#40 Between the Ears - AI Impact

Between the Ears - AI impact
Welcome, I'm Arnold Bekus and I enable you to have a better life between the ears because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today's topic is AI, artificial intelligence and especially I want to talk about the impact of frequently, heavily using AI. What people are noticing now is that what is happening is a shift, a shift from humans using software to humans managing autonomous agents that execute work.

So it's basically agents doing your work and it's not only the agents, it's also the search, the writing, the image creation, everything where people are using AI for. That has consequences and most people don't know it, they're just like oh it's so cool what you can do with AI, I need AI for basically everything I do it could be helping with your work. A lot of students are using it for their homework or they're using it for their creative activities, something I will discuss at another time.

But it's taking over a lot of the things which humans would do themselves and now the AI is doing it and the impact, I give a couple of examples. According to an MIT study, using chat GPT for writing tasks, so writing your thesis, writing a blog article, writing a book, writing a marketing copy, significantly reduces brain activity and learning. With researchers discovering that AI users showed the weakest neural connectivity compared to those using search engines, so the old search engines, or relying solely on their own thinking abilities.

It's not just reduces your brain activity a little, it says significantly. Another example, in 2024 in a national test and so 20 years, that's literally two years ago, but well you know a lot of these surveys just cover the period not where we are in but which we had in a national test in the US, just 35% of high school seniors were proficient at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author's argument. About the same number, which is 35%, scored below basic, meaning that they may struggle to draw conclusions from concepts explicitly included in the text or to use the context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown world.

Adult literacy scores have also dropped. Nearly 30% of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multi-page text. In 2017, that number was less than 20%, so from 20 to 30.

That is not just a small thing. I read a lot of articles from teachers, professors, that their students, and doesn't matter which age, whether it's primary school, high school, universities, they cannot write anymore, they cannot think clearly anymore, there's no critical thinking at all, they cannot remember a text which they read, not even remember, they cannot even tell you where the text was about. That is all a consequence of outsourcing, I would say, outsourcing your brain to artificial intelligence.

And that happens just with your brain as it happens with your body, with your physical activities. If you don't use it, you lose it. If you don't use parts of your body, for instance, if you've broken a leg or broken an arm and it's six weeks in the plaster, after that your functionality has degraded and you have to relearn using your ankle again, for instance.

What people don't think is like, if I let AI do my writing, if I let AI do my next steps, or even let AI figure out, I know there are people who have AI say, what should I eat tonight? They use AI like, well, I'm bored, what should I do? They use it basically for everything. In another episode, I will talk about the girlfriend, boyfriend thing, that is a whole other level. But basically, it's like, by outsourcing it to the AI, you're not using your brain yourself.

And if you don't use your brain, it's exactly the same as in the body. If you don't use it, you lose it. Now, you might say, oh, Arnold, that's just, you're just threatening and you're just making us fearful, it's based on nothing.

No, it's not. There are many, many researches already being done on that topic, like one which was done among x-ray specialists in hospital in Poland. And these doctors, these specialists, these experts who were every day, these x-ray scans, these, well, I don't know, you call them photos, pictures, these x-rays, they were analyzing them, what, well, what the problem was with the patient, they outsourced it to AI, and then later on, they let these medical experts do again, the x-ray themselves, and significantly declined their capability of doing so.

So that is just a consequence of not only about students and young people, these were medical experts, and they prove, again, if you don't use it, you lose it. So what I would suggest, and that is contrary to what people think is like, let's AI do everything for me, and I can just watch TV. No, I would suggest you try for yourself first.

So write, if you have a writing assignment, if you have to write a blog, if you have to figure out a structure for, well, for your new plan, try it for yourself first. So without using the AI, it's like, what do I think? It's also one of the, well, I think it's the first principle which is shared with you from fitting in to flying out, and the first principle is think for yourself. So everything you do, try for yourself first, and then you can use AI as a tool, and not as AI as the outsourcing entity of your brain, and to see how you can improve it, or make it easier to understand, or remove some failures.

So instead of you working for AI, I would suggest you work with AI, but work with AI means you got to be in control. You got to be the one who's thinking, and you got to be the one who's trying and doing it, and then use AI later, because now in very, I would say, high speed, people are losing their brain capability, because for the simple reason they're not using it, and that is not good. That's a frightening future for everyone.

Everyday beauty. We conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty, because beauty, and especially moral beauty, like kindness, courage, compassion, has a very positive influence on your inner state. Oregon, that's a state in the United States, just recorded five consecutive years with zero pesticide-related bee death.

Well, I was very happy when I read about this, and it says that it started with a disaster in 2013. A mass bee mortality event in an Oregon parking lot prompted the state legislature to establish a task force on pollinator health. Oregon State University was brought in to develop educational materials for the landscapers, farmers, and pest control professionals who work with pesticides every day.

Then in 2018, the Oregon Bee Project expanded that work statewide, training 12,000 people on how to minimize pesticide risk to bees. The university also built the Oregon Bee Atlas, the most comprehensive bee species inventory of any U.S. state, cataloging all 567 species found in Oregon, and translating survey data into country-level habitat guidance for gardeners and land managers. Since 2021, no bees in Oregon have been known to die from pesticide exposure.

That is extremely significant. Five straight years, Oregon has built one of the strongest bee survey and educational networks in the country, said Anthony, a pollinator expert at Extension Services. The public value is that we can now give people better information for protecting bees, improving habitat, and making informed decisions in every part of the state.

And please remember, we need your uniqueness. Be a better maker for yourself, for others, for the world.