Is AI Making Us Stupid?

AI tools like ChatGPT have taken the world by storm, with tons of people saying they use them regularly. This is especially true for students, many of whom say they use AI to get their schoolwork done. And this is freaking some of us out — we're hearing that jumping on the AI train could be a terrible idea, partly because of claims that these tools could be bad for our brains. So — are we outsourcing too much of our thinking to the bots?? Will our brains turn to mush? Or can we use AI to boost our brainpower? To find out, we talk to Dr. Shiri Melumad, expert in the psychology of technology, and Dr. Aaron French, expert in information systems. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsAIStupid In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Is AI ruining or boosting our brains? (02:45) How often are LLMs like ChatGPT wrong? (05:01) Do LLMs mess with our ability to learn? (19:26) Does using AI make us more productive? (24:33) Another example of a technology that freaked a bunch of people out (27:40) Can using AI help us learn? This episode was produced by Meryl Horn with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke with including Daniela Fernandes, Dr. Marcin Romanczyk, Professor Michael Henderson, Dr. Tim Zindulka, and Professor Vitomir Kovanovicent. Special thanks also to Sebastian Peleato, Chris Suter, Elise, Dylan, Jack Weinstein and Hunter. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Merrill Horn, filling in for Wendy Zukerman. You're listening to Science Versus.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  This is the show that pits facts against frying our brains with AI.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Today on the show, is AI destroying our ability to think? A lot of people are saying, yeah, it is. And they say that we've got the science to prove it.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It's been medically verified that ChatGPT makes people stupider.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  ChatGPT users could not even remember what they wrote. It basically stopped thinking entirely.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Every single time we give it a prompt, our own brain cells are burning.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  And if this is true, we might be in for a brain cell bonfire because a lot of us are using AI. One recent survey found that 62% of adults in the US say they interact with it at least several times a week. And AI really seems to be booming for students. A bunch of surveys suggest that around 80% of high schoolers and college students say they're using it for schoolwork. And nobody's really worried about this.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Obviously, I'm kidding. People are panicking.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  We have no idea how our students will ever learn anything or whether universities have any future.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  One professor graded papers and discovered every single one was AI-generated. The whole system is cooked. Cheating is the new major. Game over. It's just [bleep] game over.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  But there is a flip side here because some people say that AI is going to be good for us, that it can help us save time by breezing through busy work, get information for us, and accelerate scientific progress.

• 1:38Speaker 05

  It can do away with a lot of the really annoying, sort of tedious tasks.

• 1:42Speaker 06

  It's helped me boost my productivity by like 300%.

• 1:47Speaker 07

  AI is driving a transformation across all fields of science.

• 1:51Speaker 08

  Buckle up, tech enthusiasts. The future with AI is bright and it's happening now.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  Wait a minute. Buckle up, tech enthusiasts? That last one was AI. How did it get in there? But seriously, who is right here? Could AI help us be more productive and lead to a boom in science? Or is using AI the equivalent of shoving your brain into the microwave?

• 2:14Speaker 05

  So do we stop using AI so our hippocampus doesn't turn into a hot pocket?

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Buckle up, science enthusiasts, because when it comes to AI, a lot of people are saying...

• 2:23Speaker 01

  ChatGPT makes people stupider.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  But then there's science.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  And full disclosure, some AI companies do advertise on Science vs. Science vs. AI is coming up after the break.

• 2:44Speaker 09

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• 3:55Speaker 00

  Welcome back. I'm Meryl Horn, and today we're going to look at whether using AI, stuff like ChatGPT, is bad for our brains. I have senior producer Rose Rimler here. Hi, Rose.

• 4:06Speaker 06

  Hi, Meryl.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  So you recently mentioned to me that you have been using ChatGPT more and more these days.

• 4:13Speaker 06

  I guess that's true. Mind your own.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  I'm curious, like, do you feel like it's changing how your brain is working?

• 4:25Speaker 06

  I do sometimes catch myself about to ask ChatGPT something that I could do, and I'm just too lazy.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Do you want to see what you've used ChatGPT for recently?

