So AI is making us dumb?

Oh that page three report today! Apparently students are now getting "digital amnesia" because they now use things like ChatGPT and CoPilot to help them check grammar and spelling and plan their essays. They turn to such tools to research their essays and refine the ideas in them. Their parents are sent emails from the school written by AI so the teachers have time to use AI to write lesson plans...and more. 

In the supermarket recently I stood still for a moment trying to remember something I needed. I knew there were eight things I needed but had only remembered seven. The next alarming thought, just for a moment, was "I am getting too old for this. Perhaps I ought to start writing a list." Then I remembered what it was I needed and went back to believing I can and should remember these things.

I don't write lists. The physical act of writing, as opposed to using a keyboard, is too slow and laborious for me. I need to remember instead. I have not written a supermarket list in years. My supermarket shopping is organised - or I like to think it is. I always start at one end and work my way to the other. If the supermarket staff move things around I do not like it. A lot of other people do not like it either. If I start at the end away from the check out area I can usually go around without back tracking.  I like to think of it as an efficient way to shop. I remember what I need to get. It is a good memory exercise. I hope I can continue to do that.

At university I took very few lecture notes. Right around me people would be writing page upon page. I would be writing single words and the occasional phrase. It was not because I wanted to work this way but because I had to work this way.  My late statistics lecturer, a lovely and very patient man, would sometimes stop speaking and look at me to make sure I had something he knew I would need to get down. All my other lecturers just expected me to listen and remember. 

I have forgotten most of what I knew then. I do not need it any more. That is one of the things about that sort of memory use. It is possible to retain it for as long as you need the information and then forget it. But the point is that I could retain it and use it to pass exams, even pass them very well indeed. 

There is actually nothing very remarkable about this. A blind person would learn law in much the way that I did and would have the additional problem of someone else reading so much material to them.  My friend J...., a mathematician who could not hold a pencil let alone use one, could do complex calculations "in his head".  It was possible because he was a highly intelligent man who could not do such things any other way and he wanted to do those calculations. 

In a sense we are the lucky ones but now I find that I do not know phone numbers. They are programmed into the phone when once I would have remembered many of them. It surprised me recently when, quite recently, I was asked if I knew someone's phone number. I actually said it but I did it without actually being completely aware of what I was doing. Somehow I had dredged it out of my memory but, if asked five minutes later in a conversation about phone numbers, I doubt  I could have repeated it. The number is there in the phone put there by some sort of technological magic which seems determined to do me harm.

Yes, we need to be active learners if we are going to remember things accurately and when we need them. We need to actively think about what we are learning and try to actively understand and assess it. AI cannot do that for us.