Comment by darkstar_16 15 hours ago
You're proving the point in the actual research. Programmers who only use AI for learning/coding will lose this knowledge (of python, for example) that you have gained by actually "doing" it.
i'll add this quote from article:
Perhaps one of the more concerning findings is that participants in the LLM-to-Brain group repeatedly focused on a narrower set of ideas, as evidenced by n-gram analysis (see topics COURAGE, FORETHOUGHT, and PERFECT in Figures 82, 83, and 85, respectively) and supported by interview responses. This repetition suggests that many participants may not have engaged deeply with the topics or critically examined the material provided by the LLM.
When individuals fail to critically engage with a subject, their writing might become biased and superficial. This pattern reflects the accumulation of cognitive debt, a condition in which repeated reliance on external systems like LLMs replaces the effortful cognitive processes required for independent thinking.
Cognitive debt defers mental effort in the short term but results in long-term costs, such as diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity. When participants reproduce suggestions without evaluating their accuracy or relevance, they not only forfeit ownership of the ideas but also risk internalizing shallow or biased perspectives.
I thought I pretty clearly stated that I was already losing that knowledge long before AI. I guess time will tell if I will lose even more with agents, but I frankly doubt that is possible.