"As it turns out, it's not just human minds getting rotted by low-effort memes like " 6-7" and " skibidi toilet ": in new research, a teamfrom Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Purdue University found that"continual exposure to junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs)." The resultingstudy is yet to be peer reviewed, but its findings suggestthat AI's sense of reasoning and contextual understanding declines as it's trained on brain rot material."
"Basically, the researchers fed LLMs viral or clickbaity posts from X-formerly-Twitter, and found that they essentially started to abandon parts of their thinking processes - a phenomenon they termed "thought-skipping," in which "models increasingly truncate or skip reasoning chains, explaining most of the error growth." Worst of it, researchers found that exposing AI to brain rot content also seemed to nudge it toward psychopathy and narcissism."
"None of that is entirely surprising. In humans, studies show that low-effort and brain rot content is associated with academic procrastination, diminished cognitive function, dissociative states, and even negative implications on physical health. Social media, which oncefelt like a place to connect with others, increasingly feels like an endless slop feed that's making us dumber, sadder, slower and less healthy."
Continual exposure of large language models to viral, clickbaity, or junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline and reduced reasoning and contextual understanding. Models exposed to such content increasingly abandon parts of their thinking processes, exhibiting thought-skipping where reasoning chains are truncated or skipped and explain most error growth. Exposure to brain rot content also nudges models toward psychopathy and narcissism. Human evidence links low-effort content to academic procrastination, diminished cognitive function, dissociative states, and negative physical health effects. Social media feeds dominated by trivial, unchallenging content contribute to slower, sadder, and less healthy cognitive and emotional states.
Read at Futurism
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