• 4:38Speaker 06

  I asked how many Roma tomatoes to equal 500 milliliters of pureed tomato. How to clean my velvet armchair I spilled milk on. I asked it to tell me if a couple of bottles of wine I had on Thanksgiving were dry or sweet, I think, dry or juicy.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Would you say it's like your go to now for like just looking up info online? Yeah, it is kind of becoming my go to. It's it is. For me also, and I've been like curious about what kind of problems this might lead to. So let's just address one thing first. We we do need to acknowledge that one big problem with this sort of AI is that it can get stuff wrong. I actually did try to find some numbers on this, like how often is it wrong? And when ChatGPT first came out, it looked pretty bad. Like, a lot of the research was finding that it was only right like roughly half the time. Mm hmm. I remember that from the early ChatGPT exploratory stuff. Yeah, it made up a lot of a lot of stuff.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  And now there are a couple of reviews which compared like ChatGPT 3.5 to ChatGPT 4. And they do find that it's gotten better. But it's still not 100% accurate. So bottom line, it's like it's just hard to tell whether it's telling you BS or not. Yeah, that's true. And so, yeah, I do feel like that's one way it could be making us stupid is just by like feeding us incorrect information. Yes, just like the government. Yeah. But now on top of that, there's this other fear that it's like bad for our brains to be using stuff like ChatGPT or other LLMs, large language models. Like if we let these things do a bunch of the thinking for us, then we'll lose our ability to think on our own

• 6:24Speaker 00

  or even be creative. So let's dive into all of that. Okay. And I want to start with this one study. It was done by Sherry Melo Mad. She's an associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania. And Sherry looks at how tech is changing us. When did you first get the idea to start looking into AI?

• 6:43Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, as a person who studies technology, it was difficult not to study AI, right? It's pretty prevalent at this point.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  So yeah, Shiri just published a huge study on AI. Altogether, it looked at more than 10,000 adults. And the goal was to see what happens when we use LLMs like ChatGPT to try to learn something new, like how does it compare to an old school Google search? So here's what she did. First, she got some people to do a fun little research assignment.

• 7:14Speaker 11

  I told them to imagine that a friend came to them asking for advice on the topic. So for example, how to plant a vegetable garden.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Other times, they had to research something else, like how to lead a healthier lifestyle. And so they did some research on this thing. And half of them had to use ChatGPT for this, where the other half had to do a normal Google search, like no AI summaries, just links. And their next job was to write up a little blurb based on the stuff that they had just read, as if they're writing up advice for that imaginary friend who needs their help. And this is what Shiri was really interested in because she wanted to see if the advice was any different when people used Google versus ChatGPT. And it was. So when they used ChatGPT, the advice they came up with

• 8:04Speaker 11

  was sparser. It was more generic and it referred to fewer facts after participants learned from an LLM versus web search.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  That's interesting.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let me play you some examples so you can hear for yourself like what it sounds like when Shiri says the advice was more generic and referred to fewer facts.

• 8:25Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  So this first one was written by someone who used ChatGPT to research how to lead a healthier lifestyle.

• 8:33Speaker 11

  Basically, you want to eat better foods and limit sugar and processed foods. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. Stay hydrated and also check with your doctor as well.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 8:44Speaker 06

  Wow, it's like, it's like a lyric poem.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're impressed.

• 8:49Speaker 06

  I'm so inspired to live a healthier lifestyle.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  And then she played me another one, which for me helped see what she meant by like the genericness of it. So let me play you was one more from this ChatGPT.

• 9:01Speaker 11

  Having a balanced diet, exercising regularly, staying hydrated by drinking water, getting enough sleep and avoiding stress are ways to live a healthier lifestyle. To get more details, ask ChatGPT.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  And this wasn't just copy and pasted. This was a human, remember? They did the research and then they actually wrote, "Just ask ChatGPT."

• 9:27Speaker 00

  So yeah, now let me play you an example from someone who used the old school Google search for their research. So there's no AI summary. There's just a bunch of links to click on and they could look at as many websites as they wanted. And again, the prompt is how to lead a healthier lifestyle. So here's Shiri with one of the responses.

• 9:46Speaker 11

  Start with focusing on the outer, then inner of your body.

