There are plenty of headlines about AI induced psychosis, and they all tend follow a similar pattern:
•Individual with a pre-existing vulnerability begins using AI, usually it’s use of AI as a conversational partner.
•Gradually they lose the ability to hold conversations with humans who aren’t programmed to stroke their ego and replace human connection with AI.
•Eventually, they spiral and completely lose touch with reality. During this time they make terrible decisions that destroy their lives. Then at some point, they are forced to confront the reality of their decisions/behavior, similar to coming out of an extended splitting episode in Dissociative Identity Disorder or waking up sober from an alcohol or drug fueled binge.
Given everything we know about plasticity and human behavior, it would be silly to believe frequent use of AI isn’t changing our brains. Even if the majority of users don’t develop full blown psychosis, if suddenly your day is spent talking to a self affirming mirror, it’s going to change your brain and behavior. It’s more a question of “what/how” it’s changing people than “if” it’s actually changing them.
So, what are some of the more subtle changes (as compared to psychosis) you’ve noticed in people who frequently use AI? Have you noticed a difference even in those who don’t use it as a conversational partner?
I think a lot about the time a junior developer on the team was like “I’ll use chat GPT to reverse this list” and I was just like my guy we’re working in Python that’s a one line expression.
it’s a 6 char expression
arr[::-1]lol.I think that’s the thing. It’s a trivial task, but it doesn’t feel like work because they are asking for it to be done instead of doing it themselves.
To be fair, before ChatGPT, they’d probably still google it and land on a StackOverflow question for doing the same thing, rather than refer to the documentation or memorize it.
Yeah, that is something I regularly look up, too. Together with Euler’s formula, resistor colours and printf codes… My brain is very efficient at almost remembering things, and when I read the intro to the article, it mostly comes back
I’m optimistic that they’re more likely to learn something during that process, but that might not be a well founded belief.
Personally I can’t remember basic syntax very well and constantly have to look things up. Although just knowing that a way of doing something exists does help a lot.