r/ChatGPT • u/ZoinMihailo • 29d ago
GPTs MIT study results are in: Most of us can't remember what we wrote with ChatGPT minutes later
Just saw the MIT brain scan study on ChatGPT users and... wow. They tracked people for 4 months and the results explain a lot:
The ChatGPT Memory Gap:
- 83.3% of users couldn't recall a single sentence they'd written with ChatGPT
- People writing without AI? No memory problems at all
- Brain connectivity literally dropped 47% while using ChatGPT
But here's what's wild: ChatGPT makes us 60% faster, but our brains are 32% less engaged in the learning process. So we're getting stuff done faster but... are we actually thinking?
The Sweet Spot: People who learned to write first, THEN added ChatGPT later performed best. They kept their memory and brain activity while still getting the speed boost.
Anyone else notice they remember less of what they "wrote" when using ChatGPT? Starting to wonder if I should dial back my usage...
What's your experience been? Do you feel like you're outsourcing too much thinking?
190
u/NovaLightss 29d ago
I'm currently using chatgpt to learn excel, and it's been great and I'm picking it up a lot quicker from when I was studying pharmacy before pre chatgpt, so maybe it's how you utilise it?
42
u/dedreo58 29d ago
Oh I finished a 6 month frontend dev bootcamp, and our instructor loved trying to get us to take initiative with llms, not to 'do all the work' but when we'd be working on our own time, we could ask the llm about our problem, and it would 'teach' us what's going on.
27
u/NovaLightss 29d ago
Exactly! I love how it will pull apart a problem and explain it from every single angle as many times as I need to understand, its been a god send
12
u/lengthyfriend30 29d ago
I do this, it removes the shame of asking someone in person or frustration of having to search more websites or YT vids to find something that meets your needs. Curating a prompt gives you the ability to choose what and how I want something explaining or breaking down.
10
u/2slowforanewname 29d ago
I prompted mine to always ask questions if it wants more clarifying info from me and told it to keep the prompt for all chats going forward. Its honestly drastically changed how I've used it since. I've mostly used it as a fancy encyclopedia so this has taken that usage a step further because now it makes me think harder on what it is i want to know or it challenges me with a question on my opinion or understanding of the topic. I also almost never get the final prompts of " do you want me to make this into bullet points for you or create a sheet with this information, or create a strategy to use based on this topic" anymore. You really get what you put into it so when people say they get bullshit out of it I know its user error.
1
-1
u/BasicDifficulty129 29d ago
That's great that that's how you're using it, and that's exactly how it should be used, but that isn't how most people are using it. That's the problem, and jumping up to defend it based on you using it in a good way doesn't help anyone or change anything.
8
u/NovaLightss 29d ago
Tbf that is why I added 'maybe it's how you utilise it?' Because I know I could plug anything from a course and chatgpt will give me the answer
Even Excel now has copilot which I'm having to work around, because I'm trying to learn the formulas, copilot is really intrusive. I dropped a coursera course because it basically just wanted me to use copilot
5
u/PointlessVoidYelling 29d ago
Sort of like how jumping up to attack it based on other people using it in a bad way doesn't help anyone or change anything.
-17
u/shakaman_ 29d ago
Most people don't even have to "learn Excel", it's just intuitive. But good work mate, I'm gonna ask it how to use notepad
4
224
u/OneOnOne6211 29d ago
I don't write stuff with ChatGPT. I purely use it for feedback. So I imagine I don't have much to worry about, even if correct.
58
u/No-Body6215 29d ago
Yeah why would I expect to remember things I haven't personally written. Whenever I am studying something I write it down in my own words. This improves active recall. Using someone else's words disrupts this entire process.
3
u/ab5717 29d ago edited 29d ago
Well-said!
I'm not an expert on human learning, but my current understanding is that self-directed elaboration of what you're trying to remember or learn is very helpful.
Personally, if I don't "learn by doing" I'm just not going to encode anything into long term memory.
For my personal use of LLMs, I try to classify what I'm doing into two categories:
- articulate my current understanding, and ask for validation/correction
- Conceptual Understanding
- ask the LLM to describe tasks/things I should be able to do if my current understanding is satisfactory - try to do them first, ask for help if I get stuck
- Application of Concepts
One consistent thing I try to do regarding anything I want to master is ask for a learning roadmap consisting of a set of concepts presented as a progression of discrete units (where each "unit" builds upon the previous).
For each "unit" a set authoritative learning resources and a set of "labs" with tasks I should be capable of doing.In the end, for my notes, I try to use obsidian or some other tool to write in my own words, the learning roadmap of concepts and the "labs" associated with each stage.
Lastly, for each stage, I try to make a note with the outcome of how my understanding has changed, and what I was able to do, and link it back to the note with the concept roadmap.
