'Speak' With Their Thoughts The participants also provided their own individual feedback during interviews. Human teachers and an artificial intelligence agent scored the assessments. "EEG analysis presented robust evidence that LLM, search engine and brain-only groups had significantly different neural connectivity patterns, reflecting divergent cognitive strategies," the researchers wrote. Participants showed less brain connectivity when they used the tools to help write their essays, the study found. "The brain‑only group exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging networks; the search engine group showed intermediate engagement; and LLM assistance elicited the weakest overall coupling," the researchers wrote. In the fourth session, the participants who switched from LLM to brain-only showed "weaker neural connectivity" and less cognitive engagement. The LLM group also had less ability to recall information from the essays they had just written. Those who switched from brain-only to LLM had "higher memory recall" and greater cognitive engagement. Based on these findings, the researchers said there could be a "possible decrease in learning skills" among LLM users. "The use of LLM had a measurable impact on our participants, and while the benefits were initially apparent, as we demonstrated over the course of four sessions … the LLM group's participants performed worse than their counterparts in the brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic [and] scoring," they wrote. The findings have been uploaded to Arxiv, a preprint service, but have not yet been peer-reviewed, as the researchers noted that "all conclusions are to be treated with caution and as preliminary." There were also a limited number of participants who were all from the same geographical area. Ai Tool Scans Faces To Predict Biological Age And Cancer Survival "For future work, it will be important to include a larger number of participants coming from diverse backgrounds, like professionals in different areas and age groups, as well as ensure that the study is more gender-balanced," the researchers noted. Only ChatGPT was used in the study; future research could incorporate other LLMs. The EEG technology used to analyze brain connectivity could also have some limitations, as the researchers shared plans to use fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) in future studies. "Our findings are context-dependent and are focused on writing an essay in an educational setting and may not generalize across tasks," they also stated. "Future studies should also consider exploring longitudinal impacts of tool usage on memory retention, creativity and writing fluency." Dr. Harvey Castro, an ER physician and "AI futurist" based in Texas, said he sees this study as a "neuro-wake-up call," especially for younger brains. "ChatGPT can make you 60% faster, but that speed comes at the price of neuro-engagement," Castro, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. "Brain connectivity collapses from 79 neural links to just 42, and 83% of users can't quote their own essays minutes later. Neuroplasticity research tells us developing brains will feel this hit hardest." In emergency medicine, Castro said, doctors call this "failure to encode." "The brain isn't processing and storing information," he said. "When neural connectivity drops by nearly half, we're looking at what researchers call 'cognitive debt.'" For medical students, an inability to encode and recall information under pressure could have serious implications for clinical decision-making, Castro noted. Click Here To Sign Up For Our Health Newsletter "The same neural networks that consolidate essay information are involved in diagnostic reasoning," he said. Using LLMs for extended periods can be convenient, but could cause cognitive muscles to "atrophy" over time, the expert cautioned. There was one encouraging finding, however. "When people with strong foundational skills later used ChatGPT, they showed enhanced connectivity," Castro said. "The key isn't avoiding AI — it's building cognitive strength first." In education, he emphasized the need for periods of "AI-free cognitive development." For more Health articles, visit "Sometimes you act on preliminary data when the stakes are high enough, and an entire generation's brain development is high stakes." Fox News Digital reached out to OpenAI for article source: ChatGPT could be silently rewiring your brain as experts urge caution for long-term use
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
BYU student helps enhance wind tracking tool for wildfires
PROVO, Utah () — A (BYU) student has used machine learning and math to improve a key tool that firefighters rely on while they are out in the field battling wildfires. 'I think it's really cool when you study math, you end up working on problems that you never would have really guessed, like I have done things in so many different fields,' Jane Housley is a BYU mathematics graduate student and a wildfire modeling researcher. Housley recently wrapped up her master thesis in partnership with the and focused on improving WindNinja. is used by fire crews and analysts to predict how wind will move through terrain during a fire. It is a simulation tool created by the Missoula Fire Sciences lab. According to the , the behavior of wildland fires and the dispersion of smoke from these fires depends, in part, on ambient and fire-induced winds that work to spread fires across the landscape and mix fire emissions into the atmosphere. Housley's study focused on improving the device to model what's called a cavity zone. That's the area directly behind a mountain or ridge where wind tends to swirl backward and create a whirlpool-like motion. This movement can dramatically shift how and where a fire spreads. Housley helped improve two key areas of the WindNinja, the mass-conserving solver and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver. The first one is fast but less accurate but on the other hand, CFD is more precise but much slower. 'This is the first time that we've taken machine learning and AI and applied it to the field of wildfire modeling. The real way to study this was to try and understand the physics and mechanics of how things work,' Housley told . Through her research, Housley trained the neural network to learn patterns of error in the mass-conserving solver, using the CFD solver accuracy as the goal. The device could now be able to recognize wind patterns the way facial recognition spots a familiar face. Housley said she still remembers the feeling of excitement when she saw how accurate and efficient her new model was. 'Once I had the network built and plugged in the data and ran the simulation, the results were really good. I thought, 'I must be doing something wrong,'' Housley said in a press release. 'I combed through every single line of code and found that it was working correctly. I was really excited.' Collaborating with firefighters and scientists at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab will be an experience that Housley says she will cherish forever. Alexa Mcfadden contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
XRP Primed for Record Rally, Echoing Bullish Bitcoin Pattern Ahead of $100K Breakout
Imagine a ship caught in a fierce storm, battered by large waves and swaying wildly yet staying afloat. It indicates that beneath the turmoil, resilience persists, suggesting that smooth sailing will follow once the storm passes. Similarly, when an asset's price refuses to decline despite bearish signals from key indicators, it suggests underlying strength and a potential bull run ahead. That's the current situation in the XRP market and mirrors conditions in the bitcoin market that foreshadowed BTC's historic run higher from $70,000 to $100,000 late last year. Let's have a look at both. XRP is the payments-focused cryptocurrency used by the Fintech company Ripple to facilitate cross-border transactions. The two, however, are not interchangeable. The underlying strength in XRP is evident from the way prices have been behaving relative to the MACD histogram in recent weeks. The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) histogram is an exponential moving average (EMA)--based trend-following indicator widely tracked by both institutions and retail investors to identify price trends and measure trend momentum. The MACD bars crossing from negative to positive indicate a bullish shift in momentum, suggesting the start of an uptrend in the asset's price. A crossover below zero suggests otherwise, with consecutive deeper bars indicating a strengthening of the downward momentum. XRP's weekly chart MACD, used by traders to gauge long-term trends, crossed below zero in the first week of March, signaling a renewed downtrend. However, a pronounced downtrend has not yet materialized, with prices mainly trading back and forth between $2 and $2.60, barring occasional short-lived dips below $2. The divergence, marked by persistently bearish MACD and largely directionless trading, hints at bullish vibes or resilience beneath the surface – bulls successfully absorbing supply. This prolonged divergence means the potential for a sudden bull revival and price increases. The bull case is supported by the upward-sloping 50-, 100- and 200-week simple moving averages (SMA). The above-discussed divergence in XRP is similar to the conditions in BTC last year when the weekly MACD kept flashing red throughout the Summer. At the same time, BTC traded range-bound, barring occasional short-lived dips below $60,000. CoinDesk noted the divergence in mid-September last year when BTC changed hands at around $59,000. Weeks later, BTC rose to $70,000, eventually topping the same in November to hit record highs above $100,000. Let's see if XRP follows the same path. Sign in to access your portfolio
