Remember, ChatGPT is not your brain

After calculators had been out for some time, people began to have trouble with simple maths. They would reach for the calculator even to add 10 to 35. To be honest the calculator was invented to make life not only easier but it was mostly intended for use in banks where adding the right amount of cash was critical and there was no room for human error. It was also used for laboratory calculations where precision was and is crucial when formulating pharmaceutical and industrial chemicals. But unfortunately when the calculator came into everyone’s hands, that’s when people stopped using their simple maths skills.

In fact, the computer is also a bit of a culprit. When was the last time you wrote something down with a pen and paper? I’ll bet there are very few people now who actually make handwritten notes. Even something as mundane as a shopping list or a telephone message for someone is either sent by WhatsApp or the shopping list is written on a notes app. When I go shopping, I notice that I am the only one who actually carries a list on a piece of paper. There is an art to writing and I don’t mean just the words. The art is not just what one says but how one writes it down. The act of physically putting pen to paper is an invaluable skill to have and it should be nurtured.

Sadly people have forgotten how to use a pen and their handwriting has probably deteriorated as a result of being out of practice. I should tell you at this point that every column I write for Gulf Today has always first been written on paper starting with bullet point notes which are then turned into prose.

I don’t mind admitting that I carry lined paper around with me to make all kinds of notes for my column as well as a complete to-do list for every day. I don’t use my phone because I want to be able to have decent, legible handwriting. That’s the only way to have it, by practising.

But things seem to be getting worse. Folks have already lost their simple maths ability, they can’t write and pretty soon, it seems, their brains will begin to function less and less because of the invention of ChatGPT.

A neuroscientist claims he avoids ChatGPT like the plague because evidence has shown him how detrimental it is to the human brain in both the young and the elderly. The purpose of an AI tool is to make your life easier. Ask it any question, it’ll give you an answer. Ask it to write an essay for you on a topic and within no time it will churn out your university assignment. Whilst you might have given it guidelines as to what you wanted to include in the essay, it does the research, presumably from the databases to which it has access. That means you did no research yourself and, in my opinion, did not exercise your grey matter and, therefore, learnt nothing.

The brain is just like any other muscle of the body. If you don’t exercise it, it loses its ability to think. It loses its cognitive skills and it loses its critical thinking skills.

I would also argue that AI isn’t as intelligent as it’s made out to be. At the end of the day, it’s a robot and sounds like it in prose. Have you ever tried talking to a robot? It’s impossible unless you ask specific questions that it has been programmed to answer. Otherwise, like a robot, it will keep asking you to do the same thing over and over again. It’s a robot and sounds like one, totally unnatural.

Imagine if the prose you submit for a project, a college essay or a covering letter for a job application had been generated by ChatGPT. It’ll probably say all the right things but it won’t sound natural and give you away in that you didn’t write it and needed a robot’s help. Plus you’re on your way to cognitive decline, that’s according to neuroscientists who wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.