Ha Ha
I checked too!
It seems we are sneaky too by makeing you change your search queries!
Possible effects on cognitive function of using AI.
- Thread starter andyguitar
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I checked too!
It seems we are sneaky too by makeing you change your search queries!
Ooops they are sneaky
southwestforests
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Or is that merely an appearance/illusion created by the AI computers pulling from a larger database than the average human carries at immediate recall?
Their is No Spoon
southwestforests
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I have no idea what meaning to give that phrase as used there.
It makes me think about that spiderman meme haha. Yeah that will be our internet reality soon.
Wayne
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Hi @Oliver3 -- I could cite many examples but will provide just one. I have found it immensely helpful in keeping abreast of many things of interest to me because of its ability to succinctly summarize articles. As an example, the online site the Atlantic has a lot of great articles. I like that they're usually fairly in depth and comprehensive, but I just don't have the time and energy to read them. So I cancelled by subscription.
So summaries work better for me. It's a shame in a way, as I truly admire the journalistic work they do. But it's just not a good fit for me. Which is why I appreciate AI summaries so much. Takes a fraction of the time to read, and I get so much more out of them than reading the entire articles, because I don't have to process so many minor details that aren't important to the overall message. I found the summary below to be very interesting.
Key Insights from "What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones" (The Atlantic, August 2025)
Conclusion: The central message is clear—reducing children's screen time requires creating opportunities for them to play and interact freely in real life, rather than simply restricting devices. Parents and communities must reconstruct structures that foster independence and peer engagement to meet children’s deep-seated needs for genuine connection and autonomy.t |
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Hi thanks for the response
I was thinking in terms of true creativity, as in the arts.
I see how tgis could be useful to write articles abd collate info.
I definitely do not trust this tech. It's ultimately someone's version of reality thN doesn't seem right to me.
But I know some people swear by it.
A.i. could never have made me a better artist and songwriter because it's a process where you HAVE to work through layers of your own subconscious for years. That's a very personal process thaf gives true human experience.
Creatively speaking. A. I. Is not useful for this
I was thinking in terms of true creativity, as in the arts.
I see how tgis could be useful to write articles abd collate info.
I definitely do not trust this tech. It's ultimately someone's version of reality thN doesn't seem right to me.
But I know some people swear by it.
A.i. could never have made me a better artist and songwriter because it's a process where you HAVE to work through layers of your own subconscious for years. That's a very personal process thaf gives true human experience.
Creatively speaking. A. I. Is not useful for this
Or Welcome to the Matrix
Its from the movie Matrix
Wayne
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Hey @Oliver3 -- Thanks for your reply. I'll give you another example:
I used to work in publishing, often alongside researchers and academics. Later, I worked for a woman who published a medical journal. I did a lot of proofreading, which intersected with a lot of editing. Writers are always searching for ways to refine their words, and publishers naturally build on that.
I often found myself experimenting with different phrasings—tweaking paragraph structure, adjusting sentences, and refining word choices. It was fascinating how a disjointed sentence could be smoothed into something clear and polished with just a small tweak. Of course, it took a lot of effort, diligence, and stamina, but I genuinely enjoyed it.
These days, I don’t have the cognitive energy to edit at that level. Instead, I often just jot down my thoughts quickly and let AI take a look—summarizing, removing redundancies, and checking spelling. Not worrying about the details at the start saves me a lot of energy. Sometimes I’ll even dictate if I’m not up for typing a first draft.
Here’s what I’ve discovered on the creative side: by saving time and energy on the “grunt work,” I can immediately focus on shaping the ideas. That quickly gets me to a place where I can step back and ask: “Is this really what I want to say? Is this the tone I want? Will this connect with the kind of reader I’m hoping to reach?”
Sometimes I’ll see a passage and realize I want to expand it, so I ask AI to try. The first result is almost never exactly what I want, but by asking for tweaks—sometimes several times—I get new angles and ideas. Those iterations help me clarify what I want the “core” of my message to be. And make sure it's easy to read and understand, especially for readers dealing with brain fog.
