Several years ago, when I moved into the house I live in now, I noticed something. Whenever I climbed the stairs, I could feel it in my legs. I wasn’t tired or in pain, but it was a little bit harder than I was expecting. I realized it wasn’t that I was fat (though I was) or out of shape (that too). It was that I never had to climb stairs. Our previous house didn’t have an upstairs and I almost never had to climb them for work or anywhere else.
My legs had to get used to climbing stairs again.
About a decade ago, I found to my horror that I had lost the ability to concentrate when I read a book. I had assumed my reading dropped off because of the arrival of our first child, but the truth was that I had a hard time reading a book, even when I wanted to. I just could not read more than a few paragraphs at a time.
What I realized was that my brain had adapted to reading Twitter and short articles online; my ability to read for longer than a few hundred words was seriously diminished. It took years to regain that ability and while I am relieved to say that I’m reading more books than ever, I now know that it’s something I need to intentionally maintain. Our bodies and brains change, depending on how we use them, or how we don’t use them.
Last week, MIT released a study about the potential impact that LLM’s (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT might have on our brains when it comes to learning, critical thinking and more. The results are about what I expected. Basically, using ChatGPT or similar AI tools makes our brains lazy and dumber. This really should not surprise us. Anytime we rely on anything to do something for us, we become less good at doing that thing ourselves. When the thing we’re asking AI to do for us is think, well the results are predictable.
In my experience, people around me tend to use ChatGPT to solve immediate, small problems. I’ve seen it used in group settings when we are brainstorming ideas, for example. Does ChatGPT offer solutions? Yes. Are they as good as what we would come up with in the room? Not very often, but sometimes. So, what’s wrong with using it to generate ideas? Because generating ideas is something our brain is supposed to do, and the less we ask it to do that, the less capable it will be of doing it in the future.
Think of anything you used to be really good at. Maybe in college you became conversant in another language, or maybe you played sports, or maybe you learned how to draw. Have you ever tried to go back to that thing years later? Often, you realize “Wow, most of what I had back then is just gone.” Another example — have you ever tried to help your kids with their math homework? It’s a bit demoralizing to have your kid watch you try really hard to remember how long division works.
If you’ve ever trained for a race, or worked hard to get in shape then you know the frustrating truth that months of progress can be lost in a few, undisciplined weeks. If you’ve ever seen a pro athlete a year or so after they retire, the difference is noticeable. My favorite example is former Colts lineman Jeff Saturday, whose post-NFL physique looks like a completely different person.
This isn’t to say that we should all be doing the mental equivalent of bulking up to the size of an NFL lineman. But it does mean being aware of what we let atrophy, and what the effects might be. The MIT study suggests that when we rely on AI to help us think, we simply end up thinking less. This should not surprise us! I have seen plenty of people argue that ChatGPT helps them be better at writing. It does not. It actively makes them worse at writing, because they are writing less. They aren’t doing the work they used to do, and so those “muscles” are going to waste away. Thinking that AI will improve your creativity is like going to the gym and expecting to get stronger, while having someone else lift weights for you.
If we use AI, we should put guardrails in place to ensure that we are not allowing important things to atrophy. For myself, I actually like using Perplexity a lot as a Google replacement. It’s a far superior search tool and the ability to ask follow-up questions is really useful. It’s also less annoyingly-chatty than ChatGPT. What I never, ever do is use AI to do anything Creative, or ask it to help me with a problem I need to think through. I would never ask it to help me write an email, come up with ideas for sermon series names, or edit a script, for example. Those are skills I should be developing for the rest of my life, and every time I ask AI to help, I’m losing progress.
Here’s a suggestion for some very broad guardrails:
DON’T ask AI to do help you with something you find difficult.
DO use AI for tasks that are mindless and repetitive.
There are plenty of things that it’s ok to let atrophy, because there are more important things you could be doing with your time and brain power. There’s no reason for me to be good at making chicken sandwiches quickly anymore; I haven’t worked at Chick-fil-A since high school. And nobody argues that we should get rid of nail guns because they believe only human hands should hammer nails. But the human brain is different and we should be very careful each time we decide to ask less of it.
If you use AI, let me know in the comments where you’ve found it helpful in ways that reduce those busywork-type tasks. Are there things you won’t use AI for? Why? What guardrails have you set up for yourself?
Yes—agree—AI is helpful for basic searching/info/even a how-to. However, as an author, it makes me cringe to submit something and have to add a disclaimer that I didn't use AI (ugh). There will never be anything that out-thinks a human brain working at its finest! We have everything we need to think, reason, create, and produce, and as long as we do our part to steward it, our brains can create new pathways, which allow them to continue learning, developing, and growing. If we rely on AI to do all of those things, we will see a significant decline in society and lose the ability as humans to think independently. I'm not sure how to do it, but those of us who actually know how to use an em dash are going to have to encourage those who, in their desire to take the easy way out, will create problems not only for themselves but also for the future of all things creative.
Agree and would add, when used for creative purposes, it makes us less human.