It is nearly impossible to escape conversations about artificial intelligence (AI). AI has weaved its way into our professional, academic and personal lives just three years after ChatGPT was released to the public. Every syllabus you received this semester has a new addendum regarding AI, and I’ve heard it mentioned in countless speeches, presentations, articles, Instagram posts and in conversations between me and my friends.
But there’s a reason we talk about AI so much. AI is new. It’s scary. It’s difficult to navigate.
AI has already been integrated into nearly every facet of our lives and is here to stay, but I’d like to argue against an overreliance – or any reliance – on AI.
A person’s use of AI boils down to a desire to get something done quickly. We ask AI to make a workout plan instantaneously instead of taking the time to think about our personal fitness goals and time commitments. We offshore our brainstorming processes to chatbots instead of thinking creatively. Writing for anything, be it a résumé, a short story or a class essay, should be personal, informed by the individual’s worldview and unique voice, not generated in under a minute by AI.
“We want things immediate and fast,” said Aly Juma in an article for Medium. “There’s no time to dawdle and get distracted, rather everything should happen the very instant we desire it.”
AI gets things done quickly, but why do we need to move so fast? What do we gain from telling AI to brainstorm for us? What do we learn when AI outlines, writes and edits our essays? What do we learn when AI does our thinking?
We don’t learn anything. We retain information only when we think slowly, when we work hard. We learn when we use effort.
“The truth is, much of what is manifested in… breakthroughs is the culmination of previous hard work and subconscious thinking,” Juma said.
Overreliance on AI has already shown to have effects on an individual’s brain. A project by researcher Natailya Kos’myna for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the neural activations of three groups writing essays, one of which used an AI language learning model while another used only their brains. The study found significant differences between the groups, with the brain-only group exhibiting the strongest use of neural networks, while the AI-assisted group exhibited the weakest.
“The LLM group’s participants performed worse than their counterparts in the Brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring,” the report stated. Additionally, participants in the AI-assisted group were the least able to quote from the essays they had just written.
A Forbes study showed that most employees reported reclaiming about five hours a week by using AI. I would imagine a similar number could be said for students and individuals using AI daily. But I can almost guarantee that this saved time is not being used wisely. It is too easy to fall into a social media doomscroll or binge a show, slipping into the fruitless and frictionless digital world.
President Kevin Brown’s chapel speech on the first Monday of the semester has been on my mind these past couple of weeks. In our lives, there will be friction – hard tasks or uncomfortable, challenging circumstances that we must face. A lot of the advancements in technology or policy have been made to reduce friction, and in some areas, this is a good thing. However, certain friction is necessary for growth, like the friction of a challenging essay, wrestling with a difficult topic or experiencing a shift in your worldview.
Life without friction reminds me of slipping on a lake of ice. With no firm grip on the world around me, I’d slide around aimlessly, stuck with nowhere to go. Stagnant. It might be comfortable to lie there for a while, but when I eventually decide to move, I won’t have the right tools to get anywhere.
The digital world is frictionless with its mind-numbing social media, empty entertainment and easy AI access. I do not grow when I interact with AI. I grow when I wrestle with a topic, when I sit with my thoughts and when I rack my brain for answers to a complex question. It will hurt. It will be uncomfortable. It will take time, but I’m in no rush to figure these things out.
Brown went on to discuss students’ increasing use of AI to limit cognitive strain. An AI start-up described it as “cheating on everything.” But cheating on everything atrophies your natural capacities to think.
“If thinking is fundamental to what it means to be a human, then utilizing [AI] literally dehumanizes us,” Brown said. “It empties you and I of our humanity. Our minds, our attention, our capacities and resilience–they grow stronger with friction. You can’t hack learning.”
You need to think about things. To think is human. To experience friction is human. If we offshore our capabilities to AI, we lose our humanity. Even small tasks like creating a schedule stretch our minds and force us to think, reflect and grow.
AI will continue to advance, and as it does, new regulations will need to be created. But in this stage, the only limitation to your use of AI is yourself. Your use of AI is a personal choice, but I urge you to limit your interactions with it.
