EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use.
Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.
I mean this feels like an obvious result. Are we thinking this is ground breaking?
Like comparing 3 ways of making a table, hand tools, power tools or paying someone to make it for you. Then asking which required the most effort.
I mean I know it’s important to confirm even expected results but this feels so intuitive.
It seems intuitive but also 2000 years ago people thought that for example the eye emitting some sort of substance that interacts with the surrounding environment to be an intuitive explanation for how vision works, so intuitions need to be tested.
Damnit. Eye lasers would have been so much cooler though.
It is obvious, but we have so many liars lying to everyone and each other about AI that they get away with it. Skilled bullshitters shitting up clouds of smoke and using every manipulation tactic in the world.
Some hard evidence makes it easier to prevent their damage.
It’s so easy to pontificate instead of actually doing studies, right?
That’s a great observation!..
Fuck yeah. Lets do it!
No it’s more complex than that. In the final session, participants were swapped between the LLM and Brain groups, and the effects persisted to some extent.
So it’s worse than “using an LLM doesn’t engage your brain”, it’s more like “using an LLM actually makes you dumber.”