Trading Brain Power for Convenience

How ChatGPT Affects Memory and Creativity

Photo by Nedim on Unsplash

I came across this study last week and was immediately interested - because with any technology I want to know the trade-off costs of using it. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences as it relates to this theme.

Peace,
David

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Using ChatGPT may provide short-term expediency at the cost of memory and brain power. This was the preliminary conclusion from a research team at MIT Media Lab that conducted a small study to examine the neural and behavioral effects of using LLMs (large language models) versus the brain to write essays.

The research team recruited 54 individuals (ages 18-39) to participate. The individuals were divided into three groups:

• LLM: Participants in this group were restricted to using ChatGPT as their sole resource for help writing the essays.

• Search Engine: Participants could use any website to help them with their essay, but ChatGPT was prohibited.

• Brain-only: Participants were not allowed to use ChatGPT or any website.

Over the course of the 4-month study, each participant was tasked with writing three different essays based on a variety of possible prompts. Structured like an SAT essay, prompts were on themes such as HAPPINESS, COURAGE, and LOYALTY. Users had 20-minutes to complete each essay and wore a brain cap while writing to measure brain activity. After the writing was complete, the essay was analyzed by both human and AI judges, and the participants were interviewed.

The Results

1. Brain activity

The researchers found that the amount of brain activity decreased in relation to external tool use. In short, the more participants used Search Engines and ChatGPT, but especially ChatGPT, the less brain activity was registered.

• Participants in the Brain-only group exhibited the highest level of brain activity and connectivity (neural connections between different regions of the brain).

• In second place was the Search Engine group, which registered 34-48% lower connectivity.

• In last place was the ChatGPT group, which showed up to 55% lower total brain connectivity.

Not only was the amount of brain activity different, but the type of brain activity was also different across the groups. The brain activity in the ChatGPT group was more focused on “passively integrating externally generated information,” while the Brain-only group was focused on internally generating and structuring content. In short, the tool (or lack thereof) that participants used influenced the way participants used their brains.

2. Memory

After each essay, participants were briefly interviewed about what they wrote. Very few participants in the LLM group were able to accurately quote any portions of their first essay. In contrast, the Brain-only and Search Engine groups had a much higher recall of what they had written, including full quotes. The researchers wrote, “LLM group's poor recall and incorrect quoting is a possible indicator that their earlier essays were not internally integrated” and bypassed deep memory encoding processes.