Are AI chatbots making us lose control of our brains?
Are AI chatbots making us lose control of our brains?
人工智能聊天机器人正在让我们失去对大脑的控制吗？
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This week I’ve been at SXSW London. There’s been music, film, and a lot—and I mean a lot—of talk about AI. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Gloria Mark, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the last 30 years studying how people interact with digital technologies. 执行摘要 本周我参加了在伦敦举办的西南偏南（SXSW）大会。现场有音乐、电影，还有大量——我是说非常大量——关于人工智能的讨论。我还有幸采访了加州大学欧文分校的心理学家格洛丽亚·马克（Gloria Mark），她过去30年来一直致力于研究人类如何与数字技术互动。
Early in her career, the biggest concerns were the potential impacts of internet and email use on our brains. We may laugh those concerns off today, but it’s true that as the technologies became more ubiquitous and ingrained in our daily lives, our attention spans began to shrink. Mark is worried that things are only getting worse. The title of our session was “Have we lost control of our brains?” Unfortunately, Mark told me, the answer is yes. 在她职业生涯早期，人们最担心的是互联网和电子邮件对我们大脑的潜在影响。今天我们可能会对这些担忧付之一笑，但事实确实如此：随着这些技术变得越来越普及并深入我们的日常生活，我们的注意力持续时间开始缩短。马克担心情况只会变得更糟。我们会议的主题是“我们失去对大脑的控制了吗？”遗憾的是，马克告诉我，答案是肯定的。
Around two decades ago, Mark started wondering about how our use of devices might affect our attention spans. She set up what she calls “living laboratories,” using sensors and trackers to monitor adult volunteers’ attention, mood, and behavior when they were using devices. In 2003, she found that the average user had an attention span of around two and a half minutes. That’s how long people could spend focused on one thing before moving on to something else. 大约二十年前，马克开始思考我们使用设备的方式如何影响注意力。她建立了所谓的“生活实验室”，利用传感器和追踪器来监测成年志愿者在使用设备时的注意力、情绪和行为。2003年，她发现普通用户的注意力持续时间约为两分半钟。这就是人们在转向下一件事之前，能够专注于一件事的时间长度。
“That surprised me at the time,” she told me during our session on Wednesday. “I thought: Wow, this is really short.” But when she repeated the experiment in 2012, she found that attention spans had shrunk—all the way down to around 75 seconds on average, she said. In research she conducted between 2014 and 2020, attention spans shrank further still—to a mere 47 seconds, on average. Yikes. “当时这让我很惊讶，”她在周三的会议上告诉我，“我心想：哇，这真的太短了。”但当她在2012年重复这项实验时，她发现注意力持续时间进一步缩短了——平均仅剩约75秒。在2014年至2020年间她进行的研究中，注意力持续时间进一步萎缩，平均仅为47秒。天哪。
And it’s not good for us. Mark told me that she’s found switching our attention so frequently is stressful. “We would have people wear heart rate monitors, and … we would see direct correlation between switching attention fast and stress going up,” she told me. All this distraction makes it harder for us to get stuff done, too. “It just takes longer to do any single task if you’re switching your attention,” she told me. “It’s not great for performance. It’s not great for our emotional well-being.” 这对我们没有好处。马克告诉我，她发现如此频繁地切换注意力会带来压力。“我们会让人们佩戴心率监测器……我们观察到快速切换注意力与压力上升之间存在直接关联，”她告诉我。所有这些干扰也让我们更难完成工作。“如果你在切换注意力，完成任何单一任务所需的时间都会变长，”她对我说，“这对工作表现不利，对我们的情绪健康也不利。”
And that’s for adults. What about the effects of digital technologies on children? A few months ago, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and Google’s YouTube were ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to a 20-year-old woman who had accused the companies of creating products that led her to develop a childhood addiction. Just a couple of weeks ago, Meta settled another lawsuit, this one brought by a rural school district in Kentucky. The district had also accused the company of designing addictive products that were harmful to students and had sought more than $60 million to cover the costs of their mental-health needs. Around 1,200 other school districts are taking similar legal action against social media companies. 这还只是针对成年人。那么数字技术对儿童的影响又如何呢？几个月前，Meta（Facebook和Instagram的母公司）和谷歌旗下的YouTube被判向一名20岁女性支付数百万美元的赔偿金，该女子指控这些公司开发的产品导致她在童年时期产生了成瘾问题。就在几周前，Meta又和解了另一桩诉讼，该诉讼由肯塔基州的一个农村学区提起。该学区也指控该公司设计了对学生有害的成瘾性产品，并寻求超过6000万美元的赔偿，以支付学生的心理健康需求费用。目前，约有1200个其他学区正在对社交媒体公司采取类似的法律行动。