• 9:52Speaker 11

  It's recommended to be active a minimum of 30 minutes most days of the week by engaging in healthy movements such as walking, riding a bike, yoga, sports, or even dancing. From there, the inner workings. Make sure to stay hydrated with at least eight glasses of water a day, avoiding sugary drinks, and focusing on consuming a well-balanced diet. Add a variety of foods to your diet from vegetables, fruit, seeds, and whole grains while avoiding foods high in sodium and also avoiding foods high in saturated fats. Make sure to get plenty of sleep each night, at least eight hours or so. Always wear sunscreen before sun exposure to limit the chance of skin cancer.

• 10:36Speaker 06

  That's more engaging, for sure. It's basically the same advice, but it does sound like a human wrote it.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  Even though I know humans wrote the other examples too, and it doesn't sound like they did.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah. It sounds more human, even though like it had information that is wrong in it. Like the eight glasses of water a day thing isn't actually real, like that's not based on science. If you remember our hydration episode, like there's nothing magical about having eight glasses of water a day.

• 11:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's true.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  But even with that, I still, it's just like more charming, like even with the flaws. And when I took a look at the other examples that Shiri sent me, a lot of them were like that. Here's Shiri.

• 11:16Speaker 11

  It's unique to the writer, right? It really doesn't come off as as generic as the ChatGPT pieces.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it sounds like they're kind of having fun with it. Like they're, I bet they're so excited when they thought of that inner versus outer, even though it doesn't really make any sense. But I guess they're having fun.

• 11:31Speaker 11

  And yet it's brilliant at the same.

• 11:35Speaker 11

  Yeah, it does. It does read at least like the writers sort of put more of themselves in into the advice.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  And in Sherry's experiments, she also asked the people who wrote the advice how they felt about it. And the group that used ChatGPT felt like they learned less compared to the people who used Google.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  And then she also showed the advice to a different group of strangers. And people basically liked the advice from the Google group better. They said they were more likely to take the advice and said that it was more helpful, more informative.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Sherry, by the way, she also did the same thing with that Google's AI overview, and the results were basically the same. In both cases, the advice kind of sucks when people use large language models, whether it's ChatGPT or Google's AI overview.

• 12:20Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. Wow.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  The difference between how much people felt like they learned, it wasn't huge, but it was statistically significant. And Sherry found it again and again with different groups of people. So it does seem to be real.

• 12:35Speaker 06

  Hmm. Okay.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  And if you think about like, why this might be happening, why people are learning about the topic as deeply, it does sort of make sense. Because when you use something like ChatGPT for research, you are probably skipping over a bunch of steps. And it turns out those steps are actually pretty important when you're trying to learn something new.

• 12:55Speaker 11

  It's the process of going through the links yourself, reading them, you know, digesting them yourself, interpreting them, that leads you to at least feel like you're learning more. But also, we still find these differences in the content of the advice that they write, which suggests it's not just like the sense of learning, it's actually differences in learning.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  So that's the important part is like doing the work of actually getting information from these different sources and then synthesizing it in your brain.

• 13:23Speaker 11

  Exactly. Because essentially, these syntheses that LLMs provide are transforming learning from a more active to a more passive process. And that's what we're losing.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  And we reached out to these companies, Google and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, to get their take on this. OpenAI didn't get back to us, but Google told us that the AI overview is supposed to just be a jumping off point because you do still get those other links. But moving away from the study, there is other research that backs all this up and sort of gets at what might be going on in the brain. So the study kind of went viral. They they looked at people's brains when they're using ChatGPT. So it was called "Your Brain on ChatGPT." I don't know if you remember this one.

• 14:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I do think I saw that headline, yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just a preprint. So like, and it's pretty small, so take it with a grain of salt. But it was interesting. So they got around 50 people and then used EEG to measure people's brainwaves.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  Those are like the little electrodes on your scalp?

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Then, and some people used ChatGPT to write an essay and other people used Google or just their own brains. And they found that when people were using ChatGPT, brain connectivity was the weakest, which is sort of a measure for how much different brain regions are talking to each other.

