Research Yes. ChatGPT decreases your ability to write, critically think, & create on your own

[C C]

A whole population devolving into something akin to the hapless Eloi (at least when you remove their access to AI). OTOH, the Neo-Luddites who resist assimilation will not really correspond to the Morlocks (subterranean dwellers).

Actually, it will just mandate turning the majority of humans into cyborgs, so that AI is integrated with their brains constantly. So maybe those who resist will have to flee underground.    
- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels."
https://futurism.com/neoscope/brain-eeg-chatgpt

INTRO: Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found some startling results in the brain scans of ChatGPT users, adding to the growing body of evidence suggesting that AI is having a serious — and barely-understood — impact on its users' cognition even as it explodes in popularity worldwide.

In a new paper currently awaiting peer review, researchers from the school's storied Media Lab documented the vast differences between the brain activity of people who using ChatGPT to write versus those who did not.

The research team recruited 54 adults between the ages of 18 and 39 and divided them into three groups: one that used ChatGPT to help them write essays, one that used Google search as their main writing aid, and one that didn't use AI tech. The study took place over four months, with each group tasked with writing one essay per month for the first three, while a smaller subset of the cohort either switched from not using ChatGPT to using it — or vice versa — in the fourth month.

As they completed the essay tasks, the participants were hooked up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines that recorded their brain activity. Here's where things get wild: the ChatGPT group not only "consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels," but also got lazier with each essay they wrote; the EEGs found "weaker neural connectivity and under-engagement of alpha and beta networks." The Google-assisted group, meanwhile, had "moderate" neural engagement, while the "brain-only" group exhibited the strongest cognitive metrics throughout.

These findings about brain activity, while novel, aren't entirely surprising after prior studies and anecdotes about the many ways that AI chatbot use seems to be affecting people's brains and minds.

Previous MIT research, for instance, found that ChatGPT "power users" were becoming dependent on the chatbot and experiencing "indicators of addiction" and "withdrawal symptoms" when they were cut off. And earlier this year Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft — which has invested billions to bankroll OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT — found in a joint study that heavy chatbot use appears to almost atrophy critical thinking skills. A few months later, The Guardian found in an analysis of studies like that one that researchers are growing increasingly concerned that tech like ChatGPT is making us stupider, and a Wall Street Journal reporter even owned up to his cognitive skill loss from over-using chatbots... (MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

And earlier this year Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft — which has invested billions to bankroll OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT — found in a joint study that heavy chatbot use appears to almost atrophy critical thinking skills. A few months later, The Guardian found in an analysis of studies like that one that researchers are growing increasingly concerned that tech like ChatGPT is making us stupider, and a Wall Street Journal reporter even owned up to his cognitive skill loss from over-using chatbots

It's that insidious creeping dependency again that got us into trouble with smartphones---the growing need to take the easy route and to save time rather than doing the work for ourselves and deliberately engaging our minds. Of the replacement of thinking itself with yet another prosthetic substitute that will have the effect of eliminating the need for thinking and so making it weaker and less efficient and eventually obsolete. Subtle, barely noticed increments of resignation and laziness until we no longer are even capable of composing insightful and poignant ideas on our own. We get absorbed a little more every day into the ubiquitous Machine, saying goodbye one by one to all the things that once made us creative and involved humans. And one day we'll wake up and we will BE no longer, replaced by a button-pushing automaton of involuntary stimuli and reflexes.

[confused2]

Me (to AI)>Could you write something about "AI decreases your ability to write, critically think, & create on your own"?
AI>Oh, the irony...

[C C]

Multiple Studies Now Suggest That AI Will Make Us Morons
https://gizmodo.com/multiple-studies-now...2000620811

EXCERPT: . . . On the other hand, the conclusion that using an app to complete a homework assignment makes you less capable of thinking for yourself would appear to be self-evident. Outsourcing mental duties to a software program means you’re not performing those duties yourself, and, as is pretty well established, doing something yourself is often the best way to learn. Of course, the internet has been curtailing human mental activity since it first went online. When was the last time you had to remember how to get somewhere? It really seems like Google Maps collectively robbed us of that ability over a decade ago.

Other evidence for AI’s stupidification effect is even more obvious: the maelstrom of cheating that’s been happening in America’s educational system means that students are making their way through high school and college without learning how to write an essay or interpret a book. While there is clearly still a lot to learn about how AI impacts us, some of its side-effects seem obvious. If a student can’t write an essay without the help of a chatbot, they probably don’t have a particularly bright academic future ahead of them.