A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shows that ChatGPT (or generally, artificial intelligence) could be eroding critical thinking skills. The result is alarming.
A test was conducted. Three groups of people were asked to write a Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) type of essays. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was also used to measure and record brain activity. The first group used ChatGPT or simply, AI; the second group used “brain-only”; and the third group used Google search engine.
The first group produced extremely similar essays, lacking original thought. English teachers who assessed called the work, “soulless.” The EEG showed their minds to have “low executive control and attentional engagement.” In their third essay, they simply had ChatGPT to “do almost all of the work.”
The second (brain-only) group “showed the highest neural connectivity, especially in alpha, theta and delta bands, which are associated with creativity ideation, memory load and semantic processing.” They were found to be “more engaged, curious” and to have “claimed ownership….”
The third group (Google search users) also showed “high satisfaction and active brain function.”
Then the first two groups were asked to re-write their essays. The first group was no longer allowed to use ChatGPT and the second group was then allowed to use ChatGPT.
The first group “remembered little, showed weaker alpha and theta brain waves, which likely reflected a bypassing of deep memory processes.” In contrast, the second group showed a “significant increase in brain connectivity across all EEG frequency bands.” In this way, it shows that AI, if and only if used properly, could enhance learning rather than diminish it.
True, but for children, the concept “use-it-properly” is not yet registered in their still developing minds, except for rare gifted children.
The paper’s main author, Nataliya Kosmyna, full-time research scientist at MIT Media Lab, raised the alarm, for AI is “affecting children now.” She says, “education on how we use these tools, and promoting the fact that your brain does need to develop in a more analog way, is absolutely critical. We need to have active legislation in sync” and test “these tools before we implement them.”
Dr. Zishan Khan, a psychiatrist treating children and adolescents, says that “from a psychiatric standpoint … overreliance on Large Language Models can have unintended psychological and cognitive consequences, especially for young people whose brains are still developing. These neural connections that help you in accessing information, the memory of facts, and the ability to be resilient: all that is going to weaken.”
Resilience … going to weaken? It reverberates! For now, we are used to hearing many young people, when subjected to stress due to school work, difficulty at home, strained relationships, etc., resort to suicide. Weakened or no more resilience!
What St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans could be related to this. “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect” (Rom.12:2).
This age conforms to technology, AI in particular. The mind could lose resilience and could be unable to judge what is good, even for one’s own self. God designs the mind to develop and to be at work; but AI would make it stagnated as shown in the case of the first group being tested by the MIT scientists.
This phenomenon is also clearly an important topic in the philosophy of the mind.