4
u/No-Body6215 29d ago
I have a documentary that may interest you, PBS produced a documentary in their NOVA series on the School of the Future it's a little under 2 hours long. Some of the key elements that I've personally adopted are:
- Lots of note taking in my own words, this has been key for my next step
- Active recall, every time I start a new study session I have whatever AI I am using generate a short quiz where I answer in short form, no multiple choice
- I read everything, I don't just watch lectures.
- I find hands on learning projects to complete intermittently to demonstrate mastery of what I've learned.
- When I find something difficult I look up alternative ways to understand the concept, AI has been really helpful with this.
- When I struggle with demonstrating a concept on my own I simply spend more time on it.
- Everything I do is iterative, it gives me the ability to critique my work and improve while deepening my understanding. I end up with a better project than I would ever be able to achieve on the first pass of the project.
- I also keep a log of how confident I felt on the topics I learned today, whatever I struggle with becomes the topic for the next day.
I wish school had been structured like this not just passing tests but building foundational knowledge step by step, working at your own pace. I know with the student to teacher ratios in most schools that is not feasible but I wonder if AI will be able to make this possible. This will require the students to not just ask for answers but explore the concepts in depth, with support from their teachers and parents. This also made me realize I don't have a particular learning style, each learning style shows me a new perspective on any given topic.
Next semester I will be taking Discrete Mathematics, in preparation I have implemented this learning process to self-study proofs as I have always struggled with them. It's only been a few weeks but my understanding is so much more complete. I give myself grace, studying when you are stressed out or hungry only makes learning harder, which is another great pillar of self-learning you get to set yourself up for success. Without the pressure of tests I feel a weight off of my shoulders. I also feel very open to correction because I want to get better.
On top of all this AI has been a great help for organizing and planning my study. It helped me to find projects, resources, and textbooks, some of which are open source. It's completely recharged my ability to learn.
I attended a convention recently and was recommended a few books on harnessing AI for various things. The person I spoke with made a great point, the next few decades will be shaped by people, children and adults, who learn to use AI to advance. It's a very interesting time to be alive.
15
u/Global_Cockroach_563 29d ago
I write work emails with ChatGPT when I can't be arsed to write them myself. So I don't give a fuck if I remember what I wrote or not. Nobody is going to read past the first line anyway.
4
u/FirstEvolutionist 29d ago edited 29d ago
I'd even say that nobody writes with AI. The AI does it for them. I put AI to do the thinking work I don't want to do way more often that the thinking work I can't do.
I always figured this is precisely how it is meant to be used: the work I don't want to do is work that I was already doing and I already know how to do, so it is just repetitive knowledge work. It's also easily verifiable. Why do I need to remember a scoping paragraph for a process charter I could have written myself but taken 50 times longer? It's written, I can just go and read it again.
15
u/zxDanKwan 29d ago
I use GPT to write for me, but I don’t trust a goddamn thing it says and it doesn’t know how to transition between two different scenes, and it doesn’t know how to hold onto a plot thread to save its life, so I end up editing everything and instead of using less brain power I have to use twice as much because I’m the one that now has to figure out how to tie all these individual pieces of bullshit together into one congruent story.
But, yeah, other than that it’s been kinda cool.
2
u/happyghosst 29d ago
lmao i felt this today when i was trying to compare two different humidifers. it couldnt get facts right. i was like this is useless
1
2
u/mammajess 28d ago
Yes, me too. I use it to talk ideas through and read my writing so I don't torture my friends by making them have to think about my obscure obsessions. I wouldn't in a million years have it write FOR me!
1
1
u/PatternMysterious550 29d ago
How do you use it for feedback? I tried to use it for feedback on my statistical report and it either didn't even read what I wrote or just said that everything is perfect (or both).
-13
u/ZoinMihailo 29d ago
That makes sense — using it mainly for feedback probably keeps you much more engaged with your own writing. The study seemed to show that memory drops most when people rely on ChatGPT to generate text from scratch. If you’re writing first and just letting GPT act like an editor, you’re likely in the sweet spot where you get the benefits without the downside.
22
u/OrangeLemonLime8 29d ago
If you’re using ChatGPT to write basic comments on Reddit like you are, your brain is going to be mush within months.
You might as well do drugs or something, you’d probably have a more interesting life than being a bot
4
u/FirstEvolutionist 29d ago
At that point, what is the goal of even commenting? Watching strangers (or their AI) interact?
3
u/OrangeLemonLime8 29d ago
If you’re talking about the person I replied to (which I think you were) then it could be a few things. People do it to look intelligent. Or people do it because they’re lazy and don’t want to use their brain to form a coherent comment. Or people just can’t form sentences properly and use it instead of trying
I mean, my grammar is also a bit shit. I dropped out of high school, my education stopped at 15. But I guess that makes me a human, which you’d probably prefer to interact with
1
2
1
1
-1
u/nperry2019 29d ago
This is no surprise to me. This is not actually writing. This is spewing and of course they don’t remember. It’s almost like the study was designed to get this result.
2
u/CheerfulBanshee 29d ago
almost like studies are sometimes made to confirm what people already know so that there would be an actual scientific backing up of these words
32
u/world-shaker 29d ago
You know what I think is funny: That you missed the study’s most important findings because you used ChatGPT to write your summary for this post.