One practical method I use is to paste the AI’s version (paragraph by paragraph) right under my original draft. Sometimes (often) I reject almost everything, other times keeping several ideas but tweaking them to fit my own style. I rarely adopt most of it. I actually don’t want an overly polished “product.” For me, the personality and energy behind the writing is more important than some kind of perfect clarity, and I don’t want AI interfering with that.
I find this kind of back-and-forth with AI creatively stimulating, and even though it's a lot of work in its own right, it's not exhausting in the way that original drafting and endless editing used to be. In short: I let AI do the heavy lifting, and I save my energy for the creative choices. Does that make sense?
And for the record: -- This post was 99% homemade.
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Dysfunkion
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I think the biggest issue happens when a company goes big, you need to keep customers but ultimately it's an exploited need in post industrial societies. Everyone is in larger towns or cities and needs central resource hubs for groceries and such. Online this is to an extent a default. I've been using the net since around 2000 when to the public it was just baby (though this was dial up, not high speed constant connection which I can't remember when I got specifically but probably around the end of middle school) so I've seen it change over the years. Big companies with central data hub websites for accessing other places or holding data themselves were a need or you wouldn't have search for example. Not all of them were bad, even Google didn't start off as a monster. Wikipedia as a data centralization point is still a non-profit neutral, they just hold information with as little bias as a human run site can. The early 2000's net was basically just information sites (like wikipedia and other special purpose database hubs), some older chat services, a lot of peoples personal sites, a bit later you had video sites like Youtube, lots of active forums for just about anything, and file locker sites for storing things. 2003-2005 appears to be when things really started taking off. Making this shorter, all of this overall decentralized information really clashes with making big profits and various agendas that require information constriction. When the common desktop computer always connected to the net hit most peoples homes this better internet for the people started wasn't suitable for making big money or anyone's public image that can be shaken by free public information flow. This gets more off topic but in a nutshell we're seeing so much sudden attacks on the internet now because the AI infrastructure is now in place to do so and global tensions politically are rising.
It definitely piggy backed as a trojan horse through increasing convenience. Why enter your card all the time when you can just implement paypal and be done with it across the net? Why download things when you have fast streaming services with a lot of high quality popular shows/movies/music? Why have physical media and rip it with drives when you can just stream high quality and store nothing? Why search when an AI can find something much faster? I could go on forever but you get the picture. The biggest convenience of them all was the "always online" nature of things direction that life went in. Like I mentioned with desktop/laptop computers there was a comfortable middle ground where there was easy access but it wasn't there all the time and the internet was more people oriented, homely, and decentralized. No one wanted or needed flashy sterile modern websites that require a super computer to use. All everyone wanted and needed was functionality with some style where need be. I think the biggest trojan horse used was the always internet ready smart phone with big social media capability. When everyone and their mother was now constantly on the internet and through mediums the internet was not centered around hardware wise this provided the biggest gateway into the nightmare we have on our hands now. Grandma on Facebook also doesn't know how the internet works so if there is bad things you can run into on it she thinks that they just magically pop up everywhere the second you search anything or open up Facebook, then she gets on board with incremental censorship and it snowballs. So from this you can kind of see how convenience and everyone ever online all the time was used to roll out what we're up against today in what appears to be some modern puritan book burning event but in modern contexts.
I actually think AI was made with problems when integrated with search and algorithms just so someone can point the finger and go "see the internet is bad" and then use the algorithms recklessly implemented and the greater surfacing of offensive content people don't want to see due to how aggressive it is (like on youtube for example, my feed is full of things I would never watch or remotely care about.) or general functional problems as the reason for tighter information control and invasions of privacy. There's no way anyone can use the the modern internet even if they have no idea what it was like before with all the AI backbones models and go "wow this is great". You actually on this "safer" internet have more of a chance of running into things you don't want to see because of the lack of personal control. I'm not on tiktok or anything but if even just being on youtube says anything then I'm exposed to more offensive garbage to me than I ever was before. But now the solution to the created problem that was minimal before (maybe you clicked on a wrong link or something and realized not everything in public on the internet is FOR YOU) is just control even more of the data but this requires AI because the scope is so absurd, like fighting the ocean absurd. On this front it's also piggy backing on this idea that if something is in public on the internet then it must be for everyone even if the context of public is someone's personal blog you would only find if you had a link to it. So if one group of people doesn't like this content EVERYONE must be shielded from it and the government must do something about how offended they are that not everything is for them. What a mess.
