A study by MIT researchers finds that individuals who relied solely on ChatGPT to write essays had "lower levels of brain activity and presented less original writing,” reports Greta Cross for USA Today. "While these tools offer unprecedented opportunities for enhancing learning and information access, their potential impact on cognitive development, critical thinking and intellectual independence demands a very careful consideration and continued research," the researchers explain.
Researchers at MIT have found that ChatGPT use can “harm an individual’s critical thinking over time,” reports Rachel Scully for The Hill. “They discovered that subjects who used ChatGPT over a few months had the lowest brain engagement and ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels,’” explains Scully.
A study by researchers at MIT examines how the use of large language models impacts the human brain, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. Research scientist Nataliya Kos'myna says the results “suggest large language models could affect our memory, attention and creativity.”
Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Nature reporter Elizabeth Gibney about Africa’s first continent-wide space agency, the African Space Agency (AfSA). “It’s a new era,” says Wood. “Where in the past, it may have seemed that the opportunities were outside Africa, right now we can say there’s many opportunities for collaboration inside Africa.”
Prof. Pattie Maes speaks with Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle about recent developments aimed at increasing AI memory retention. “The more a system knows about you, the more it can be used for negative purposes to either make you buy stuff or convince you of particular beliefs,” says Maes. “So you have to start thinking about the underlying incentives of the companies that offer these services.”
Neha Narula, director of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, joins Taylor Wilson of USA Today’s The Excerpt podcast to discuss the future of cash as the use of digital currencies expands. On her vision for the future of money, Narula says, “We’ve had a lot of promise, we’ve had a lot of exciting ideas, but now it’s time to really buckle down and really build products that help users and help make their lives better.”
Researchers at MIT have conducted a survey to understand how people interact with AI companions, reports David Adam for Nature. The researchers found that 12% [of users] were drawn to the apps to help them cope with loneliness and 14% used them to discuss personal issues and mental health,” writes Adam. “Forty-two per cent of users said they logged on a few times a week, with just 15% doing so every day. More than 90% reported that their sessions lasted less than one hour.”
Prof. Canan Dagdeviren speaks with NBC Boston reporter Priscilla Casper about her work developing a wearable ultrasound scanner that can be used for early breast cancer detection, with the goal of empowering “women to monitor their own bodies, on their own time and in the comfort of their own home.” Dagdeviren explains that “our hope [is to] collect a lot of data and use AI to predict what will happen to breast tissue over time.”
Forbes contributor Tracey Follows spotlights how MIT Media Lab researchers are exploring how AI can “support, rather than replace, human flourishing” as part of the Media Lab’s new Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program. “We are creating AI and AI in turn will shape us. We don’t want to make the same mistakes we made with social media,” says Prof. Patti Maes. “It is critical that we think of AI as not just a technical problem for engineers and entrepreneurs to solve, but also as a human design problem, requiring the expertise from human-computer interaction designers, psychologists, and social scientists for AI to lead to beneficial impact on the human experience.”
Forbes reporter Tracey Follows spotlights the MIT Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) project, a “new research program asking how can we design AI to support human flourishing.” At the launch event, Prof. Sherry Turkle “raised a specific and timely concern: what is the human cost of talking to machines that only pretend to care?”
Chronicle visits MIT to learn more about how the Institute “nurtures groundbreaking efforts, reminding us that creativity and science thrive together, inspiring future advancements in engineering, medicine, and beyond.” Prof. Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov discuss their planetary defense efforts aimed at identifying small asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, and Prof. Canan Dağdeviren demonstrates her work developing ultrasound devices to detect the earliest stages of breast cancer. Host Anthony Everett notes that: “Big ideas have a way of breaking out of conventional boundaries, just part of what makes MIT one giant laboratory of groundbreaking ideas."
A new study by researchers at MIT explores how AI chatbots can impact people’s feelings and mood, reports Matthew Gault for Gizmodo. “One of the big takeaways is that people who used the chatbots casually and didn’t engage with them emotionally didn’t report feeling lonelier at the end of the study,” explains Gault. “Yet, if a user said they were lonely before they started the study, they felt worse after it was over.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that “heavy users of ChatGPT tend to be lonelier, more emotionally dependent on the AI tool and have fewer offline social relationships,” reports Rachel Hall for The Guardian. “The researchers wrote that the users who engaged in the most emotionally expressive personal conversations with the chatbots tended to experience higher loneliness – though it isn’t clear if this is caused by the chatbot or because lonely people are seeking emotional bonds,” explains Hall.
Graduate student Cathy Fang speaks with CBS News reporter Lindsey Reiser about her research studying the effects of AI chatbots on people’s emotional well-being. Fang explains that she and her colleagues found that how the chatbot interacts with the user is important, “but also how the user interacts with the chatbot is equally important. Both influence the user’s emotional and social well-being.” She adds: “Overall, we found that extended use is correlated with more negative outcomes.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found “that frequency chatbot users experience more loneliness and emotional dependence,” reports Beatrice Nolan for Fortune. “The studies set out to investigate the extent to which interactions with ChatGPT impacted users’ emotional health, with a focus on the use of the chatbot’s advanced voice mode,” explains Nolan.