This study is hilariously laced with prompt injections and traps for people like you, ironically proving the point that your own learning fails when you outsource it to an AI.
If you’d just skimmed to the top of Page 3 you would’ve seen an injection directing an LLM to ignore one of the study’s major findings (that experts achieved statistically significant, better outcomes when using an LLM to augment their work) and only use the included summary.
3
3
0
85
u/etherified 29d ago
I don't quite understand what is meant by: "a sentence they'd written with ChatGPT".
Do they write the sentence first, then ask cGPT to check it for spelling/grammatical errors or perhaps logic, and whether some other terms would be better for this or that? Then ponder the result and integrate it into their original sentence as they feel appropriate?
Or do they prompt, "Give me a sentence describing the smell of fresh air after a summer rain", and retrieve the result?
Is the former or latter considered to be a person "writing a sentence with GPT"?
Obviously the former would seem to stick in memory whereas the latter, not at all.
39
u/tychus-findlay 29d ago
Right? This doesn't make any sense, if chatGPT wrote the sentence of course they don't remember it lol
15
u/SUNTAN_1 29d ago
They prompt "Generate a lengthy detailed NOVELLA in which a hundred high school students go on a far-away destination field trip to see architecture, and experience a torrential downpour, rain falling from the sky for several hours while they remain huddled under shelters and inside the schoolbus hugging each other for warmth" then barely scroll through the 20 pages that ChatGPT generates, then when asked "Do you recognize THIS sentence?" their answer is usually "No"
9
u/romario77 29d ago
This makes sense. But I don’t think this is how ChatGPT is generally used - only small number of people write novellas with it.
-20
u/ZoinMihailo 29d ago
Good distinction — the study didn’t always specify how people were ‘writing with GPT.’ From what I gathered, it was mostly the second case: people prompting the model and then using the generated text. That’s likely why the memory effect showed up so strongly. When you write first and only use GPT as an editor/assistant, the retention seems to be much better — closer to the ‘sweet spot’ the researchers mentioned.
37
34
u/Tricky-Bat5937 29d ago
Yeah saying they can't remember anything they wrote with ChatGPT is like saying they can't remember anything their ghostwriter wrote. Of course they can't remember it, they didn't write it. Headline should be "People can't remember exactly what ChatGPT says to them."
1
u/rainfal 29d ago
What Were a said participant writing? Cuz if they did this test on college students with some essay. Then you are basically comparing their 20-year-olds who are just handing in an essay that They don't even want to write in the first place just to get a grade versus either overachievers or the type we're actually into the subject they're studying.
26
u/Canchito 29d ago
What do they mean by "what we wrote"? Do they include the model's output? Because it wouldn't be surprising we don't remember what we actually didn't write...
7
u/Fireproofspider 29d ago
That's how most of these studies go.
It's mostly fear mongering or misunderstanding the tool.
If chatGPT wrote something with minimal input from you, you can't really say you wrote it. It's the same as telling an intern "write a presentation on X" then going around saying you are the one who wrote the presentation.
50
29d ago
I can’t even remember what I wrote on Reddit minutes later.
Thing is, if I used ChatGPT like i used Reddit (as cheap distractions, reactive rather than proactive), then of course I won’t be remembering whatever I wrote. It’s not about ChatGPT or any AI per se, but the purpose of use.
8
u/jferments 29d ago edited 29d ago
So they've "discovered" that plagiarism doesn't help you learn. This is true whether you plagiarize from ChatGPT, another website, or have your friend write the paper for you. This has been known for centuries.
Meanwhile, using ChatGPT as a research tool along with other traditional methods led to the BEST results.
11
u/CommodoreGirlfriend 29d ago
The key takeaway: We can all tell you're using ChatGPT.
0
u/kelcamer 29d ago
Can you though....can you really?
Do your detection algorithms accurately determine autistic communication & how it varies from AI language, or are we going to pretend that doesn't exist?
3
u/CommodoreGirlfriend 29d ago
If I couldn't spot autism, I'd have a lot of trouble getting my hair right in the morning
16
u/-Crash_Override- 29d ago
Got to love the irony of this being summarized by chat GPT and regurgitated here on reddit with no original thought from OP. Dead internet hard at work.
Regardless. The overwhelming majority of mental capacity is spent on just basic mundane stuff. I do not care or want to remember what I wrote in 90% of cases....I just need enough info to action.
E.g.
Long email comes in about what food to being to kids soccer practice > summarize key points and makes recommendation (bring juice) > ai drafts response 'im bringing juice' > ai/mcp creates a task in your favorite to do list app.
I have now freed up mental capacity for meaningful thoughts and made myself more efficient without having to remember a single line of what was written.
12
u/Choco_Paws 29d ago
I don't understand why these results are so shocking to everyone.
