Oh neat, a new subclass of brainrot has been observed and defined.

I've been saying this for years:

One way to win the Turing test is if you make every human so much more stupid that it is easier for an 'AI' to pass the test.

Now that's out of the box thinking!

Unfortunately it is a massive negative sum solution to a game theoretic approach to passing a Turing test, but it is a solution.

Roughly on par with winning an arcade fighting game by actually punching your local opponent irl.

Very interesting, emphasis mine :

"findings support the view that external support tools restructure not only task performance but also the underlying cognitive architecture. The Brain-only group leveraged broad, distributed neural networks for internally generated content; the Search Engine group relied on hybrid strategies of visual information management and regulatory control; and the LLM group optimized for procedural integration of AI-generated suggestions.

These distinctions carry significant implications for cognitive load theory, the extended mind hypothesis [102], and educational practice. As reliance on AI tools increases, careful attention must be paid to how such systems affect neurocognitive development, especially the potential trade-offs between external support and internal synthesis."

Also the focus on agency and ownership is also very interesting, namely regardless of the scored outcome or how one might think the work itself changed them, or not, do they themselves feel it is their work?

The biggest flaw in this study is that the LLM group wasn’t ~~allowed~~ explicitly permitted to edit their essays and was explicitly forbidden from altering the parameters. Of course brain activity looks low if you just copy-paste a bot’s output without thinking. That’s not "using a tool"; that’s outsourcing cognition.

If you don’t bother to review, iterate, or humanize the AI’s output, then yeah... it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: no thinking in, no thinking out.

In any real academic setting, “fire-and-forget” turns into “fuck around and find out” pretty quick.

LLMs aren’t the problem; they’re tools. Even journal authors use them. Blaming the tech instead of the lazy-ass operator is like saying:

These people got swole by hand-sawing wood, but this pudgy fucker used a power saw to cut 20 pieces faster; clearly he’s doing it wrong.

No, he’s just using better tools. The problem is if he can’t build a chair afterward.

Maybe the actual problem is sorting and filtering people based on pointless essays. It selects for the most privileged and obedient.