Stop slipping on the ice and take the time to think.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
Slipping on ice: my thoughts on the use of AI
It is nearly impossible to escape conversations about artificial intelligence (AI). AI has weaved its way into our professional, academic and personal lives just three years after ChatGPT was released to the public. Every syllabus you received this semester has a new addendum regarding AI, and I’ve heard it mentioned in countless speeches, presentations, articles, Instagram posts and in conversations between me and my friends.
But there’s a reason we talk about AI so much. AI is new. It’s scary. It’s difficult to navigate.
AI has already been integrated into nearly every facet of our lives and is here to stay, but I’d like to argue against an overreliance – or any reliance – on AI.
A person’s use of AI boils down to a desire to get something done quickly. We ask AI to make a workout plan instantaneously instead of taking the time to think about our personal fitness goals and time commitments. We offshore our brainstorming processes to chatbots instead of thinking creatively. Writing for anything, be it a résumé, a short story or a class essay, should be personal, informed by the individual’s worldview and unique voice, not generated in under a minute by AI.
“We want things immediate and fast,” said Aly Juma in an article for Medium. “There’s no time to dawdle and get distracted, rather everything should happen the very instant we desire it.”
AI gets things done quickly, but why do we need to move so fast? What do we gain from telling AI to brainstorm for us? What do we learn when AI outlines, writes and edits our essays? What do we learn when AI does our thinking?
We don’t learn anything. We retain information only when we think slowly, when we work hard. We learn when we use effort.
“The truth is, much of what is manifested in… breakthroughs is the culmination of previous hard work and subconscious thinking,” Juma said.
Overreliance on AI has already shown to have effects on an individual’s brain. A project by researcher Natailya Kos’myna for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the neural activations of three groups writing essays, one of which used an AI language learning model while another used only their brains. The study found significant differences between the groups, with the brain-only group exhibiting the strongest use of neural networks, while the AI-assisted group exhibited the weakest.
“The LLM group’s participants performed worse than their counterparts in the Brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring,” the report stated. Additionally, participants in the AI-assisted group were the least able to quote from the essays they had just written.
A Forbes study showed that most employees reported reclaiming about five hours a week by using AI. I would imagine a similar number could be said for students and individuals using AI daily. But I can almost guarantee that this saved time is not being used wisely. It is too easy to fall into a social media doomscroll or binge a show, slipping into the fruitless and frictionless digital world.
President Kevin Brown’s chapel speech on the first Monday of the semester has been on my mind these past couple of weeks. In our lives, there will be friction – hard tasks or uncomfortable, challenging circumstances that we must face. A lot of the advancements in technology or policy have been made to reduce friction, and in some areas, this is a good thing. However, certain friction is necessary for growth, like the friction of a challenging essay, wrestling with a difficult topic or experiencing a shift in your worldview.
Life without friction reminds me of slipping on a lake of ice. With no firm grip on the world around me, I’d slide around aimlessly, stuck with nowhere to go. Stagnant. It might be comfortable to lie there for a while, but when I eventually decide to move, I won’t have the right tools to get anywhere.
The digital world is frictionless with its mind-numbing social media, empty entertainment and easy AI access. I do not grow when I interact with AI. I grow when I wrestle with a topic, when I sit with my thoughts and when I rack my brain for answers to a complex question. It will hurt. It will be uncomfortable. It will take time, but I’m in no rush to figure these things out.
Asbury Swim Coach Qualifies for Boston Marathon
Brown went on to discuss students’ increasing use of AI to limit cognitive strain. An AI start-up described it as “cheating on everything.” But cheating on everything atrophies your natural capacities to think.
“If thinking is fundamental to what it means to be a human, then utilizing [AI] literally dehumanizes us,” Brown said. “It empties you and I of our humanity. Our minds, our attention, our capacities and resilience–they grow stronger with friction. You can’t hack learning.”
You need to think about things. To think is human. To experience friction is human. If we offshore our capabilities to AI, we lose our humanity. Even small tasks like creating a schedule stretch our minds and force us to think, reflect and grow.
AI will continue to advance, and as it does, new regulations will need to be created. But in this stage, the only limitation to your use of AI is yourself. Your use of AI is a personal choice, but I urge you to limit your interactions with it.
Stop slipping on the ice and take the time to think.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.