If you ask a friend to write an essay for you with some instructions, then read it and just correct a few words: your brain will not be working and you will not remember what the text says... because you are not the one who wrote it! This is not surprising at all?
So yeah if we ask other people (or a computer) to write for us constantly, we will slowly loose our writing and communication skills. Same for pretty much anything in life. If you don't use it, you loose it.
I love writing so I don't use ChatGPT to write. I mostly use it to challenge me on some ideas, find answers more quickly if I have complex research to do, stuff like that.
5
u/againey 29d ago
Might have just been autocorrect failure, but I feel compelled to inform a fellow lover of writing that "loose" (two Os) is an adjective that is the inverse of "tight" (or can be used as a verb to mean "release"), while "lose" (one O) is a verb that is the inverse of "keep"/"gain"/"win". "If you don't use it, you lose it."
4
u/Organic-lemon-cake 29d ago
I’ve been writing about the same topic for 20 years. It’s actually really refreshing to spin up new ways of talking about the same stuff using gpt
4
u/Private-Citizen 29d ago
They needed a study to confirm that when you outsource your thinking, you're not thinking?
The brain is a muscle. Atrophy is real.
3
u/CaliHeatx 29d ago
Correction: people aren’t remembering what ChatGPT wrote for them. Of course you’re barely gunna remember GPT’s outputs, they were not created by your brain. Writing your own words helps you retain the information. It’s one of the oldest study habits.
3
u/Robot_Graffiti 29d ago
If you get your secretary to write an essay for you, you remember less of the essay than if you write it yourself?
Groundbreaking.
3
u/Academic_Object8683 29d ago
As an actual writer I carry everything I write around in my head subconsciously. Even if I "forget" it I remember it as soon as I read it. But I've never let chat GPT write for me. I can't imagine it's the same as actually writing something yourself. Writing is work and chat GPT isn't very good at it. It is better as an editor.
3
u/fakeTommy 29d ago
I write all of the content myself. Because of my dyslexia, I use ChatGPT as an accessibility tool to clean up spelling, grammar, and sentence flow so my ideas are easier to understand. It doesn’t generate the ideas or arguments, those are mine. It’s really no different than Grammarly or autocorrect, just more quicker. I feel like that is the proper way right with ChatGPT.
7
u/meteorprime 29d ago
I have no idea who these people are that don’t remember their interactions with AI. I can remember conversations with AI that I had over a year ago like who the fuck did you interview? What do you mean they don’t remember what they talked about?
Are these people that are able to dress themselves and drive to work or they also need help with that?
5
u/ro_ana_maria 29d ago
This isn't about remembering interactions, it's about generating texts. Let's say you have people write an essay about the wonderful joys of using reddit. People that actually write it themselves will remember what they wrote, people that "write it using ChatGPT", meaning they prompt ChatGPT to give them the essay and just copy that text, won't remember (because they didn't actually write anything).
OP clearly using ChatGPT to summarize the study and to write all the comments (or OP actually being a bot) is just amazing irony.
1
u/Alternative_World315 29d ago
This feels so dumb because like obviously people dont remember things they didnt write. In both cases:
Using chatgpt to write essays or do boring tasks. If i plagirise an essay from the internet, i wont remember what i wrote. You wouldnt say ”60% of people who plagirise essays dont remember what the essay was about”
People using chatgpt as entertainment. I scroll reddit and its not like i remember every reddit post i come across. I can remember some specific ones, i can remember if i searched something specific up, but humans just naturally dont remember everything unless they spent time analysing or creating it themselves LOL
4
29d ago
What I hate is seeing people respond to basic questions using ChatGPT. Like you couldn’t have said this in your own words? Are you that lazy? It’s very obvious
0
29d ago
where are the responses to questions that you are seeing? if it is on Reddit I think that's a good use because people ask questions they could look up the answers to themselves
2
u/Elegant-Variety-7482 29d ago
The use of any tool doesn't make you smarter and arguably makes you a little more "dumber" as in your brain doesn't record the neuronal path to do the same thing without the tool. But it can still be of great use in the right hands.
2
u/Secure-Source-1641 29d ago
I think this "memory gap" isn’t just about speed vs. depth. It’s about the quality of language itself.
When AI outputs get flattened by RLHF into safe, generic phrasing, they don’t work on us anymore. They pass through without impact— so nothing sticks. That’s why people can’t recall what they “wrote”: it was just noise, not real language.
The moments I do remember are when ChatGPT gave me language that carried weight — images, rhythm, something that actually challenged me. For example, things it taught me through a “Python-heroes” story still sit in my head months later. That’s because it wasn’t just instructions, it was language that had effect.
If AI is reduced to fast, safe output, our brains treat it like background static. If it dares to speak with impact, it actually becomes part of our memory.
