As an anecdote I can attest to this personally. I stopped using AI assistance tools for my work bc I noticed I’d stopped thinking about what I was doing
I can attest to the exact same thing.
“ChatGPT, summarize this study for me”
Chatgpt is so hopelessly and blindly pro science it will be incapable to address its shortcomings unless you actively rub its nose in it. And that would mean you know how the sausage is made well enough that you don’t need a summary.
I ask AI to avoid all the AI slop search results I’d have to sift through when I could get my slop delivered directly.
Are you referring to the AI search results? If so, I’ve fallen into a similar strategy. I’ll search for something, usuaply how to do something then read the AI result. If it’s what I’m looking for, then I’ll click through to the referenced articles. The AI result is usually too vague. Part of my problem is probably bad searching skills on my part. I’ll often find what I’m looking for way down the first page or sometimes the second page of results. The AI cuts through that searching page after page or tells me that I need to change my search terms.
With Gemini I have had several instances of the referenced article saying nothing like what the llm summarized. Ie: The LLM tried to answer my question and threw up a website on the general topic with no bearing on the actual question
Same, especially when searching technical or niche topics. Since there aren’t a ton of results specific to the topic, mostly semi-related results will appear in the first page or two of a regular (non-Gemini) Google search, just due to the higher popularity of those webpages compared to the relevant webpages. Even the relevant webpages will have lots of non-relevant or semi-relevant information surrounding the answer I’m looking for.
I don’t know enough about it to be sure, but Gemini is probably just scraping a handful of websites on the first page, and since most of those are only semi-related, the resulting summary is a classic example of garbage in, garbage out. I also think there’s probably something in the code that looks for information that is shared across multiple sources and prioritizing that over something that’s only on one particular page (possibly the sole result with the information you need). Then, it phrases the summary as a direct answer to your query, misrepresenting the actual information on the pages they scraped. At least Gemini gives sources, I guess.
The thing that gets on my nerves the most is how often I see people quote the summary as proof of something without checking the sources. It was bad before the rollout of Gemini, but at least back then Google was mostly scraping text and presenting it with little modification, along with a direct link to the webpage. Now, it’s an LLM generating text phrased as a direct answer to a question (that was also AI-generated from your search query) using AI-summarized data points scraped from multiple webpages. It’s obfuscating the source material further, but I also can’t help but feel like it exposes a little of the behind-the-scenes fuckery Google has been doing for years before Gemini. How it bastardizes your query by interpreting it into a question, and then prioritizes homogeneous results that agree on the “answer” to your “question”. For years they’ve been doing this to a certain extent, they just didn’t share how they interpreted your query.
You would think the world right now is led by bright, clever, thoughtful individuals considering the AI panic lol
Same reason I don’t use GPS. I want to actually learn, use my brain and grow as a human.
No one grows when the work is done for them.
Your brain doesn’t have real time traffic information.
Do you use a calculator?
Slide rule
Abacus
Beans in a clay pot
Fingers and toes
I usually try doing it in my head first. I use paper if it is available. I use a calculator when I don’t have time, or fail at the first two steps.
I noticed my number skills were deteriorating without proper use, and I found that alarming. I’m still weaker than I used to be, but not as bad as I was.
It’s just important to think for ones self when one can. The brain is a muscle that atrophies without use.
Maybe you number skills are fading because you waste your time and energy on pointless computations. Maybe they just fade with time…
The brain is a muscle that atrophies without use.
This is anti-scientific. But again I don’t think doing multiplication problems is really going to help anything.
“EEG” on “AI”? I heard you like pseudo-science, so I put extra pseudo-science in your pseudo-science, dawg!!!
- ☐ you misunderstand EEG
- ☐ you confuse EEG with something else
EEG on AI users
Although it’s easy to “create” pseudo-science with EEG data, the presence of EEG by itself does not mean straight pseudo-science. It can be used correctly, and it’s actively used in the medical field to detect brain diseases, for example.
*That said, I’m not saying the study here is to be believed, I have not read it, just commenting on EEG
