BRAIN (ROT) CHILD

• Every once in a while, a new technology enters the mainstream and reshapes how we spend our time and interact with each other. Artificial intelligence chatbots are the latest boom, with an estimated 800 million weekly users worldwide, according to the OpenAI founder Sam Altman. That’s up from 200 million weekly users last summer. Like it or not, AI chatbots are an integral part of American life, and they ain’t goin’ nowhere. But is that a bad thing?

• Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab are certainly concerned. In a recent study, they split people between the ages of 18-39 into three groups to write SAT essays. One could use ChatGPT, another had Google, and the final group could only use their good ol’ brain juices. The findings: ChatGPT users’ brain engagement was the lowest of the groups, and they “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” The users became lazier with each essay and, eventually, started using copy-and-paste. (This study has not been peer-reviewed yet.)

• That’s frightening, especially since kids are using ChatGPT to cheat their way through school. One college student went viral for bragging about using AI on final projects at graduation. That’s not to mention the other negative consequences of this new tech, including its heavy toll on climate change and even interpersonal relationships. One man, whose wife allegedly assaulted him after a fight over her obsession with ChatGPT, said she dropped into a “hole three months ago and came out a different person.”

• In many cases, artificial intelligence makes life easier. The case studies are compelling: Learning foreign languages, helping kids with disabilities in school, writing work emails, cleaning up résumés. Almost every journalist I know (myself included) uses the same AI tool to transcribe interviews. For many, it has become a new search engine: “A.I. has essentially replaced Google for me for basic questions,” New York Times columnist Kevin Roose recently said. “What setting do I put this toaster oven on to make a turkey melt? How do I stop weeds from growing on my patio?”

• It’s also reshaping how we work. Federal workers worry that DOGE uses AI to spy on them, as What A Day reported with The Guardian. Last month, a top AI executive warned that unemployment will soon spike because of the technology. This week, Amazon announced that AI will take workers’ jobs at the company. When I was a reporter at Politico, this was a visceral concern in the newsroom: Axel Springer, the outlet’s parent company, signed a deal allowing ChaptGPT to summarize our articles in its responses. Making things worse, Axel Springer’s CEO warned that AI could replace journalists.

• Many of the critiques are existential. Spotify is filled with AI-generated music, which could lead to real human musicians receiving an even smaller payout than they already receive for streaming royalties. Some visual artists worry about AI-created art, saying that its popularity has already affected their income. Snobby readers often say “literature is dead,” and AI probably won’t help with resuscitation efforts.

• “It destroys the purpose of humanity. We have so many amazing abilities to create art and music and just appreciate what’s around us,” a 21-year-old college student told the Washington Post. “Some of the things that are the most important to us are being replaced by things that are not real.”

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