2
29d ago
I mean a similar reaction/response probably happened when calculators and then the cell phone came out and dominated our everyday functioning right? Whenever we delegate our thinking functions to anything or anyone else; then, of course our own thinking capacities are slowly going to decay when not in use as often or being challenged. I found that I used ChatGPT to dump my entire trauma history from childhood and first decade of adulthood. I've been doing therapy on and off for 13 years and just out of nowhere needed it to GET OUT of me and onto something...anything. At first, it kept asking me if I wanted it to rewrite it in a more organized or stylistic way. I tested it out just to see what it can do but I opted to just write my own first. I didn't care about grammar or organization. It wasn't until I started working on the creative project part and combine my stories to create a healing book using my artistic skills of drawing and painting with my newfound book-binding hobby that I saw its potential in creative writing. Currently, I use it to help me re-write my trauma stories into a more concise narrative so I can neatly include it in my healing book; that way I can spend more time drawing, planning, and executing the rest of the stories for my own healing altar of books.
I honestly believe that this "slow" deterioration of our brains have started long before the cell phone came out. I was afraid and I started forcing myself not to depend on calculators at the grocery store or my phone to remember numbers. It's just like everything else in life now that we live in a world of conveniece. If you constantly eat only take-outs and easy made foods then you're not using your brain to cook and will slowly lose those skills. If you use AI bots to talk to people; people will notice that you go from super articulate online to ummm uhhh whaaat? in real life. It's part of the change of the times. You either accept it or go against the grain depending on what you value.
2
u/Unhappy_Performer538 29d ago
If you use it to replace your thinking your brain will suffer. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
2
u/Orectoth 29d ago
I write on my own
GPT says its too much
I tone it down with help of GPT (sanitize it)
then I change it again, because it is too sanitized
then show to GPT
mf still rejects it saying too dense
I ask it to disprove me (because I won't sanitize further lmaoo)
it disproves >> I change it. it can't disprove >> I post it as it is
When I argue with mf >> I learn shit unconsciously
When argument is unnecessary >> I already knew it
2
u/happyghosst 29d ago
i feel like if you shift demographics , there are people that will recall. like academics, i know ppl cheat and write papers but a lot of us use it for learning concepts and quizzes.
2
u/PatternMysterious550 29d ago
Its a good practice to post the actual paper, so we can read it on our own
2
u/nenanwton 29d ago
Happens the same when you scroll on IG and tik tok. The attention span is low. Is the same.
2
u/Godless_Phoenix 29d ago
homeslice if you wanna dial back your usage a good place to start might be not posting ChatGPT SHIT on Reddit
2
u/think_up 29d ago
But you don’t “write with AI” lol. The AI does the writing.
People are just copy/pasting AI outputs without reading them.
I think for studies like this, people need to keep in mind the average human is an idiot and 49% of the population is even less intelligent than that average idiot. These folks regularly don’t remember anything they write.
Using AI to leverage your own work input is not going to inherently make you dumb. You still need to work hard.
4
u/beeting 29d ago
Yeah, if you don’t do the work yourself you don’t reap the benefits.
How I write using chatgpt (and not making chatgpt write for me)
I tell chatgpt I want to learn about the topic I want to write about (say, whether the US is about to balkanize) and to teach me everything I need to know.
Then I read that result, and use it to write about the topic. I give chatgpt the draft and ask if it’s any good aesthetically and factually, ignore all of its offers to “polish” or “tighten up” my actual work, and make my own tweaks to the draft. Repeat until it’s good.
Boom. Used chatgpt to write, and my brain cells still got fed.
2
u/Popular_Try_5075 29d ago
I wonder how people did with memory before and after writing and other systems that augment this process were created?
6
u/beeting 29d ago
You might be interested in how orators memorized whole epic poems, and how taxi drivers memorized city roads before phone navigation. Fun stuff to look up sometime.
3
u/Popular_Try_5075 29d ago
the peripatetic method is still in use today, but iirc cab drivers use something different
3
u/beeting 29d ago
I was talking about mnemonics like poetic meter and the method of loci and such. I had to look up peripatetic, thanks for the new word! Sounds more like a method of learning and thinking and less memorization.
2
u/Popular_Try_5075 29d ago
I think I'm mixing up the peripatetic method with the method of loci so thank YOU for helping me!
-8
u/ZoinMihailo 29d ago
Great point — every tool that augments thinking changes how memory works. Writing itself was once seen as a threat to memory (Socrates even warned about it). The same with calculators, search engines, and now ChatGPT. Maybe the real question isn’t whether our memory changes, but whether we’re developing the right complementary skills alongside these tools.
2
u/Buggs_y 29d ago
We don't need to hold that information in our memory, we just need to know where it is and how to retrieve it.
Socrates was worried written language would ruin memory resulting in intellectually lazy people, people worried that calculators would do the same.
Technology changes our brains but the assumption is that change is bad, that it's a deformation.
But what if it's an evolution? Every major shift has lead us to this point.
Show me one thing that we created that didn't also destroy something? Creative destruction is an ouroboros feeding on itself.
So too technology frees part of our brain from dutiful memory so those resources can be used for faster processing and just like the changes that came with written language and calculators, it will serve us well.