I don't swear by anything. Uncertainty makes the world go round, and even on this forum - when people exhibit certainty, I'm even more skeptical.
AI comes down to how you use it. Can it make you a better songwriter? Sure. People think of AI only as 'doing the work for you' as opposed to using it as a learning tool. Like most tools (Google, online forums, the telephone), it depends how it's used.
If you're writing a song in Eb Mixolydian and you want a key change but don't remember exactly how or why a chord changes if you slip into Ionian for a few bars, it might be easier to figure out with AI than a Google search or music textbooks.
It's still the human experience; you're executing a key change in your song for an emotional reason. You can probably do it without any theory, but the theory could help you quickly decide to use chords from Lydian vs Ionian.
The next time you encounter that same issue, you may not need AI because now you know. That's learning, whether it happened at Juliard or with Google or AI.
When I got sick (1997), I only had a borrowed copy of the Physician's Desk Reference (PDR) and occasional doctor appointments. That was the only way I had to try to research my paradoxical drug reactions, symptoms, etc. Then we had newsletters, forums, Google, and now AI. My access to medical information is orders of magnitude better - mostly due to technology. Sadly, no cures or even effective treatments, but I likely wouldn't have let my health get this bad if I'd known some of the danger back then (the 'experts' confidently encouraged me to push through).
But to each their own. Even with music theory - some people find it helpful, some people find it stifling. If AI doesn't work for you, there's no reason you have to use it.
Yeah I'm of the musical theory is stifling brigade too. I work with classically trainers musicians abd I haven't come across one yet that hasn't been creatively damaged by being put into musical tramlines. It's not as bad as all the gear, no idea, but its usually pretty bad. They see barriers through their education.
Yet I've worked with a fairly famous songwriter in the indie world who has zero formal training, just spent years developing his own ' theory of music. Ideas pour out of him.
It's a human thing and a.i. is not right. It's the instinctual human nature of art that sets us apart.
Music itself has been getting dumbed down for years as has production values. Everything stying in a grid and roboticised.
It's literally corrupting the human element of music and the listeners ear.
To me , my songwriting started out young, by just being with my guitar for 10 hours a day. Then all the bands. Then finding a way to express myself.
A.i. is someone's odd version of music and it has no place in the arts. Not in the creative process at least.
It's too late of course, it'll eventually take over as the main form of creation.
But art is not about consuming. First n foremost it's the desire to work yourself out. So there will always be some of us doing it.
But I really fear for the arts. We're at a wierd place culturally anyway, but tgis could be a disaster
Yet I've worked with a fairly famous songwriter in the indie world who has zero formal training, just spent years developing his own ' theory of music. Ideas pour out of him.
It's a human thing and a.i. is not right. It's the instinctual human nature of art that sets us apart.
Music itself has been getting dumbed down for years as has production values. Everything stying in a grid and roboticised.
It's literally corrupting the human element of music and the listeners ear.
To me , my songwriting started out young, by just being with my guitar for 10 hours a day. Then all the bands. Then finding a way to express myself.
A.i. is someone's odd version of music and it has no place in the arts. Not in the creative process at least.
It's too late of course, it'll eventually take over as the main form of creation.
But art is not about consuming. First n foremost it's the desire to work yourself out. So there will always be some of us doing it.
But I really fear for the arts. We're at a wierd place culturally anyway, but tgis could be a disaster
Wayne
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Wow @Oliver3, that's what I call commitment! I can see you're passionate about the arts, and the creativity involved in producing it. I ran across something a few years ago which astounded me--and still does. It was a take on the "spiritual purpose of the arts". I'd be most curious what you, as an artist, think about it.
