“Houston, we have a problem” were the words spoken by a member of the crew of Apollo 13 when a critical systems failure occurred on the way to the Moon in 1970. The collective wisdom of the astronauts and ground crew surmounted the challenge and brought the mission to a successful conclusion. Success was measured in lives spared.
What Apollo 13 taught us is that human hubris comes with negative consequences. How could a spacecraft with so many unique moving parts have been designed with little thought to the need for redundancy in the event of an emergency? The obvious example on that flight was the use of two different designs for carbon dioxide filters, one round and one square. Talk about trying to plug a square into a round hole.
Fortunately, the brain trust employed by NASA invented a solution on the fly using duct tape, plastic bags, discarded space suit hoses (not needed because the crew never reached the Moon), a cardboard cover from the flight procedures manual, a sock, and wet wipes.
Could we be as creative should humans encounter similar crises in the future? I am less confident today because, as artificial intelligence (AI) emerges, it appears to be hastening our further dumbing down.
Nataliya Kosmyna, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, is the lead author of a study entitled “Your Brain on ChatGPT,” involving 54 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 39 whose brain activity was monitored while writing essays with and without ChatGPT.
The study concluded that AI dependency reduced memory recall, diminished creative thinking, and was seen as a crutch rather than aiding human thinking. Cognitive decline was particularly pronounced for tasks demanding critical inquiry, idea synthesis, complex reasoning, personal reflection, and developing novel hypotheses and arguments.
These results should be seen as context-dependent. Not everyone is tasked with researching and writing essays, and therefore, as the study’s authors stated, the results cannot necessarily be generalized to all human cognitive capacities.
This study, however, is part of a worrying trend that indicates humans are getting dumber. The new term being used to reflect this dumbing down in our political leadership is “idiocracy.” Whereas the 20th century produced leaders like Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who both demonstrated high intelligence, it seems that we have entered a long slide and descent with the last quarter of the 20th and the first of the 21st century aptly demonstrating this.
Last year, I wrote about a Stanford University-published paper by Julian Cribb, an Australian science writer, who described the average 3-point decline in human IQ per decade and a 13.5% total from 1975 to 2020. Other studies from the United Kingdom show similar results.
Before the emergence of AI, research had identified several other converging factors that were contributing to human cognitive decline. These include:
- The emergence of standardized educational testing and the simplification of curricula are contributing to the weakening of abstract reasoning.
- Growing environmental pollution, including exposure to neurotoxins at a young age, is linked to cognitive deterioration.
- Eating changes include the emergence in urban diets of ultra-processed and fast foods, low in iron, iodine, zinc and omega-3 fatty acids, all necessary to human cognition.
- The rise of personal digital devices, digital media, and the Internet has led to shorter attention spans, decreased working memory, and learning impairments from overreliance on these technologies.
With AI added to this mix, the implications for the future of human intelligence appear dire. We are undergoing what some researchers call “a global cognitive reconfiguration” involving two trends: a decline in human cognition and a rise in technological cognition.
Humans have shared their collective wisdom, first through the passing down of oral and physical traditions, as demonstrated by our earliest ancestors. In our past, we have learned from elders: how to fashion tools and the stories containing generational knowledge that have allowed our species to succeed and advance. This succession strategy is part of our human DNA as social animals. In the present world, however, where we appear to be increasingly isolated and dependent on small screens and digital media, human socialization as a means of sharing collective wisdom is in serious decline. This trend is a potential civilization killer.
Are there knowledge and wisdom succession strategies in today’s world that don’t include the digital realm? Is oral tradition dead? Is knowledge from the old to the young no longer in fashion? Can we stop dumbing down?
Knowledge succession is critical to human survival. There are cultures and societies still in existence here on Earth that demonstrate succession strategies without the digital world. We can observe and apply these strategies to how we educate the next generation.
Indigenous communities around the world continue to rely on oral tradition, storytelling, mentorship and apprenticeship as sources of knowledge and tribal collective wisdom. These cultures emphasize learning from elders and the passing down of inherited knowledge and practices. You can find them in the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia, where indigenous and rural communities are closely tied to the surrounding natural world, and to cultural identities tied to seasonal cycles and not to an overdependence on intrusive modern electronics, the digital world and AI.
The tools for this type of learning don’t need an AI. They are the same as the tools used by our ancestors: oral knowledge sharing in stories, practices, lessons and ceremonies; apprenticeships; observing the natural world; experimentation; mentorship and reciprocal learning from teachers to students and back; reading books and creative writing.
Digital and AI dependency is causing our species’ cognitive decline. This has to stop.