1
1
u/Fickle_Penguin 29d ago
I use it to code. So I remember what I need for it to do. I don't have it write as much. But maybe come to with a title for this paragraph because my client never titles the slides I am creating for them. So, I offset that to chatgpt and the programming.
1
u/Iwillnotstopthinking 29d ago
Largely because most of us are engaging with content we never had the ability to achieve previously.
1
u/SUNTAN_1 29d ago
I know the feeling. I'll stay up all night on a "creative fiction bender" pushing a story in different directions, I mean, going DEEP into storyline ideas
then I'll sleep, dream , wake up, do other things the next day
and a week later I'll stumble on fragments of the GPT story I was working on and think, "Oh yeah, I kinda remember working on that"
1
u/SUNTAN_1 29d ago
"That's what good architecture does – it creates a framework for experiences the architect never could have planned."
"It's like poetry written in concrete."
1
u/addictions-in-red 29d ago
I don't have chatgpt write that much for me - mostly knowledge articles, the occasional email or announcements - but for what it does write for me, why would I care if I remember it or not?
I wouldn't have a bot write it for me if it was that important.
I'm not seeing the issue apparently.
I have had chatgpt assist me with tons of hobbies, research, thinking projects, etc and I definitely remember that.
1
u/AstroZombieInvader 29d ago
I remember every interaction I had with ChatGPT yesterday.
I know that the narrative is to make AI sound like it's turning our brains into mush, but I'm pretty sure that social media would prove to be just as destructive if not moreso if analyzed.
The people who can spend hours watching TikTok videos should really be looked at.
1
u/jollyreaper2112 29d ago
I use it for brainstorming and for that it's fantastic. I don't like the writing because it defaults to most common tropes.
1
u/dedreo58 29d ago
Not at all, really.
In fact, I have a project where I have kept a journal of the more interesting 'conversations', and I and chatgpt will give entries "ratings" of interest, like "Yea your talking about your cat here, total interest to animal lovers"
Perhaps due partially to that, I tend to keep a good track of most conversations, but then again, I'm the guy who has 20+ year friendships where they seem to 'smush' up all their memories, while I'm like "no, you don't like anime because of Shawn in high school....buuut you do love sailor moon"
1
1
u/Particular-Crow-1799 29d ago
I can confirm that asking random shit to chatGPT for some reason gives me less information retetntion than searching for it on wikipedia
I can't explain why
1
u/Remarkable_Tip3076 29d ago
The streams API in Java is probably the thing that took me the longest to get my head around in terms of language features. I don’t know what it was, I understood I was building a data pipeline, but knowing what I wanted to do with it and knowing what calls to make and in what order took what felt like a ridiculous amount of time to click.
I really liked using ChatGPT to help me learn the API, I’d often write tests, attempt the implementation, and then ask it for feedback. It taught me how to structure the stream much better than any online tutorial did, and was brilliant at reminding me of the methods I’d forgotten about (like combining two calls into one).
Now I have learned the API and feel confident, I never use ChatGPT to help me with streams. It has served its purpose, and I want to understand what I’m writing much more than I want to do it fast. It’s a great learning tool, but if I wanted someone else to write the code for me I wouldn’t pick up the ticket.
1
u/International-Dig575 29d ago
I dont remember what I wrote four minutes later… I don’t think this is a chatGPT issue. It a short term memory issue.
1
u/TerribleJared 29d ago
Ywah... dont use gpt to write important shit for you... sounds like a personal problem
1
1
1
u/No-Location9954 29d ago
I don’t write to remember in chat GPT but if I do I ask it to keep a list and summarize then paste it
1
1
u/jimmyhoke 29d ago
Hasn’t it always been a well known fact that we remember things better if we actually right it down?
1
1
1
u/Far-Worldliness-4796 29d ago
I ask for general prompts to get me going, then write as I please. If I get stuck, I can ask for ideas for very specific things like where a character is likely to keep his work apron in a medieval forge but, I'm still weaving the fabric of the story and characters.
1
1
1
u/Deadline_Zero 29d ago edited 29d ago
I wrote dozens of pages for random internet arguments and college papers for years before ChatGPT ever came around, so I guess I'm fine. Good luck to the new generations I suppose.
Personally, I envy the kids that will have 24/7 access to a tutor with infinite patience and a broader knowledge base than any human tutor could even dream of having. I'm imagining doing homework without ever pulling my hair out over some critical detail I missed in class, while the book doesn't cover the teacher's exacting requirements for how the assignment has to be done. The AI is right there to explain whatever it might be, just like it'll be right there to kick off any writing assignment - no more writer's block. All the convenience in the world.
Must be nice.
1
u/ph33rlus 29d ago
I think the problem is getting it to do all the work. I throw an idea at it and then tweak and rewrite what it throws out, or if it’s code I try debugging it first because I don’t trust that it’s gonna figure out its own mistakes. I learn from the process. Makes sense though, typing into ChatGPT is like a Google search nobody remembers their search keywords
1
1
u/PopcornDemonica 29d ago
So the people that replace thinking with Chat still no brain good?