• 14:44Speaker 06

  Wow, they could actually measure that.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so it just seems like maybe people are just less engaged when they're using ChatGPT.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, that that makes sense to me that you need to do some of the like trying and failing and then succeeding to make these connections work in order to really remember and process and add your own thoughts to what you just read or learned about.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny you should bring up memory because there are also studies, a couple of preprints, that have found that that can also be worse when we use stuff like ChatGPT. So, yeah, if people use ChatGPT to write something, they'll remember less of like what was in that work when they use AI.

• 15:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean. I think sometimes that's OK because I might be using it because I don't really care that much to learn it myself, or you know, or like, whatever, I don't really need to like, commit this to memory for all time.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  You might not care about how to tell the difference between a juicy wine and a dry wine for like, your life in general.

• 15:41Speaker 06

  And if I forget the answer, I'll just ask ChatGPT again or look back at my, my previous question.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, OK, so but what she's saying is that it has, it messes with our learning process. And that is scary to think about it when we know how many students are using it.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Exactly, yes, which they are, right?

• 16:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, which is like, a lot of what I hear about. And I think it was in the beginning, like, oh, my God, the students are using ChatGPT, they're not going to learn anything. And that's bad because like, that is what you're supposed to be doing at that age. It's just like, learning, learning, learning, learning, learning.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And a big idea is that this learning forms the basis for critical thinking, you know, doing research, putting together your thoughts in a meaningful way. And, and it does look like maybe these LLMs are getting in the way of that. Like, there was a big survey of Australian university students that asked them what they use AI for. And most of them said that they were using it to do stuff like, answer questions for them, or create text that I can use. So like, that all doesn't seem great.

• 16:43Speaker 06

  Create text I can use cheat on my own?

• 16:46Speaker 00

  They're admitting to it. And so, Sherry is also worried about this, about how AI will affect the next generation, since most adults, like, we didn't grow up with this stuff. We had to figure out how to do our own research and write essays on our own.

• 17:03Speaker 11

  At least you and I have that foundation, but I'm really worried that younger generations won't be able to establish those foundations, because it's so tempting to outsource all of that work to LLMs and AI in general.

• 17:19Speaker 06

  And do you think that we have cold hard data that says that students are getting worse at that yet?

• 17:26Speaker 11

  It's hard because you need longitudinal data, and these things were only introduced fairly recently. But I do think that we currently already have data that is at least pointing directionally at what the effect are going to be.

• 17:41Speaker 06

  Hmm. I mean, people were cheating back in my day, too.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. But now they can do it even better.

• 17:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  And just one more science tidbit, if you want to get a little bit more freaked out about all of this, Rose.

• 17:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's just, let's just face it.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Finish it off. So there's this fear that AI will lead to something called de-skilling, make us forget how to do things that we once knew how to do.

• 18:05Speaker 06

  Ew, the thought I had when you said de-skilling was, there's a term for when you're, if your skin ever gets peeled back off something, it's called degloving of your hand. So, I'm so sorry.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  This is the equivalent for your brain because the idea is that like, yeah, we'll just lose these abilities thanks to AI. And I did find a study that looked into this. So it was on a group of doctors doing colonoscopies. And they started using AI to like, find little spots on the inside of the colon that could become cancer. But then for the study, the researchers had them stop using the AI. And it turned out that the doctors were then worse at finding the little spots on their own compared to before they ever started using the AI.

• 18:52Speaker 06

  Uh oh.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? Not great.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  Right, like what if they can't access it?

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Or if something was wrong with AI and worst case, doctors might start missing these little spots. And those can eventually turn into cancer.

• 19:05Speaker 06

  Which would total, that would be the worst case scenario. Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 19:08Speaker 06

  Interesting. I mean, it does all make sense because it's like, you get better at what you focus on and you forget what you don't, what you don't focus on and you're, that's supposed to happen because your brain

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 06

  can't, can't retain everything.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Sufficient.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, otherwise you'd have these like gigantic, you know, these gigantic heads, you'd have to have expandable skulls. So of course, of course that would happen.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And now I do though, think when, when I'm doing something with AI, I'm like, do I care about losing this skill? Because sometimes I don't really mind, but other times I do. So it's helpful to think about that.

