Your Brain on ChatGPT→

Kosmyna and colleagues at MIT Media Lab, in a recent preprint:

"The use of LLM had a measurable impact on participants, and while the benefits were initially apparent, as we demonstrated over the course of 4 sessions, which took place over 4 months, the LLM group's participants performed worse than their counterparts in the Brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring."

The study gave 54 college students EEG headsets and had them write essays over four months. One group used only ChatGPT, another only Google, and a third used nothing but their own brains. The brain-only group showed 55% stronger neural connectivity in regions tied to memory encoding and executive function. The ChatGPT group? Weakest across the board.

Immediately after writing, 83% of ChatGPT users couldn't quote a single sentence from their own essay. Zero provided a correct quote. In the other groups, only 11% failed this test.

The researchers call this "cognitive debt":

"As the educational impact of LLM use only begins to settle with the general population, in this study we demonstrate the pressing matter of a likely decrease in learning skills."

When some ChatGPT users later wrote without the tool, their brains didn't bounce back. They even reused ChatGPT's vocabulary patterns. Meanwhile, brain-only students given ChatGPT for the first time showed increased neural activity. They had built something to integrate with.

The lesson: struggle first, then integrate. Not the reverse.

Optimisism about the future of education in a world of AI→

Ethan Mollick, writing for One Useful Thing:

I actually think the opposite is true: education will be able to adapt to AI far more effectively than other industries, and in ways that will improve both learning and the experience of instructors.

During a recent meeting with my district's Literacy Coaches, I saw an opportunity to introduce ChatGPT and help them understand how it could generate assessment prompts using a new technical format they had recently learned. The coaches identified a grade level and subject area, and I used ChatGPT to generate multiple assessment prompts. The prompts were not only coherent and grammatically correct, but they also perfectly fit the specifications learned at the training.

The coaches were amazed at the speed and accuracy of ChatGPT's responses. This was their first exposure to the technology. By demonstrating ChatGPT's capabilities, they were able to see the potential benefits that AI could bring to planning instruction.

With AI, teachers can quickly generate materials and assessments, saving time and allowing them to focus on individualized student support. Additionally, AI can analyze student data and provide personalized recommendations, helping teachers better understand each student's strengths and needs. By showing teachers these benefits through hands-on experiences early on, we can build their confidence and encourage more integration in the classroom.