More from the OpEd...

... But first, let's look at what science says about genAI brain rot.

Creativity

Research published by Carnegie Mellon University this month found that groups that turned to Google Search came up with fewer creative ideas during brainstorming sessions compared to groups without access to Google Search. Not only did each Google Search group come up with the same ideas as the other Search groups, they also presented them in the same order, suggesting that the search results replaced their actual creativity.

The researchers called this a "fixation effect." When people see a few examples, they tend to get stuck on those and struggle to think beyond them. For example, if you see "butter" and "jam" as things you can spread, you're more likely to think of other foods and less likely to think of "rumors" or "disease."

Earlier this year, The Journal of Creative Behavior published a study called "Am I Still Creative? The Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Creative Self-Beliefs." That study looked at the difference between how creative people think they are in general and how creative they feel when working with AI. The researchers focused on "creative self-beliefs," which means a person's confidence in their own creative ability -- they wanted to know whether using AI changes this confidence, and if so, how. ...