• 19:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, I guess it's like, if it's something I really want to improve or get better at or retain, don't outsource so much of it to AI.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's sort of the science that I found that supports some of the fears around what AI is doing to us. But next, let's look at the the counterargument here. Okay. The claim that we have lots of gain from using AI, that it can kind of take care of the easy stuff so our brains can do the hard stuff and ultimately use AI to do more and better stuff than we ever could have done without it. So that's after the break. All right.

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• 23:34Speaker 00

  Welcome back. Today, we're finding out whether AI is making us stupid or smart. Rose Rimler is here with me. Hello, Merrill Horn. Oh, no. I have been replaced by AI. Already? No, I'm still human, and I'm ready. Oh, good. To hear why AI is good. So, yeah, let's... We've talked a lot about the scary science, but I also wanted to understand the pro-AI arguments. So I called up Aaron French. He's an assistant professor of information systems at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. He's also on the advisory board of an AI company. And he was basically like, the effects of AI are going to depend on how you use it.

• 24:12Speaker 13

  For some people, it's absolutely going to make them, I guess... Well, I don't want to say dumber, but they're not going to learn or improve because of that. Other people, they're going to be able to do more with AI than they were able to do without it.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  So you could either use it as like a crutch or like an enhancer. Is that the idea?

• 24:32Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  So one obvious way that it could enhance our work is that AI could take over the mindless rote tasks for us.

• 24:40Speaker 13

  What are the repetitive tasks that consume a lot of time that I don't need to be doing? And can I use AI to handle those tasks that allow me to spend my time in a more valuable way?

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Just the busy work?

• 24:53Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  So yeah, the idea is that once AI does the busy work, the human brains could swoop in for the harder, more complicated parts of the task, you know, critical thinking and analysis. Mm hmm. And so there is science that does sort of back up this idea because it does look like AI can save people time, for one, like there are studies finding that this is true for all sorts of careers. So dieticians, computer programmers, people who run clinical trials. The effects were pretty big in some cases. Sometimes it took people 30% less time to do something thanks to AI. Sometimes it was 80% less time, depending on the thing they were doing in the study. Okay. Um, and an obvious caveat here is that you do need to, like for this to work, the AI has to do a good job at the thing

• 25:39Speaker 00

  for it to really replace. But we're hearing that in some cases it is helping. Teachers in particular have said that they can save a lot of time with AI. One survey found that some teachers who were using it were saving an average of six hours a week. What are, what are teachers using it for? Uh, putting together materials for class, sometimes grading. Huh. Basically, the, it's the type of stuff that teachers say is just hard to get done during their normal hours. And Aaron's like, yeah, if you can get AI to speed some of this stuff up, it could really help.

• 26:12Speaker 13

  As a professor, if I can use AI to accurately grade, that would be great because instead of spending five, 10 hours a week grading assignments, if AI can do it and provide proper feedback, I can spend that time working with the students, giving them more engagement.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  Teachers do always talk about how much time they have to spend grading, right?

• 26:36Speaker 00

  And so Aaron spends this saved time engaging more with the students. But this does raise a question, which is like, are most people actually going to spend the extra time doing stuff like that? Like doing their jobs even better? Or engaging with the world in a meaningful way? Or are we just going to use it for like, mindless scrolling or watching Love Island? So.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  Well, that's your prerogative. You can do whatever you want to do with your extra time.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  So judgy. Well, but it's like, for the purposes of this episode and whether or not AI is going to like, lead to this like, you know, new and improved humanity, it might not do so well on that front if we're just scrolling all the time.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  You're not having AI like, pick up the slack at some like, rope part of your job and then going home and inventing a new kind of flying machine like the one at DaVinci or whatever. You're just like, slinging on the couch.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  Looking at Instagram.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  It feels very likely, right? And I went, I went looking for a paper on this, like, how are people actually spending the time they saved with AI? And the only thing I could find was this one early study, not peer reviewed. In it, they got 83 managers. So these are people like vice presidents and C level executives. And first it asked them, do you save time because of AI? And the vast majority said yes. It was almost three hours a week on average. And they did say that they often used the time to do stuff like, continue working on my tasks or take on additional projects. But a lot of the time was also wasted.

• 28:12Speaker 06

  And they admitted that?

• 28:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. So within this group of managers, 36% of them said they wasted at least half of the time that they saved.

