Are we losing our ability to think?
Or are the robots just altering the way we do it?
We are creatures not only of habit, but creatures of shortcuts. Give us an easier way to do something, and consequences be damned.
Is it a coincidence that cooking skills among the general public diminished once the microwave oven arrived? And perhaps evaporated a bit more when home delivery exploded in popularity?
Why cook when you can nuke something, or have the DoorDash people drop off your burrito bowl on the front porch?
There are countless other examples where technology has altered the way we live, and often in a seismic manner.
Which is why this headline in Time magazine probably surprised no one:
ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills
The report out of MIT detailed a study of young adults between the ages of 18 and 39. Volunteers were asked to compose an essay, and there were three groups: those who used ChatGPT, those who used Google search, and those who had no help at all.
Then, using an electroencephalogram (EEG), researchers studied the brain activity of the writers, specifically the “brain engagement.” They found that as time went by, the ChatGPT users displayed diminished neural and linguistic skills. In fact, eventually the users got “lazier”—their term, not mine—until they were doing nothing but cutting and pasting.
The MIT scientists warn that people who use large language models (LLM) like Chat, Claude, DeepSeek, and Grok are potentially sacrificing their brain development for the sake of convenience.
The shortcut.
It’s way too tempting. I know. I’ve fallen down an LLM rabbit hole more than a few times.
So what does this portend for us when you consider mass results and the passage of time?
This is not new
I think back to an incident nearly 20 years ago. On our morning radio show, we hosted a live audience every Friday. Ten people were invited to sit in the studio with us during our four-hour show, to watch the behind-the-scenes activity and to learn a little more about their favorite morning team.
There’s a feature I call The Mindbender. It’s not a trivia question, but more of a lifestyle question you can have fun with. For example:
The average woman has seven pairs of shoes with this in common.
The answer?
She never wears them.
See? It’s not actual trivia, where you either know the answer or you don’t. With The Mindbender, you can puzzle it out and at least guess.
During one live audience show, there were two college students in the front row. When I asked the audience a Mindbender question, almost everyone else started chatting about it with those sitting around them, trying to puzzle it out.
But the two college students immediately grabbed their phones and started searching. When I told them they couldn’t do that, and instead had to figure it out without Google, they looked dumbfounded.
I’m not being mean—they truly looked terrified. How in the world could they be expected to figure something out without looking it up?
In other words, their critical thinking skills had already been damaged—and that was only having Google.
So how much more dramatic will those skills be eroded—as the Time headline suggests—after a few years of LLMs doing all the heavy lifting? Hell, even the light lifting.
I’m not one to cry “The sky is falling!” I’m a fan of A.I. and the new frontiers of discovery awaiting us, in fields ranging from engineering to medicine to energy. I think it’s an exciting time.
But I also believe it’s naïve to think our own abilities won’t be affected. When Gutenberg unveiled his printing press, doomsayers said access to so much printed material would ruin our ability to remember things—all we’d have to do is look in a book.
Sound familiar? All we have to do now is look in our phones. You know, the devices that eliminated our need to memorize phone numbers. (If you’re younger, it’s true: we used to each store at least ten phone numbers in our heads.)
Here’s what I think:
As with almost all new tech, the way we learn is morphing. When I use an LLM to work on a project, it does indeed offer suggestions I hadn’t thought of. But it also spurs new thoughts from me, taking me down paths I hadn’t considered. Yes, it’s doing a lot of work I used to do, but it’s also inspiring me to explore other options. In the past, I might’ve had one idea and stayed laser-focused on just that.
So what does that mean? Did ChatGPT ruin my ability to think? Or did it simply alter the way I think?
I feel like the answer is . . . both.
While I’m a fan of the robots, I’m honest enough to admit my critical thinking skills may be shaved down a bit. Or perhaps a lot. I don’t know. None of us knows yet.
But I also won’t lie and pretend to not be concerned, just as I was shaken by the inability of those students to even guess at a Mindbender question. The machines certainly are doing a mammoth amount of our work today, and I don’t expect that trend to stop or to reverse. It’s here to stay.
What it will take is a concerted effort by each individual person to push themselves to learn and to not become lazy or—worse—apathetic. There’s no way in hell we’ll get anywhere close to 100% participation in that challenge. Some people just want the shortcut and give no shits about any perception of laziness.
I think people in the creative fields might take the lead in this area, though. Many of us are finding our talents under attack by the robots, whether it’s art, writing, or voice acting. Since it’s impacting us so much, it’s up to us to lead the charge to not let our abilities atrophy entirely.
We must be the role models.
Even if the average person simply wants their damned burrito bowl.
Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and he’s trying to cultivate a friendly relationship with our future digital masters. Or current digital masters, depending on how you look at it.
Find most of his work at DomTestaBooks.com.