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AI - are we losing our brain capacity for independent research?

Marianne72

I find myself regularly asking AI, instead of doing research myself. Is this another dangerous step - not stretching our brain capacity but relying on ever powerful AI. Before long, surely AI will be programmed to become sentient or designed for warfare by persons of mal intent. On the other hand, I think of the film, 'Silent Running.' We are destroying our planet - I like the idea of a robot Dewey caring for plants when humans are no longer around.

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  • It’s all too easy to ask AI for the answer when the alternative involves hours spent scrolling through search results, picking potential likely sites/research papers/books and visually scanning each one for potential information relevant to the required research.

    I think that relying on AI to do much more than that could cause a person’s mind to become less sharp. For that reason, I sometimes use AI to provide me with a list of sources but I would visually scan each one for the required information so that critical thinking skills are employed. Even that, I would not trust without performing a manual search if it were for something vitally important because AI isn’t good enough yet.

    AI cannot replicate or improve on moral and ethical decisions made by humans which have developed through years of experience and insight. AI in the hands of unscrupulous world leaders is a recipe for disaster.

    Trump threatened Anthropic because it wouldn’t give his defence department unfettered access to their AI tools. Trump, AI and weapons is a dangerous combination.

    The Harvard Gazette has some interesting opinions on AI dulling our minds.https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/is-ai-dulling-our-minds/#:~:text=Is%20AI%20dulling%20our%20minds

  • in reply to ArchaeC
    ArchaeC said:
    relying on AI to do much more than that could cause a person’s mind to become less shar

    Yes, that's what I think can too easily happen. And young students might not always have the necessary ethics to do their own work. Even now, there are firms who write theses and essays - I think this totally wrong.

    ArchaeC said:
    use AI to provide me with a list of sources

    Yes, that is fair enough.

    ArchaeC said:
    AI cannot replicate or improve on moral and ethical decisions made by humans which have developed through years of experience and insight.

    I think many people forget this part of human development. This is also why driverless cars fill me with fear.

    ArchaeC said:
    Trump threatened Anthropic because it wouldn’t give his defence department unfettered access to their AI tools.

    Now that is hugely scary but I'm glad they stood up to him.

  • in reply to Marianne72
    Marianne72 said:
    Even now, there are firms who write theses and essays - I think this totally wrong.

    I agree it is wrong.

    A while back I searched online for some of those firms who write theses and I discovered that many of them offered ‘short courses’ to enable those who pay to get a ‘Masters’ or ‘PhD’ from obscure ‘Universities’ within two months. I don’t understand how this could deceive employers as they should be checking the details of degree certificates. What would people use such a fake thing for? Is it just to ‘impress’ friends? 

    There were other firms who offered to write essays according to needs. 

  • in reply to ArchaeC

    By the way, I should have explicitly stated that my search for the thesis writing firms was out of curiosity only.

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