But social media isn’t all bad, all the time. It can provide opportunities for some people, including those from marginalized groups, to form connections that might otherwise be difficult. A 2024 survey of LGBTQ+ teenagers found that while some described social media as a place of rejection and fear, others described it as a place where they felt a sense of belonging, where they could develop friendships and cultivate their identity. 但社交媒体并非一无是处。它能为一些人，包括边缘群体，提供建立联系的机会，而这些联系在现实中可能很难达成。一项针对LGBTQ+青少年的2024年调查发现，虽然有些人将社交媒体描述为充满排斥和恐惧的地方，但另一些人则将其描述为能让他们产生归属感的地方，在那里他们可以发展友谊并培养自我认同。
In truth, we can’t definitively say what effects using social media is having on children across the board, says Mark. “There have been lots and lots of studies, and the evidence is to date inconclusive,” she told me. (Despite what you might read in best-selling books on the subject.) Mark is hopeful that large, long-term studies might finally start shedding a bit more light on this question. An effort of this nature is underway in Australia, which enacted a social media ban for under-16s at the end of last year. 马克表示，事实上，我们无法断言社交媒体对儿童的全面影响。“已经有非常多的研究，但目前的证据尚无定论，”她告诉我。（尽管你可能在关于该主题的畅销书中读到过不同的说法。）马克希望大规模、长期的研究最终能开始揭示这个问题。澳大利亚目前正在进行此类研究，该国在去年年底颁布了针对16岁以下青少年的社交媒体禁令。
Given this uncertainty over a 20-year-old technology, I wondered if Mark had any thoughts on the potential impacts of AI—an obviously much newer offering that within the space of a couple of years appears to have become deeply integrated into our digital lives. She told me she’s worried. 鉴于对一项已经存在20年的技术尚且存在这种不确定性，我很好奇马克对人工智能的潜在影响有何看法——这显然是一个更新的技术，在短短几年内似乎就已经深深融入了我们的数字生活。她告诉我，她很担心。
When we put in effort to do something—such as evaluating or summarizing content—we’re doing what’s known as “depth of processing,” she told me. “When you’re actively engaged with information, you’re processing it on a very deep level,” she said. “Then you’re more likely to learn it, to understand it, [and] to retain it.” That’s not happening when most people use AI bots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. When we ask these tools to write, summarize, or evaluate for us, we’re no longer doing that depth of processing. 当我们投入精力去做某事——比如评估或总结内容——我们正在进行所谓的“深度加工”，她告诉我。“当你积极地与信息互动时，你是在非常深的层面上处理它，”她说，“这样你更有可能学会它、理解它，[并且]记住它。”但当大多数人使用ChatGPT、Claude和Gemini等人工智能机器人时，这种情况并没有发生。当我们要求这些工具为我们写作、总结或评估时，我们就不再进行那种深度加工了。
“You’re deferring your cognitive work to AI,” she said. “And it’s not good for us.” The risk is that our cognitive abilities will weaken over time. “If you’re not constantly exercising your muscles, they can atrophy,” Mark said. “And that’s exactly what can happen with our minds.” People with weaker critical thinking skills are more likely to fall prey to misinformation, she added. “你把认知工作推给了人工智能，”她说，“这对我们没有好处。”风险在于，我们的认知能力会随着时间的推移而减弱。“如果你不经常锻炼肌肉，它们就会萎缩，”马克说，“而这正是我们大脑可能发生的情况。”她补充说，批判性思维能力较弱的人更容易成为虚假信息的受害者。
Interactions with AI-powered “synthetic companions” can be just as harmful. Relationships between human beings take work—time, effort, and understanding. None of that is needed if you’re forming a relationship with a sycophantic bot. The “muscle” we risk atrophying here is emotional intelligence, which surveys suggest is already on the decline, said Mark. 与人工智能驱动的“合成伴侣”互动同样有害。人与人之间的关系需要经营——需要时间、精力和理解。如果你是在与一个只会阿谀奉承的机器人建立关系，这些都不需要。马克说，我们在这里面临萎缩风险的“肌肉”是情商，调查显示情商已经在下降。
She’s not painting a particularly rosy picture. “If we continue on this trajectory, attention spans are diminished, loneliness is rising, boredom is rising, emotional intelligence decreasing, and actually our sense of purpose, according to studies, is also decreasing,” she said. 她描绘的前景并不乐观。“如果我们继续沿着这条轨迹发展，注意力持续时间会缩短，孤独感会上升，无聊感会上升，情商会下降，而且根据研究，我们的目标感也在下降，”她说。
Luckily, she thinks we can course-correct by changing our relationship with these technologies. The key factor is effort. The more effort we put into something, the deeper the satisfaction we stand to gain, Mark told me. That means making an effort to read a book rather than skimming its summary, and to meet with friends in person. 幸运的是，她认为我们可以通过改变与这些技术的关系来纠正航向。关键因素是努力。马克告诉我，我们在某件事上投入的精力越多，我们获得的满足感就越深。这意味着要努力去读一本书，而不是只浏览它的摘要，并努力与朋友面对面交流。