ChatGPT, brain rot and who should use AI and who should not

India Today

5 hours ago

There was a time when almost everyone had a few phone numbers stored in the back of their mind. We would just pick up our old Nokia, or a cordless, and dial in a number. Nowadays, most people remember just one phone number — their own. And in some cases, not even that. It is the same with birthdates, trivia like who the prime minister of Finland is, or the accurate route to this famous bakery in that corner of the city.advertisementHumans are no longer memory machines, something which often leads to hilarious videos on social media. Young students are asked on camera to name the first prime minister of India and all of them look bewildered. Maybe Gandhi, some of them gingerly say. We all laugh a good bit at their expense.But it's not the fault of the kids. It's a different world. The idea of memorising stuff is a 20th-century concept. Memory has lost its value because now we can recall anything or everything with the help of Google. We can store information outside our brain and into our phones and access it anytime we want. Because memory has lost its value, we have also lost our ability to memorise things. Is it good? Is it bad? That is not what this piece is about. Instead, it is about what we are going to lose next.advertisement
Next, say in 10 to 15 years, we may end up losing our ability to think and analyse, just the way we have lost the ability to memorise. And that would be because of ChatGPT and its ilks.So far, we had suspected something like this. Now, research is beginning to trace it in graphs and charts. Around a week ago, researchers at MIT Media Lab ran some experiments on what happens inside the brain of people when they use ChatGPT. As part of the experiment, the researchers divided 54 people in three groups: people using only the brain to work, people using brain and Google search, and people using brain and ChatGPT. The work was writing an essay and as the participants in the research went about doing it, their brains were scanned using EEG.The findings were clear. 'EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity,' wrote MIT Lab researchers. 'Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity.'The research was carried out across four months and in the last phase, participants who were part of the brain-only group were asked to also use ChatGPT, whereas the ChatGPT group was told to not use it at all. 'Over four months, LLM (ChatGPT) users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning,' wrote MIT Labs researchers.advertisementWhat is the big takeaway? Quite simple. Like anything cerebral — for example, it is well-established that reading changes and rewires the brain — the use of something like ChatGPT impacts our brain in some fundamental ways. The brain, just like a muscle, can atrophy when not used. And, we have started seeing signs in labs that when people rely too much on AI tools like ChatGPT to do their thinking, writing, analysing, our brains may lose some of this functionality.Of course, there could be the other side of the story too. If in some areas, the mind is getting a break, it is possible in some other parts that neurons might light up more frequently. If we lose our ability to analyse an Excel sheet with just a quick glance, maybe we will get the ability to spot bigger ideas faster after looking at the ChatGPT analysis of 10 financial statements.advertisementBut, I am not certain. On the whole, and if we include everyone, the impact of information abundance that tools like Google and Wikipedia have brought has not resulted in smarter or savant-like people. There is often a crude joke on the internet — we believed that earlier, people were stupid because they did not have access to information. Oh, just naive we were.It is possible that, at least on the human mind, the impact of tools like ChatGPT may not end up being a net positive. And that brings me to my next question. So, who should or who should not use ChatGPT? The current AI tools are undoubtedly powerful. They have the potential to crash through all the gate-keeping that happens within the world. They can make everyone feel superhuman.When this much power is available, it would be a waste to not use it. So, everyone should use AI tools like ChatGPT. But I do feel that there has to be a way to go about it. If we don't want AI to wreck our minds, we will have to be smart about how we use them. In formative years — in schools and colleges or at work when you are learning the ropes of the trade — it would be unwise to use ChatGPT and similar tools. The idea is that you should use ChatGPT like a bicycle, which makes you more efficient and faster, instead of as a crutch. The idea is that before you use ChatGPT, you should already have a brain that has figured out a way to learn and connect dots.advertisementThis is probably the reason why, in recent months again and again, top AI experts have highlighted that the use of AI tools must be accompanied by an emphasis on learning the basics. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis put it best last month when he was speaking at Cambridge. Answering a question about how students should deal with AI, he said, 'It's important to use the time you have as an undergraduate to understand yourself better and learn how to learn.'In other words, Hassabis believes that before you jump onto ChatGPT or other AI tools, you should first have the fundamental ability to analyse, adapt and learn quickly without them. In the future, this, I think, is going to be key to using AI tools in a better way. Or else, they may end up rotting our brains, similar to what we have done to our memory and attention span due to Instagram, Google and all the information overload.(Javed Anwer is Technology Editor, India Today Group Digital. Latent Space is a weekly column on tech, world, and everything in between. The name comes from the science of AI and to reflect it, Latent Space functions in the same way: by simplifying the world of tech and giving it a context)(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Trending Reel