Article

Against "Brain Damage"

Ethan Mollick (One Useful Thing) · oneusefulthing.org

A Wharton professor's plain reading of the research on AI and learning, with a tutor prompt you can copy.

Open on oneusefulthing.org ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. How do I learn a new subject quickly with AI without fooling myself that I understand it?
  2. Does using ChatGPT make you worse at thinking? What does the research actually say?

Read with it

  1. The field experiment behind the 48% and 17% figures, and the hint-giving tutor that protected learning. hamsabastani.github.io Article Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics Hamsa Bastani, Osbert Bastani, Alp Sungu and others (University of Pennsylvania)
  2. Example prompts for quizzing yourself one question at a time and reasoning through why an answer is right. help.openai.com Guide Using study mode in ChatGPT OpenAI Help Center
  3. Video How to Learn FASTER using AI (without damaging your brain) Justin Sung
  4. Video How to Think and Learn So Deeply AI Can Never Replace You Justin Sung
  5. Why Google built a mode around probing, open-ended questions, and what it is meant to do differently. blog.google Article Guided Learning in Gemini: From answers to understanding Maureen Heymans, Google
  6. The EEG study of 54 essay writers, a preprint not yet peer reviewed, which is worth reading past the headlines. arxiv.org Article Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task Nataliya Kosmyna and others (MIT Media Lab)
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