I'm in a local facebook group for my town where people post hiking pics, bird pics, local business updates, contractor recommendations etc. I am annoyed to see "brain rot" videos starting to take over the page.
There is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last week. I opened the comments expecting to see other people complaining, "hey buddy take your ai-spam elsewhere" but all the comments were "cute!" "adorable" and "love this!" I just ended up blocking this dude but I am sad for humanity lol.
Have you seen sci-fi movies? It's all fake! And people are happy with this. Same here, it becomes annoying only after some time. Most didn't get to this point yet. By the time they get quality will be better, so like new again. After that even adults will have hard time telling apart reality from generated. Like little kids believe dreams are true.
"AI" absolutely contributes to brain rot. Google "AI" is just a status quo propagandist that makes things up, misunderstands questions and berates the "user" if the "user" dares to contradict. It is worse than any legacy media. It also weaves in how awesome "AI" is and how the "user" should treat "AI" with respect, preferably like a human.
You should definitely keep minors away from this dangerous brainwashing.
Even better "AI"s lead to outsourcing of thought, search capabilities, speed reading and critical reflection.
It's funny how multiple commenters here are reacting to this article by saying that older media is also bad when the article itself is about specific observations about how relying on AI and overengaging in social media can lead to detrimental outcomes.
Ironically this tendency to form an opinion without investing time might also be a form of brain rot.
Anything that contributes to you not needing to actually "think" and instead just "react" is going to be bad for you because it is simply engaging your reward system. The only way LLMs can be a net good is if they free you from drudgery and allow you to work harder on the things that actually matter. (Think dishwashers and laundry machines). If you are using them as an "easy button" so you can finish your work (poorly) to have more time to scroll your timeline then yes, you are turning your brain into mush.
I'm purposefully not engaging with whether LLMs are actually even good at what they do, which is another discussion.
Why hasn't a social media platform with mandatory verification to prove users are unique humans taken off yet? Still too hard to break the existing network effects?
I think we'll start to see AI as any other tool that can atrophy your natural faculties. You can use a wheelchair to get everywhere, but your leg muscles will start to wither, but a wheeled vehicle for going longer distances is a genuinely useful tool.
Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just need to be honest about whether it's your brain in the driver's seat or the chat bot.
I noticed this in myself and had a pang of disgust at myself. I used to write almost daily, but with the baby we've had there hasn't been time. So recently when I was thinking of getting back on it, I went testing several writing helpers that are LLM-powered. I think it took me a few days to realise I was only doing it because it's easier and “everyone is doing it”. Like, I write for pleasure, why the hell do I need to automate part of the process?
I’m doing most complicated projects I ever work , I would not even try to implement them without AI. My brain is exploding of complexity every time , I passively learn lots of topics I only had a vague understanding in the past
Contribute? That's basically its only purpose now, rot your brain with a dopamine drip and show you a bajillion ads. Now with AI slopgen being baked right into most of them it's been set into overdrive.
Deleted all my social media accounts except Youtube (but I use Unhook to remove everything except my subscriptions and the search). Haven't felt better. I use Telegram and Whatsapp and SMS to keep in touch with friends and family, nothing connected to any social app. I avoid all of the social-media-lite features in those apps like the plague.
“I’m pretty frightened, to be frank,” Dr. Melumad said. “I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.”
20 years ago I remember all the scary articles/studies about the web ruining education.
e.g
Net cheaters (from link below)
The ease of gathering information on the Internet has a darker side. The simplicity of finding out things on the Web also makes it easy for students to cheat. Cutting and pasting text from a Web site and into a paper is effortless. So is wholesale copying or purchasing finished essays or reports. About a fifth of online youth (18%) say they know of someone who has used the Internet to cheat on a paper or test. While 9% of those who have been online for a year or less know someone who has cheated, 19% of those who have been online for 2 to 3 years and 28% of those who have been online for more than three years know people who have used the Net to cheat
Socrates thought that writing contributed to brain rot.
If I AI rots my brain than so did Google before it, and printed encyclopedias before that. In reality, the fact I can get my questions answered quickly only makes me think of more and more questions to ask, more things to wonder about, more problems to ponder.
The wishful cynic in me sometimes thinks this might actually lead to a partial reversal of ageism in the workforce. It's almost starting to look like the kids graduating from school with chatgpt are actually handicapped (painting in extremely broad strokes; there will always be prodigies) and those who graduated or worked before 2022 will actually become more desirable to hire.
