Axios AI
Driving the news: A study titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT” out of MIT last month raised hopes that we might be able to stop guessing which side of this debate is right.
- The study aimed to measure the “cognitive cost” of using genAI by looking at three groups tasked with writing brief essays — either on their own, using Google search or using ChatGPT.
- It found, very roughly speaking, that the more help subjects had with their writing, the less brain activity, or “neural connectivity,” they experienced as they worked.
Yes, but: This is a preprint study, meaning it hasn’t been peer-reviewed.
Flashback: Readers with still-functional memories may recall the furor around an Atlantic cover story by Nicholas Carr from 2008 titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
- Back then, the fear was that overreliance on screens and search engines to provide us with quick answers might stunt our ability to acquire and retain knowledge.
- But now, in the ChatGPT era, reliance on Google search is being framed by studies like MIT’s and Wharton’s as a superior alternative to AI’s convenient — and sometimes made-up — answers.
