Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things

This also happened with the introduction of TV.

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/town-without-television...

And the IQs of those born after 1975 via the reverse Flynn Affect, those who had these devices of consumption and easy answers such as TV, and later Social Media, AI, etc has been decreasing.

I can only imagine a further and speedier decline will happen, and is happening.

This has not been true in my experience. The bar of what is possible has been moved dramatically. So my daily quest is not to continue to achieve our old objectives, but rethink worthy objectives for our new tools.

Wouldn't it have been more useful/conclusive if the study had another control group or two with non-AI based assistance (access to math books, access to calculator, access to human experts, etc)?

This behavior is not very surprising to me, and I think the conclusion is a bit off. Here is an analogous study:

Participants are asked to drive 20 nails into a plank of wood. Group A is given a hammer and an unripe banana. Group B is given only a banana. Halfway through the experiment, the hammers are taken away.

Hammers erode your ability to persist at hard things…

My point being that AI is a new tool that allows us to work on harder things at a higher level. It’s like having a team of 100 skilled workers with nail guns (and all manner of other tools) that never tire, and you get to direct them. Once you experience that, it’s a bit disheartening to go back to building alone with your bare hands… even if you lament the decline in your hand-eye coordination.

This is just our energy conservation system in practice. It happens every time we experience and easier/better way of doing something. Another version of this headline could have been "Experiencing VIP treatment for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to tolerate the normal shit you have to put up with"

They need a better control or comparison. For the math problem, introduce a standard calculator and one that that sometimes gives the wrong answer. Pretty sure he’ll find the same issue with persistence and focus.

Extremely Weak study.

I find that this is noticeable in situations where you're working on something a bit more complex and are initially using an LLM as code assistant to make progress. Once it hits a wall and you find yourself needing to just figure it out yourself, man does the debt get paid with interest. It's not a permanent cognitive impairment though. But there is a bit of a recovery period needed. On the whole I think there are some productivity gains, in spite of setbacks (assuming you know how to solve the problems yourself, to begin with)

Personally, I've been spending 12 continuous hours building things using agentic AI most of these days.

Link to the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721

or simply hard things that are worth doing are changing

Using a table saw for just 10 minutes eroded my ability to persist at hand sawing lumber.

The time difference was measured in hours, not minutes, and and effort required to hand-saw is enormous. Also, the accuracy difference is ridiculous, even with a lot of practice, and maintaining that accuracy continues to be a struggle with hand-sawing.

I now own 6 different electric saws for different specific purposes. Table saw, chop saw, circular saw, track saw, jig saw, scroll saw... I actually probably have more. I got rid of my chainsaw because it lost its chain in a way that really scared me one day. I might get another some day, but not that one again. Does a Dremel count? I'm going to say 'no' so I don't have to count 2 of those.

And yet, I still own a 2 Japanese pull saws and a normal American hand saw. I don't use them as much, but some times they're still worth the effort.

> The findings backed up what anecdotes and surveys have increasingly found in recent years: An overreliance on AI for answers erodes our cognitive fitness.

What is our cognitive fitness without our tools? How capable would we be at intellectual tasks if you remove computers, search engines and other things we now take for granted?

It's clear to me our overall output is better with those tools, and better with AI. So the comparison the paper is trying to make is disingenuous, because it tries to compare a baseline without any modern tools (ie, solving fractions by hand) to a result where the best tools are suddenly removed. But these tools are here to stay, and my cognitive fitness has adapted to their continued existence.

How well would these people doing fractions by hand perform if math notation could not be used? Or if the most common method for solving fractions on paper was suddenly disallowed?

It reduces tolerance for dealing with bullshit. Who wants to start a stackoverflow humiliation ritual and breadcrumb following random websites to find reliable stuff(90% of which is AI generated), when prompting gets you directly to the answer? Before that, the "Google rots your brain" articles prophesied the fall of humanity to search engines: now its mark of intellect to able to manually curate and search within websites for relevant info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid%3F

I've sort of come around to the other side, a few months ago I was pumping out as many project in my lab as I could manage thinking I was suddenly "able to do all the things I never got around to", now, idk. Give me a terminal, Ubuntu 26, and the simplest text editor in the world. I'm not making money off producing slop.

This all reminds me of keruigs for some reason, like a quick easy way to get coffee that produces a lot of waste for a forgettable drink. I'm sort of advocating digital pour overs.

I remember when people would say that if a person took LSD 10 times or more that they would go insane. After about my 30th or 40th trip I knew it was nonsense.

This feels similar. 10 minutes? So, after sever thousand hours of using AI to build projects, I can't solve hard problems? More nonsense.

I have to go now, the nurse here at the psychiatric ward is about to strap me down and give me my meds.

Several commenters explaining how much more productive they are with ai tools. The study is about reading comprehension. Draw your own conclusion.

Fear-mongering clickbait title signals complete nonsense.

Since I started using AI seriously in my (mathematics) research about 6 weeks ago I've advanced more and been more productive than in years. I'm more motivated and persistent than before because I have at my disposal a tool that helps me get past technical obstacles that previously took up a lot of my time.

You do have to acknowledge there is a bit of a Sisyphus element to some hard things.

Eg. I’m glad AI built my startups landing page in (almost) one prompt, because it’s allowed me to do the hard things that matter and I enjoy.

Learned Helplessness. Happens alot all around. I see it a lot in disability care. SO much that there is a saying: "Suplemental disability caregiver" (Zusatzbehinderung Eltern). Might be a schock to the more socially oriented people. But the fact is, the more help you allow to be provided to you, the more you forget/unlearn how to handle things on your own. Which in the end, will make you hyperdependant on others.

The Computer Chronicles – Word Processing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0OoXluC8g @ 4:08:

  Writers disagree on what effect word processing will have on the quality of our written language.

  Some writers are concerned that computer assistance may promote dry bland writing.

Hunger also reduces my ability to do hard things. But like most things in life, it’s not permanent.

I honestly don't care anymore. No matter how hard I try nothing ever gets better. If AI eases the burden even a little I'll take it. Persistenting at hard things hasn't made my life any better yet.

[flagged]