put your thinking-cap on
It will come as no surprise that I’m not a fan of celebrity this and celebrity that, but t’other week my disappointment of our celebrity culture hit a new all-time low. It wasn’t just the infantile questions on Romesh’s version of Anne Robinson’s once-brilliant quiz show but the fact that several so-called celebrities actually delighted in their lack of knowledge, they genuinely rejoiced in their stupidity and appeared to mock those who answered anything correctly. Doh. Taking into account the virtual world these individuals seem to inhabit, is it a fair assumption that technological advances are responsible for making it harder to think, function, learn and converse?
Around two years ago, MIT research scientist, Nataliya Kosmyna, whilst analysing brain states began receiving reports from people, who had started using generative-AI ChatGPT language models, and who believed their brain function had changed somewhat and their memories appeared impaired. Her subsequent studies have clearly highlighted that those who use such tools within their daily life very quickly become reliant upon them. In other words, for the people using ChatGPT there was less going-on up-top!
The fundamental issue, Kosmyna found, is that as soon as a new time-saving-easy-life innovation hits the streets we’re evolutionarily primed to adopt it. We love shortcuts and are engineered to do so, it’s in our genes. The complete contradiction is our brains need (to use the modern term) ‘friction’ to learn, develop and remain sharp but instinctively, it wants to avoid it! Use it or lose it seems to be an apt mantra.
Furthermore, she received more than 4,000 emails from teachers and lecturers who felt their students were neither learning nor engaging properly due to their widespread adoption of ChatGPT. They worried that their pupils were not only permanently distracted but were unable to develop critical thinking skills, that, with quick answers only a click-away, AI was creating a generation that didn’t retain usable knowledge or possess any genuine understanding of the material they submitted. One recent survey found that 92% of university students use AI and 20% have done so in ‘writing’ a complete assignment. Even more concerning is that many appear unable to hold a meaningful conversation without continually referring to their chatbot of choice.
In today’s tech-driven world, friction is presented as the harder reality to deal with. Consequently, we avoid phone calls, automatically defer to apps, Google everything however simple, log-in for home-delivery, are guided by Satnav, queue at the self-service checkout, avoid eye-contact and shun social interaction. And we’re doing this on auto-pilot, in a state of continuous partial-attention. Unsurprisingly, last year, ‘brain rot’ was named Oxford University Press’s word of the year and falling worldwide IQ scores are hard to dispute.
Lest we forget, it’s only software developers and drug-dealers who refer to their customers as ‘users’ and in the frictionless online world this is exactly what we are, passive and dependent. The modern internet experience, with its mindless scrolling of increasingly dumb and corrosive content, doesn’t necessarily make idiots of us but it certainly primes us to act like one.
