The result of the study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on those people who completely relied on artificial intelligence (AI) shows how the mind is stagnated. By analogy, it is like an unused vehicle; it quickly gets rusted.
What then is the nature of the mind? In the Philosophy of the Mind, one of the main questions is whether or not the mind is a separate substance from the body (dualism, held by Rene Descartes), or it is ultimately reducible to the physical processes (monism/materialism). Other aspects are consciousness, intentionality, perception, cognition.
The dualistic and monistic views of the mind are still debated by philosophers. Many of the scientists of the mind hold the monistic view. Some hold the dualistic view. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a neuroscientist, holds “that the mind is a being distinct from the body, though intimately related to and dependent on the body” (Mystery of the Mind, xvii). He further says that “to consciousness the brain is messenger” (8).
Some believe that the mind is the soul or the soul is the mind; they are just the same. It is responsible for consciousness, feelings, thoughts, including cognitive function. In this view, the mind or soul is immaterial and it therefore continues existing after the body’s death. It coincides with the Catholic teaching on soul’s immortality, which can be traced back to Plato via St. Augustine of Hippo, and the soul would face God’s judgment seat after separation from the body.
For brevity, let us focus on mind’s cognitive, or thinking, function. As Dr. Penfield asserts that mind is a being related to and dependent on the body, it follows the mind requires the body for its development, especially among the still growing up young people. Thus, the brain has to be put into “action,” as “brain is a messenger to consciousness.” In other words, brain is the vehicle through which the mind or soul can become embodied. In order for the mind to function maximally, in accordance with its nature designed by God, i.e., thinking, it should be put to work.
It is consonance with the study conducted by MIT on those three groups of people: the first group used ChatGPT only; the second group, brain-only; and third group, Google search engine.
The result shows that the minds of the first group are being stagnated. The teachers who assessed their Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) type of test say that their works are lacking originality, unconnected and “soulless.”
Such a result corroborates the work of Dr. Penfield concerning the relationship between mind and body or brain. In short, when the mind is not put into action, as using ChatGPT or AI only, it becomes stagnated and cognitive functioning would become, in a sense, “dead.”
It is therefore a dangerous phenomenon today. As it is trending now, this generation and the succeeding ones would become detached from reality, uncritical of what is going on in society, and oblivious of the salvation of one’s own soul.
Consequently, the kind of society in the near future would be like what the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow says in his famous poem, A Psalm of Life: “In the world’s broad field of battle / In the bivouac of life / Be not like dumb, driven cattle / Be a hero in the stripe.”
Longfellow’s call to man to “Be not like dumb, driven cattle” would most likely fail, since man would rather become “like dumb, driven cattle” by the continued reliance on AI from childhood to adolescence to old age.
It would be a society of “dumb, driven cattle,” or of what Russian novelist Eugene Zamiatin describes in his novel, “We,” or of what George Orwell also describes in his novel, “1984.”