Does AI help or hurt your learning?

I am a heavy user of AI 🤖 both at home and at work. I’ve found the various LLM or AI agents helpful with refining messages, brainstorming ideas and coming up with fun visuals to share with family and friends. I even had fun with AI at the College Football Hall of Fame where they personalized my experience through AI displays that incorporated me!

As a self-proclaimed lifelong learner, I started to wonder if by using the “easy button” with AI, that I am on a path to becoming one of the human characters in the movie Wall-E where humans are so reliant on technology that they are lazy and complacent.

This week during my commute, I listened to an episode of the Huberman Lab that explored this topic:

Enhance Your Learning Speed & Health Using Neuroscience Based Protocols | Dr. Poppy

Crum

In that Huberman Lab episode with Poppy Crum, she says there are two ways one can use AI (or technology more broadly):

1. To increase efficacy (i.e. augment or assist your cognitive processes, make yourself smarter)

2. To replace a task (i.e. offload or automate something you used to do).

She emphasizes that using AI just to replace tasks can lead to loss of learning or atrophy of the underlying skill, whereas using AI to enhance your thinking or self-testing can preserve and even improve cognitive function.

According to ChatGPT, here are my top 5 uses:

1. Cognitive Amplification

2. Learning Acceleration

3. Creative Drafting & Refinement

4. Operational Offloading

5. Reflection & Sensemaking

You can do the same assessment using a simple prompt into the AI agent you use most frequently.

What does this tell me?

First, that I am largely using the technology to augment my intelligence and grow. Andrew Huberman shared a use case tied to learning where he has AI send him quizzes on important topics related to his work including areas of weakness. I prompted ChatGPT to send me a similar quiz starting tomorrow and I will report back on the results.

Second, while I certainly don’t want to go overboard with AI replacing my tasks that could lead to atrophy of important skills, if I could free up time to focus on my family or hobbies or my most important tasks at work, the impact could be life changing. If you have ideas, send them my way! I am open to your suggestions!!!

Learn In The Flow Of Life

Jason