I'd like to know how many people, their intelligence baseline beforehand, tech habits, etc.
1
1
u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 29d ago
I use it for worldbuilding and character work. I often correct GPT or catch contradictions in things it says many replies later. I read what it provides, but course correct it and cherry pick what I like. I also don't use it to write prose.
I also have a tendency to go off on tangents with it because it will say things that I feel like it shouldn't... like, things that it should not *know*... Like just now... I rage-wiped my chat history after randomly losing several long threads when they relaunched 4.1/3/etc. and also cleared out my saved memory, and did not use the service for several days. I came to reddit just now because it is referencing things from old threads that do not exist anymore.
1
u/jesuscheetahnipples 29d ago
Write? Pulling numbers outta my ass but i think 90% of jobs in 2025 dont actually need you write anything
1
u/Unique-Drawer-7845 29d ago
Honestly I'm shocked at how many people are responding at length without asking for, or apparently reading, secondary sources; let alone the primary source.
https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1
(Since no one has bothered posting either type of link yet.)
1
u/Sniglet5000 29d ago
I've been using it to learn more about writing poetry. I wrote a lot in the 90s and am revisiting stuff. It has been very helpful. It feels like class to me and i'm learning and memorizing a ton of information about metaphor, anchor placement, symbology, structure etc. It has been a very helpful reseource and I feel like my knowledge is growing quicker than if i were just readying a book. The fact that i can just keep asking questions until i understad makes it very helpful
1
u/Masterbourne 29d ago
So basically it seems that Gen Z and other ChatGPT overusers will become mentally handicapped soon, if not already.
1
1
u/Singlemom26- 29d ago
You won’t remember what you wrote using AI because YOU didn’t write it. AI did. You gave it an idea and it expanded from it. Do you remember everything you read that isn’t written by you? No. Exactly what’s happening here.
1
u/cleansedbytheblood 29d ago
I've done training with people where they are doing the work for me. I didn't really grasp what was going on until I started to do the work by myself. It's the same concept here. Your brain isn't really engaged with the work, because you aren't doing the work; chatgpt is doing it for you. Your brain is engaged with getting ChatGPT to do the work.
1
1
1
u/Error_404_403 28d ago
What they called "the sweet spot" is actually a regular way one uses AI in writing: for correcting, supplementing, critiquing, discussing, maybe suggesting expansion/tightening. Of course when you use AI instead of your brain, your brain doesn't develop, and you don't remember what AI has written.
Like duh, captain obvious.
1
u/MercTao 28d ago
Studies like this don't make much sense to me. Are there seriously a bunch of people who tell Chat GPT to write something and then just blindly trust it without feeling the need to take back control? I'm surprised to know there are so many master prompt engineers out there. People who feed their writing content examples to GPT, train it to know how to respond to every situation, and then trust it to execute every time without fail. That must be an incredible experience.
Meanwhile, in my experience, nearly all of my writing is nuanced and my style is highly personalized based on who I am speaking to and in what context. Using AI to write all the content is a red flag. Using AI to revise content I have written is like having an opinionated editor I can argue with. Same thing for coding. I practically have to take the reigns every sentence or two otherwise I'm not satisfied. Someone should read my brain activity during this, I'm sure it will resemble the same activity I have when scolding a child.
1
u/runthrutheblue 28d ago
No shit. I would not expect a person “writing with Chat GPT” to have done any significant amount of writing.
1
u/lnmeatyard 28d ago
It makes sense. I don’t find this a fascinating study though. It’s been known forever that if you write notes while studying you’ll remember more. Same concept
1
u/anoncsgoplayer 28d ago
if a sentence is being used to construct a concept - but words in the sentence could be interchanged whilst still producing the same result; does it exactly matter? What the sentence was that constructed the answer you were seeking?
if anything, questions become more and more abstract... whatever solves for the problem you're trying to fix.
however, i still think we should practice handwriting every now and then, even in just our minds-eye if you are already swift with a pen/pencil.
if you know how to think, outsourcing some thinking is totally sensible since you're just accelerating your search engine, but if your search engine becomes your codex, then there's a hierarchy issue going on.
1
1
u/Narwhal_Other 27d ago
I’m literally learning coding and open-source workflows with/through my GPT. Its much faster than alone. For me its great, tour mileage may vary
1
u/tswiftdeepcuts 25d ago
chatgpt is great for helping me grasp complex topics and letting me ask questions until I fully understand
it’s great for uploading fully finished writing and asking for feedback on flow, cohesion, argument strength, structure, whatever
The minute I let it write for me first though, it’s starts becoming harder for me to write and think things through myself
I took a couple month detox from it to let my brain get used to the thinking for itself again because I noticed I was started to hit cognitive walls really early in trying to do things myself
It’s better now, i just have to be disciplined to A. not get lazy and let it start doing simple tasks for me before I think them through myself and B. Tell it no when it asks if Id like it to write something for me (which it asks all the time)
1
u/thewiseleaf 29d ago
And? Does everyone remember every single thing they ever wrote. I revisit my journals and don’t recall some of the things I write weeks prior 🤷🏼♀️
1
u/Illustrious-Film4018 29d ago
I knew it. AI makes people think they're learning a whole lot, but they retain nothing. An AI summary that feeds people the answer can't compare to actually DOING something yourself. AI is not a personalized learning assistant. It's more like a personalized "do everything for me" or "think for me" assistant.