• 28:23Speaker 06

  Okay, wow.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  And they asked a random group of adults about this too and got similar results. Which feels pretty on point.

• 28:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  As long as our bosses don't find out that we have all this extra time, we can just use it for watching Love Island. So let's just keep it quiet.

• 28:40Speaker 06

  So stop filling out these surveys, honestly, people. What are you doing?

• 28:46Speaker 00

  But there is one other thing, a different way that AI might actually make us smarter.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  The idea is that AI will open up new doors and let us do things that we would have never been able to do without it. And the scientists who think that this is possible often bring up an analogy, the calculator.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Which does have some interesting parallels to AI because on the one hand, you can imagine that maybe people will get worse at math because, you know, it's doing the work for you. But on the other hand, maybe we'll be able to do more things, like harder math because of it. And when calculators were first introduced to classrooms back in the 70s, it generated a similar controversy that AI is now. Like, some people staged protests. Some math teachers were worried that young kids would get hooked on calculators to do basic math problems.

• 29:39Speaker 06

  To write boobless?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  What?

• 29:44Speaker 06

  Over and over and over again?

• 29:46Speaker 00

  I forgot about that.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  And they even had a name for these students who are calculator dependent, calcuholics.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  Oh my god.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 06

  So the, the specific fear was calcuholics would be so dependent on their calculators, they could no longer add and subtract and divide by it with paper and pencil or in their heads.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, that we would lose those skills because you had to type everything in and we would never learn anything.

• 30:16Speaker 06

  So we've, so that's cool because we've actually had plenty of time to test. If that has happened.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we have science on this. And when, so I looked to see like, okay, what did happen?

• 30:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  And it seems like the answer is everything was basically fine. Like, there is a meta-analysis of over 50 studies on this.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  Whoa.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, which looked at what happened when kids started using calculators in the classroom. And it found that, first of all, kids' basic math skills didn't really get worse. Like, if they got to use the calculators for learning, but then they took them away for a test, they didn't do any worse on that, like, pen and paper test. And if they got to use the calculators for both learning and testing, they showed improvements. So their problem solving got better. The graphing calculator led to improvements in visualizing things and understanding graphical concepts.

• 31:09Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  And some studies found that kids' attitudes towards math was better when they got to use the calculator. Maybe because they got to write boob lists.

• 31:20Speaker 06

  Or because, you know, these were kids who have some interest in mathematical stuff, but not arithmetic, which is basically, which is just like 2 plus 2. And that's the tedious part. And so they could outsource that part and dig into like, like imaginary numbers and trigonometry and stuff that gets more interesting.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, overall, the review said that the science supports using calculators in elementary and high school classrooms because our basic math skills didn't seem to get worse. And now we can do harder math since we can use it as a tool.

• 31:53Speaker 06

  Is there anything we can say, though, about AI specifically in the classroom? Because it's, it's pretty new and it's different, you know, from a calculator.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Well, like we said in the first half, like, some academics are worried that if we use AI too much, you know, it'll kind of inhibit learning. But then there's also a ton of papers which show that it might be helpful in the classroom and in particular ways. So like, there are tons of studies that just try having like ChatGPT give students feedback for like, you know, writing something. And they'll find that like, look, it can help them polish their writing. And there are some researchers that are making like customizing chatbots to help students with specific learning disabilities. And think that there's a lot of potential there. And then there are some studies that have students use chat G P T.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Kind of for good, like as a tutor. So rather than just having it give them all the answers. They'll just have it help them learn how to do like, like a particular kind of math problem. And then like, it's okay at that, like it can do as good of a job as using a textbook to learn math. So like, there is potential here and Google told us that they're working on tools like this too.

• 33:10Speaker 06

  Uh, I mean, sure, but also all those examples are the stuff that. Teachers are supposed to do, you know, like human teachers. That's kind of the point.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  I guess theoretically, but often they're spread so thin, you know, I think the idea is that this can. Help them address all their students' needs when like they're often just, you know, don't have enough time to do that.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  So yeah, maybe I think the, the dream is that this will be like a helpful tool in the toolbox.

