Short Thoughts

I started reading Hannah Arendt. When she attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi and an organizer of the Holocaust, she observed what she called the “banality of evil”. Here’s a quote, emphasis mine.

The deeds were monstrous, but the doer—at least the very effective one now on trial—was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-trial police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness.

A few weeks ago I came across the opinion piece Will AI Destroy or Reinvent Education? I think this piece has lots of good thoughts.

The piece begins with talking through two articles about an MIT study on the impact of AI on our brain when using it in writing, Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. The paper found LLM use led to weaker neural connectivity and less cognitive engagement.

Initially I thought, this is concerning and a good reason to have an awareness of how we use AI. But if people use it this way, it is to their detriment.

After reading Arendt, I’m even more concerned. Could AI use be fostering a new kind of “thoughtlessness”? If so, might horrific deeds be carried out by people who are “quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous” simply because they stopped thinking critically?