What is the spiritual purpose of the arts: writing, painting, music, etc?
This answer will come as a shock to some beginning artists and to many advanced ones as well. What is the spiritual purpose of the arts? It is to learn structure.
Until an artist has a very clear idea of how small units combine to make larger objects in God's worlds, he or she will never produce any great art.
Once an artist creates a true structure, then divine love can pour into it and make it a living thing of beauty.
Such a poem, painting, story, or piece of music by a master artist helps people escape the grip of this material world and taste the joy of spiritual freedom. So always look to see how the very smallest things around you make up bigger things.
A master artist is always a scientist first.
southwestforests
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Although an interjection in this thread's topic, there is some explanation needed here ...
Ah, that would explain why I did not know it - pretty much anything in TV or cinema after the end of 1970s except some 1980s, 1990s, Star Trek, is going to be unknown to me.
When I moved out on my own in 1987 or 1988 I did not get a television because the thing had become what I now know the term for as sensory overload.
I did have for a while in the early 1990s a little TV my Cousin Renea was selling for $10 when she and her son were moving to another state, it had been used for videogames & I wanted to see what the then new Star Trek Next Generation was like but didn't want to spend much on a TV.
After about 1994, 1995, and watching some Babylon 5, I didn't have a TV again until being married from 2005 to 2011, but we separated in 2008 and I did not get a TV then and have not had one since, and have been very happy with that thing being absent from my home.
Think the last movie I saw in cinema was Top Gun in 1986, went with my brother.
The 1980 Flash Gordon cinema movie was definitely sensory overload, but I had to go see it, Because!, it's Flash Gordon! Also saw the 1979 Buck Rogers cinema movie, same reason, Because!
No, 1990's Days of Thunder was last movie I saw in cinema, went with Mom actually; she has Ozark Mountains moonshine runners in her ancestry ...
(Mom could be quite the character when she managed to drop her uptight autistic masking, which we now know that's what it was)
(and yes, she has shown once or twice that she could cut loose and drive that way in certain circumstances ...)
There are things like Matrix, Stargate, X Files, I know exist and know a bit about them because people I hang out with are in to them.
Other than Star Trek Strange New Worlds I've not got much clue what's on TV these days beyond knowing that the general categories of news, sports, game shows, Disney, HBO, Netflix, exist.
Now, directly connecting to the topic, I very much enjoy being able to be highly selective what I view on YouTube, even so, there are things I have to dump at some point because the combination of audio and video input is too much.
AI is being used by content creators in both professional and sloppy ways.
Have seen some AI generated, "What if ..." such as What if Star Wars was done in 1950s style.
And, What if these daily human activities were being done by cat characters, and some of those are quite cute.
Have encountered some content that has become termed AI slop, often taking other creators' work and blending it in to some kind of casserole which might or often might not have any manner of relation to any documentable reality.
That is Impressive!
Ai cannot duplicate anything that comes from a humans heart and soul
Or move anyone like someone that Loves what they do when they perform.
It is Raw Eloquence that cannot be duplicated.
southwestforests
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Just for fun, here is my totally not affected by AI 25 minute timed writing to prompts creation from creative writers group this morning.
I've not used AI and have no desire to.
(largely for spiritual reasons, which is a different conversation from this one)
I have several health happenings which now get in the way of creating, do not want to by choice add another interference with creativity.
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August 16, 2025 prompts
Write how a characters hidden identity and past might be exposed
Include hero mask or truth in a story's title then write the story
write story from pov of someone forced to hide someone else's secret
write a story about a hidden society
write a story that starts with the reveal of some long-kept secret
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“Whoa, I've never seen someone make a turn like that! How did you do it?”
“Do what?” Douglas' voice managed to carry a tone of innocence through the crash helmet intercom.
“Oh, come on, you know, what, I mean,” Eric sort of hiccuped out as the dune buggy bounced across what looked looked like a ford in a now dry stream.
