Man Alarmed as His Cognitive Skills Decay After Outsourcing Them to AI

It's a fact of life that automation can make us lazier. Usually, the tradeoffs are worth it. But it feels more pernicious with AI Chatbots, which offer to basically automate thinking itself. That's what Sam Schechner, a tech reporter for The Wall Street Journal, began to wise up to after developing a nasty ChatGPT habit. "Artificial intelligence was eating my brain," he wrote in a recent essay for the newspaper. Schechner, an American living in Paris, had come to rely on the OpenAI chatbot to draft emails in French. It got to the point where he even used it to write some of his texts to his French friends. "After years of building up my ability to articulate nuanced ideas in French, AI had made this work optional. I felt my brain get a little rusty," Schechner wrote. "I was surprised to find myself grasping for the right words to ask a friend for a favor over text." Robert Sternberg, a Cornell University professor of psychology, cautioned Schechner. "With creativity, if you don't ... Read full article.