How many of you still have mental agility in simple mathematical operations? Since the emergence of the internet and digital search engines, we have stopped memorizing in general and many of us have an absolute dependence on the browser to get anywhere.
In the 90s, Mathematics teachers went on strike over the rise of the calculatorarguing that students should only use them in more advanced courses, since this could affect their learning in earlier stages. Many years have passed since then, and all of us, at least those of my generation, learned mathematics, some of it very complex, and also how to use very sophisticated calculators.
But it is true that, in our daily lives, most of us turn to the calculator or spreadsheet, even for simple operations. Since covid-19, practically no one pays in cash anymore, and when we do, many of us realize that we have lost that numerical mental agility. Does this mean that we are losing cognitive abilities? Or do we lose some and gain others? As before with the calculator, is something similar happening to us with artificial intelligence?
We will soon celebrate three years since the emergence of ChatGPT, and I think no one doubts the new capabilities it is providing us or how its use has grown dramatically in such a short time. For the first time, Technology is available to practically everyone, without the need to learn any programming language.simply with natural language, which to a greater or lesser extent all humans master.
In these three years we have seen notable advances in medicine, education or code developmentamong others. It is well known how AI has been key in the AlphaFold project, contributing to the faster generation of new drugs; or how it can help us reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, generating texts, presentations or connecting applications. Furthermore, applied to education, it can offer new ways of teaching, adapting knowledge to each student.
Each technological advance has its advantages, but it also poses new challenges. In the case of generative AI, there are fundamentally two: the future of work and ethical use. According to the latest report from the World Economic Forum on the future of employment, many positions will disappear and others will emerge, but the balance seems positive, 7% net employment growth. Even so, It will involve profound transformations and a period of adaptation for everyone.
Regarding ethical challenges, some still to be resolved, we must consider the generation of biases or fake newsthe impact on intellectual property and privacy. Since the emergence of generative AI, hundreds of studies and reflections have been published on these two great challenges, as well as recommendations in this regard. However, for now There is little research that addresses the impact of AI on our cognitive abilities.
One of the studies that has caught my attention the most is the experimental work carried out by MIT. In it, participants were divided into three groups to write essays: the first without access to technology, the second with web search engines, and the third assisted by AI. This structure was maintained for three sessions, but in the last session participants were exchanged between groups.
The study showed how participants who did not use any additional resources had greater brain activity, and those who showed less activity were those who used the help of AI. That is to say, AI use was associated with lower cognitive activation. In the group exchange, those who went from not using technology to using AI maintained high neuronal activation, while those who had depended on AI and went to not using anything showed difficulties in reactivating that brain activity.
Regarding remembering what they had written, the groups that used AI had more difficulties remembering their own text. Although the study has limitations (such as the sample size, the educational context or the use of a single language model), the conclusions invite us to reflect on whether our cognitive abilities are decreasing and if, consequently, we are generating a “cognitive debt.”
Cognitive debt can be understood as the cumulative loss of mental effortcritical thinking or memory that occurs when we continuously delegate certain intellectual tasks. Every day new studies emerge that reconfirm some of these conclusions.
Many educational institutions warn that writing and reading skills are being affected by the emergence of AI in learning. UNESCO and the World Economic Forum highlight that frequent delegation of reading and writing tasks to AI leads to a decrease in memory, critical thinking and problem solving.
Some neurology experts maintain the need to find a balance between absolute delegation and proper use of AIso as not to weaken working memory, critical analysis or problem-solving ability. If, for example, we are going to write a text, we can ask for help to structure it, look for sources or review the style, but we should not systematically delegate the entire writing.
For almost twenty years we have lived in a digital world characterized by information overload. In this context, AI, used well, can be an excellent tool for finding and summarizing information, which would allow us to have more time to read, learn and strengthen our critical thinking. Is this what we really do with the time that AI “saves” us? Or are we, without realizing it, increasing our cognitive debt with its use?
We must also not forget that we are judging a technology that has only been on the market for three years, and we do so with the perspective of people trained in the 20th century. What would the Socratic philosophers have thought about the printing press if it had emerged in their time? They would probably have argued that critical thinking could only be developed through the oral transmission of knowledge.
The philosopher and writer Wolfram Eilenberger, born in the 70s, recently commented in an interview: “With artificial intelligence we close the era of the written and enter the era of the oral.” With the exponential evolution of AI and its use, it may be the case that the majority of written content in the future will be generated by it. What impact could this have on our cognitive abilities? Will cognitive debt be the price of a new form of collective intelligence? Time will tell us.
*** Mónica Villas, technology consultant and co-founder of OdiseIA.