AI will make brain buffering for words

[praveen]

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Just had a fascinating lunch with a 22-year-old Stanford grad. Smart kid. Perfect resume. Something felt off though.

He kept pausing mid-sentence, searching for words. Not complex words - basic ones. Like his brain was buffering.

Finally asked if he was okay. His response floored me.

"Sometimes I forget words now. I'm so used to having ChatGPT complete my thoughts that when it's not there, my brain feels... slower."

He'd been using AI for everything. Writing, thinking, communication. It had become his external brain. And now his internal one was getting weaker.

Made me think about calculators. Remember how teachers said we needed to learn math because "you won't always have a calculator"? They were wrong about that.

But maybe they were right about something deeper.

We're running the first large-scale experiment on human cognition. What happens when an entire generation outsources their thinking?

Don?t get me wrong, I?m beyond excited about what AI and AI agents will do for people in the same way that I was excited in 2009 when the App Store was launched.

But thinking out loud you got to think this guy I met with isn't the onnnnnly one that's going to be completely dependent on AI.

 

[renuka]

I am not surprised at all.

 

[sravna]

The greater danger is in taking the words of AI as gospel and acting thoughtlessly.