I'm sure this take is at best oversimplified. Probably mostly wrong. But it's certainly something I will think about while hiring from now on
Such bs! Every new tech causes the disgrace of society! Music, films, dancing, comic books, the internet. Everything is always evil except the bible of course.
Funny I've been trying to quit reddit and I'm just like "what do I do with my time" I usually have two windows: reddit on the left and YT on the right. I work 7 days a week and haven't made anything for myself code/hardware wise in a while.
I think of this concept living second hand through other people's lives (social media) it's not living your own
Lumping AI together with social media is confusing for me. One is a tool for the user, the other is not.
If social media is a tool for anything, it is for the company to generate ad revenue. Sure there is value someone can extract (keeping in touch family). But I can also extract value from junk mail (using it as scrap paper for notes and lists.)
AI is still a tool. I think? I have not seen any direct way that monetizes it through ads, yet. I expect AI with a revenue model will look way worse.
AI is turning people dumb. I see it all the time with code slop. It's the old "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish". Maybe a tool-using approach to AI is "should me how to do this", rather than "do this for me". "Show me an example of some code" is more useful to me than unleashing it on my project.
Also, social media is obviously a sort of digital narcotic. Probably should be scheduled.
31 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 31.3 ms ] threadThere is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last week. I opened the comments expecting to see other people complaining, "hey buddy take your ai-spam elsewhere" but all the comments were "cute!" "adorable" and "love this!" I just ended up blocking this dude but I am sad for humanity lol.
At the end of the day, people don't care if it's real or not as long as it's either entertaining or tells them what they want to hear.
Schfifty Five https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XccUMOQ978
You should definitely keep minors away from this dangerous brainwashing.
Even better "AI"s lead to outsourcing of thought, search capabilities, speed reading and critical reflection.
Ironically this tendency to form an opinion without investing time might also be a form of brain rot.
I'm purposefully not engaging with whether LLMs are actually even good at what they do, which is another discussion.
Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just need to be honest about whether it's your brain in the driver's seat or the chat bot.
Well, this guy obviously didn't get the memo that Google search isn't what it was 10 years ago and is total junk.
It's not just AI brain rot. Brain rot is everywhere. Social media, linear TV, politics.
Deleted all my social media accounts except Youtube (but I use Unhook to remove everything except my subscriptions and the search). Haven't felt better. I use Telegram and Whatsapp and SMS to keep in touch with friends and family, nothing connected to any social app. I avoid all of the social-media-lite features in those apps like the plague.
“I’m pretty frightened, to be frank,” Dr. Melumad said. “I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.”
20 years ago I remember all the scary articles/studies about the web ruining education.
e.g
Net cheaters (from link below)
The ease of gathering information on the Internet has a darker side. The simplicity of finding out things on the Web also makes it easy for students to cheat. Cutting and pasting text from a Web site and into a paper is effortless. So is wholesale copying or purchasing finished essays or reports. About a fifth of online youth (18%) say they know of someone who has used the Internet to cheat on a paper or test. While 9% of those who have been online for a year or less know someone who has cheated, 19% of those who have been online for 2 to 3 years and 28% of those who have been online for more than three years know people who have used the Net to cheat
from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2001/09/01/main-report-...
If I AI rots my brain than so did Google before it, and printed encyclopedias before that. In reality, the fact I can get my questions answered quickly only makes me think of more and more questions to ask, more things to wonder about, more problems to ponder.
Such a low bar.
I'm sure this take is at best oversimplified. Probably mostly wrong. But it's certainly something I will think about while hiring from now on
I think of this concept living second hand through other people's lives (social media) it's not living your own
If social media is a tool for anything, it is for the company to generate ad revenue. Sure there is value someone can extract (keeping in touch family). But I can also extract value from junk mail (using it as scrap paper for notes and lists.)
AI is still a tool. I think? I have not seen any direct way that monetizes it through ads, yet. I expect AI with a revenue model will look way worse.
AI is turning people dumb. I see it all the time with code slop. It's the old "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish". Maybe a tool-using approach to AI is "should me how to do this", rather than "do this for me". "Show me an example of some code" is more useful to me than unleashing it on my project.
Also, social media is obviously a sort of digital narcotic. Probably should be scheduled.