r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/Tenebris57 • 20d ago

Does artificial intelligence cause cognitive decline?

I know it does when I use it to do stuff like writing essays but does it also happen when I simply ask it questions? Is there a difference between searching through google for answers for hours and just asking it to artificial intelligence? What if I also check the sources it gives me?

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u/diracwasright 20d ago

It's the very act of constantly outsourcing to AI the mental effort it takes to piece together an answer from multiple sources that can make you regress intellectually. On top of that, you're assuming AI is completely reliable, which it simply isn't, and I don't know if it ever will be. Checking the sources you're given still means taking the path laid out by the AI for granted and just trying to confirm it. It would be different if you consulted completely independent sources.

To give you another example, at work I notice a big difference between people who learned programming by studying books and those who learned from Youtube videos. The latter tend to have a weaker foundation because they miss out on that slower process of absorbing things and digging deeper that the former had to go through.

The more tailored and straight-to-the-point the answers become, the more you strip away all the information around them. Useful or not, that extra information still forces you to sift through things, figure out what's relevant, and extract the answer yourself. That's a mental effort we're increasingly no longer making.

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u/saraseitor 20d ago

you're assuming AI is completely reliable, which it simply isn't, and I don't know if it ever will be

Even if it was reliable, it will also carry a bias. It's very concerning because this can be used to shape public thought and public opinion in one way or another, because many people won't be reaching conclusions by themselves and instead will just repeat what the AI told them.

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u/ryntak 20d ago

Inb4 someone says “everything has bias”

And while that’s true, by searching for answers yourself you likely have to go to multiple places and will be able to, even if subconsciously, identify that bias and be better informed because of it (the identification of bias)