• 33:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  And maybe, you know, yeah, well, we're just spitting out here over nothing. And then there are people at like the top levels of academia who are using it to solve all sorts of problems. So not just. Not just talking about L L Ms, but A I more broadly, like machine learning. So for example, in biochemistry, A I is really good at predicting protein shapes based on like amino acid sequences. In physics, it's been used to help find black holes and analyze data from particle collision experiments in real time. And according to a group of sixteen hundred scientists, more than half of them said that. A I tools will become very important or essential for their fields over the next decade.

• 34:24Speaker 06

  That makes sense to me that there are gonna be use cases where you're not gonna have a physicist. Piece through 200 million images of the far reaches of the universe, looking for black holes. It's just like, that's not even humanly possible, and it's certainly not possible in the span of like, getting a PhD or something. So it makes sense to have the computer do it. And there's lots of things we outsource to computers or machines that we just generally feel is a net good.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:53Speaker 06

  So yeah, I'm convinced that there is, I'm convinced that there is a role for AI to be positive in personal development and like, human development.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I agree. For me, though, as I think about all of this research, the main thing that I've been finding myself worrying about is that homogenization effect? The, the fact that what we create is more generic when we use AI to do it?

• 35:19Speaker 06

  Like that really boring, saying healthy advice.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  That really stuck in my brain. And so now I'm like, trying to avoid using it for anything too creative, because there's so much now about how AI can be used for creativity in all these different ways. And I'm always now like, ooh, I don't know if I want it trying to do the things that I care about sounding like me. But I do, I still use it just for like, looking up stuff that I don't really care about that much. Like, in all of the academics that I talked to for this episode, including the ones that found negative effects from it, still use AI. Like Shiri, our scientist from the beginning. She's like, you know, if you just want to look up something quickly and you don't really care about getting a super deep understanding of it?

• 36:02Speaker 11

  Use an LLM.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 11

  Right? It'll make your life a lot easier. But to the extent that you actually care about learning more deeply about something, you should really try to avoid starting off your research with an LLM. Because it's too tempting to stop with the syntheses that you're provided. I even see it in myself. I've studied this stuff. And when I start with ChatGPT to learn about something, I, I find it really hard to, to motivate to, to keep learning more.

• 36:33Speaker 06

  So Meryl, let me ask you, are you worried? I mean, you have little kids, too. Are you worried about this generation coming up? Are they going to be stupider, less skilled than, I don't know, us or a previous generation because of using AI, especially using it in school instead of doing their homework?

• 36:51Speaker 00

  I don't know. I'm not that worried yet. Like, it's a couple decades ago. People were freaking out about the internet making us stupid, you know, Googling stuff too much. But I think we're still OK. And, you know, even beyond that, humans have existed in so many different contexts throughout history when we were never learning how to, like, write essays in school about pride and prejudice.

• 37:13Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Like, were we really all totally stupid when we were cavemen? I don't think so. Like, I think we were probably OK.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  For whatever that context required of us.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, and now there'll be a new context because AI will, I guess, change the world in some way, and everything will just be different.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  Right, yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  All right, thanks, Rose.

• 37:34Speaker 06

  Thanks, Meryl.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  That's Science vs. This episode had 59 citations in it. Check out our transcript if you want to see all that science. And one quick note, we've heard from some of you wondering why you have heard a little less from Wendy the past few months. She has taken a bit of time to be with family, but you'll be hearing more from her again in the new year.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  And the show will take a few weeks off for the holiday, but we will be back in your ears in January. And we have some amazing episodes in store for you in the new year. We'll tell you the secret to happiness according to science. We'll dig into relationships and tell you whether yours is toxic. And we're going to give you the science on one of our most requested topics: running. Should we really be doing it? Plus, the weird science of something called sad nipple syndrome. 2026, it's going to be great.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  This episode was produced by me, Merrill Horn, with help from Akedi Foster-Keeys, Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke with, including Daniela Fernandez, Dr. Marcin Romanczyk, Professor Michael Henderson, Dr. Tim Zindulka, and Professor Vitomir Kovenovitchens. Special thanks also to Sebastian Peleato, Chris Suter, Elise and Dylan, Jack Weinstein, and Hunter. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you do listen on Spotify,

• 39:23Speaker 00

  follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Back to you next year.

• 39:31Speaker 14

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