“No, actually, I don't” Douglas said in time with his clutch and gearshift movements.
“Come on man, only UFOs make right angle turns, cars do not.”
“Hang on, this is gonna be another bounce.”
Eric did not argue that point, and firmly grasped handolds welded to the buggy's frame rails as Douglas accelerated through a series of hollows then up an irregular slope where the buggy caught air as it moved from slope to hilltop.
As their vehicle stabilized on a new path Eric picked up his previous path, “People don't learn that kind of driving playing dune buggy driver three times every summer.”
“Hang on.”
Douglas shifted gears, braked, spun the wheel hard over, Eric reached for those handholds, Douglas shifted again, then accelerated.
“Okay man, I get it, you don't wanna answer, that means something.”
“Many things mean something. Many things mean nothing. Many things are merely things.”
“And many things doesn't mean all things,” Eric countered.
Although it was a fair certainty that no other traffic existed where they were, Douglas' helmet moved quickly as he scanned their surroundings. “Even so, all things are merely things.”
“And your skill at this thing ain't some esoteric prophecy received in a dream, this is a real thing really learned somewhere.”
“And why do you care?”
“Well, I ...”
Douglas powered the buggy through another dry wash. “Well, what?”
“Well, um, okay, sorry, looks like I hit some kind of thing.”
“Hang on while we hit this drift.” Douglas shifted gears again, squared up the buggy with the dune ahead and accelerated.
After a grunt from the landing forces, Eric continued, “You know that song which goes the ocean is a desert with its life underground, something about your connection to this desert and your driving style says there is a life underground your style. It has roots somewhere.”
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I've not used AI and have no desire to.
(largely for spiritual reasons, which is a different conversation from this one)
I have several health happenings which now get in the way of creating, do not want to by choice add another interference with creativity.
-------------------------------------------------
August 16, 2025 prompts
Write how a characters hidden identity and past might be exposed
Include hero mask or truth in a story's title then write the story
write story from pov of someone forced to hide someone else's secret
write a story about a hidden society
write a story that starts with the reveal of some long-kept secret
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Whoa, I've never seen someone make a turn like that! How did you do it?”
“Do what?” Douglas' voice managed to carry a tone of innocence through the crash helmet intercom.
“Oh, come on, you know, what, I mean,” Eric sort of hiccuped out as the dune buggy bounced across what looked looked like a ford in a now dry stream.
“No, actually, I don't” Douglas said in time with his clutch and gearshift movements.
“Come on man, only UFOs make right angle turns, cars do not.”
“Hang on, this is gonna be another bounce.”
Eric did not argue that point, and firmly grasped handolds welded to the buggy's frame rails as Douglas accelerated through a series of hollows then up an irregular slope where the buggy caught air as it moved from slope to hilltop.
As their vehicle stabilized on a new path Eric picked up his previous path, “People don't learn that kind of driving playing dune buggy driver three times every summer.”
“Hang on.”
Douglas shifted gears, braked, spun the wheel hard over, Eric reached for those handholds, Douglas shifted again, then accelerated.
“Okay man, I get it, you don't wanna answer, that means something.”
“Many things mean something. Many things mean nothing. Many things are merely things.”
“And many things doesn't mean all things,” Eric countered.
Although it was a fair certainty that no other traffic existed where they were, Douglas' helmet moved quickly as he scanned their surroundings. “Even so, all things are merely things.”
“And your skill at this thing ain't some esoteric prophecy received in a dream, this is a real thing really learned somewhere.”
“And why do you care?”
“Well, I ...”
Douglas powered the buggy through another dry wash. “Well, what?”
“Well, um, okay, sorry, looks like I hit some kind of thing.”
“Hang on while we hit this drift.” Douglas shifted gears again, squared up the buggy with the dune ahead and accelerated.
After a grunt from the landing forces, Eric continued, “You know that song which goes the ocean is a desert with its life underground, something about your connection to this desert and your driving style says there is a life underground your style. It has roots somewhere.”
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