[john_strinlai]

when i was younger, we didnt have cellphones. i had ~20-30 phone numbers memorized, at least. i also used to remember my credit card number. my brain has not deteriorated now that i have offloaded that to my phone.

point being: it depends on how you use it. if you offload critical thinking to ai, you will probably (slowly) atrophy your critical thinking muscles. if you offload some bullshit boilerplate or repetitive tasks or whatever, giving you more time overall to do the critical thinking part, you will be fine.

[sumeno]

> my brain has not deteriorated now that i have offloaded that to my phone.

Is there empirical evidence that you haven't? You wouldn't necessarily be the best judge

[john_strinlai]

do you want a reference from a published journal or something? links to my last mri? how do you want me to answer this?

bring some empirical evidence that using ai rots the brain, and in the meantime, i will think about whether or not its worth trying to answer your request in earnest.

[bigmadshoe]

There is no way for you to know that you aren't slightly less sharp having offloaded the memorization of those phone numbers. Who is the judge? It's a nonsensical question from a scientific perspective because it's impossible to prove either way.

We could speculate that simple acts like memorizing phone numbers probably do make the average person slightly sharper, in a similar way to trivial brain games helping to stave off alzheimer's.