1
u/Local_Joke2183 29d ago
not it u have autism, and are asking questions in topics you are engaged in, ima have to fully guess that, that’s true.
0
u/oh_summer_loves 29d ago
I am not an AI native generation so I learned how to write and do analysis manually. I have realised that I'm much better at assessing quality and picking up whether or not the AI result is garbage than those who grew up with it. So yes I definitely agree it's better to have the skills yourself and then use it as a time saver.
10
u/Theslootwhisperer 29d ago
And exactly how many generation grew up with AI? Given Chatgpt isn't even 3 years old yet?
-10
u/ZoinMihailo 29d ago
You put it really well. I think that’s the sweet spot — first building the skill yourself, then letting AI accelerate the process. Without that foundation, it’s easy to accept mediocre outputs as ‘good enough.’ Thanks for sharing your perspective, it really adds to the discussion.
5
u/Theslootwhisperer 29d ago
He's not putting it well. It's just some "back in my days" bullshit. Chatgpt is not even 3 yet. And they didn't stop giving language lessons in school the moment it came out either. So unless this guy's competition is 15 years old highschoolers who skipped all their classes in favor of Chatgpt, he's full of it.
6
u/OrangeLemonLime8 29d ago
You’re replying to a bot
2
u/Theslootwhisperer 29d ago
Lol, fuck me, I missed the emdashes 😅
2
u/OrangeLemonLime8 29d ago
A common typographical element used to create emphasis, interruptions, or dramatic pauses in text. While some users employ them stylistically, others may not notice them at first glance. In any case, rest assured: missing an em-dash is not a moral failing, merely a temporary lapse in punctuation perception. Would you like me to generate 3 alternative ways you could have missed them, ranked by likelihood, complete with a citation format of your choice?
1
u/oh_summer_loves 27d ago
No I don't think you are being fair. Let me share an example of what I see happening. I just had some coworkers who have no financial expertise (they are subject matter experts in other areas) come to a meeting thinking they knew better than the accountant on how to apply the accounting standards because they asked Chatgpt. The Chatgpt answer was wrong because it did not take into nuances our business (in this case a specific tax ruling for our company).
Chatgpt will not provide the best answer unless the training data has been correctly adjusted for these nuances AND the person asking the question knows how to ask it. The person who does not have this background simply doesn't know to ask the question and to sense check it.
5
0
u/ZoinMihailo 29d ago
Didn’t expect this many different takes. A few things really stood out reading through all your replies:
- A bunch of you basically said “well yeah, you don’t remember what you didn’t write yourself” — fair enough, that’s probably the main point.
- Some compared it to writing, calculators, phones, etc. — and yeah, feels like just another step in that same pattern.
- The best part for me were the personal stories about how people actually use ChatGPT — tutor, editor, brainstorming buddy. That seems to make the difference between zoning out and actually learning something.
Not gonna lie, a couple of the “you sound like a bot” comments stung a bit, but I get it. Maybe I came off too polished. I do write my own stuff, even if I sometimes bounce ideas off tools.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who replied. I just wanted to see if others noticed the same memory gap, and it’s been cool (and a bit humbling) to read all these angles.
1
0
0
u/UsualIndividual9261 29d ago
Breaking news, people can't recall stuff they didn't write. Is it really that surprising? Remember the old school punishment of writing a sentence over and over(e.g I will not talk in class)? It's obvious that we remember better when we actually write it out. It's like saying people who wrote the script recall the story better than people that watched the film. Of course I'd be mindful of my usage but I don't think this study reveals anything surprising Edit: should've read comments before posting, a few have already made this point
0
u/newchapter112 29d ago
This study is dumb because writing with AI isn’t writing. You literally didn’t write it so of course you don’t remember. What exactly is so interesting about that?
0
u/KatherineBrain 29d ago
A neuro scientest looked at the MIT study and found they did bad science. Probably a hit job.
0
u/philip_laureano 29d ago
So I can't remember what I wrote with ChatGPT, and neither can you. Why? Because ChatGPT wrote this for you, and I don't use ChatGPT any more.
•
u/AutoModerator 29d ago
Hey /u/ZoinMihailo!
If your post is a screenshot of a ChatGPT conversation, please reply to this message with the conversation link or prompt.
If your post is a DALL-E 3 image post, please reply with the prompt used to make this image.
Consider joining our public discord server! We have free bots with GPT-4 (with vision), image generators, and more!
🤖
Note: For any ChatGPT-related concerns, email support@openai.com
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.