https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/EoKC44MS3ujvuMYNjrEmBpxdiByQBSSWAf1YkVzf9mySMtsFb9JXtzcgoSb5CLmX9mz.png_{Image from the study entitled "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task" by Kosmyna et. al. (2025)}

Hello everyone!

There were proponents of AI who questioned why Hive is so against it. They argued that it feels like swimming against the current or just prolonging the inevitable. While I agree with the premise that it seems we are going backwards, I will still maintain my position in terms of using AI in content creation. Perhaps we forgot the buzzword "proof-of-brain". A few years ago, it has been consistently popping up in many posts. Simply put, Hive is just like any Blockchain. The only difference is that how the token is mined.

Hive and AI content creation are simply not compatible. With the way we value original content and human interaction, it's not aligned with pure AI-generated blog. That's why we maintained in @worldmappin that your travel blogs should be yours and that you must have visited the place you featured.

I have been meaning to write about this, but I can't find a study that would support my claim. Finally, the researchers in MIT published in arXiv their findings after they measured brain activity during an essay writing session with the participants. They grouped the participants into three: (1) those who wrote their essays on their own, (2) those aided by search engines, and (3) those who used AI assistant in their essays. They had three sessions with the same group assignment for each participant. Then they had a fourth session where those who initially used AI assistant in the first three sessions were told to write an essay on their own and vice versa.

They used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the participants' brain activity. Just read the article on the link I provided above if you want to know more about their methods.

Based on the results, it's safe to say that AI is the complete antithesis of "proof-of-brain". As I've said, Hive and AI simply can't coexist harmoniously if Hive remains true to its merit-based reward distribution. As the title of this post and the title of the article suggest, cognitive debt accumulates when one consistently use AI in writing their essays or blogs.

The obvious result was that the third group or those who used AI in their essays have the lowest brain activity. What's surprising was that when the groups were swapped in the fourth session. Those who started with AI and then wrote their essays on their own showed much lower brain activity while those who initially started writing their essays on their own and then used AI showed increased brain activity.

This means that if you consistently used AI in your writing, you won't be able to formulate your own ideas without AI. That's scary. Being too dependent on a tool will lead to cognitive decline.

With everything I said above, the surprising result of increased brain activity in the first group during the fourth session supports the idea that we can't simply blanket ban AI here in Hive. Just like with how a calculator did not destroy mathematics, but elevated it to higher levels by relieving the burden of arithmetic calculations, the researchers believe that AI can be a powerful tool in content creation. Maybe not a complete reliance on it, but the help in refining grammar and determining the tone of the content, will not lead to the accumulation of cognitive debt.

The idea generation as well as writing the whole blog should be yours while refining the tone that you want in your blog can be done with AI. Perhaps in the future, we can have a collective framework on AI usage, we can preserve the concept of "proof-of-brain". For now, at least in @worldmappin, we will continue to abide by the rules we set in the community. As AI exponentially progresses, pure human creation might become more scarce and thus becoming more valuable.

What about you? What are your thoughts about this study?

-----

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ybanezkim26/AKR6ryf1A4g3gyKgUzJiAN1vRm8UMmun9HLxgFMsK3gtqXAQjoHFUYEKMwtaje2.png

Kim Ybañez _{Welcome to Kim's small corner in Hive. He is a chemical engineer by profession but a blogger by passion. He is a wanderlust and an adventure seeker. Join his quests as he visits remote destinations, climbs mountains, tries new and exotic dishes, and explores his country (The Philippines). He's also a trying-hard photographer, so stay tuned as he shares his photos and his thought process while creating them.} _{If you like his content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. You can also reblog if you want to. Also, don't forget to follow him to be updated with his latest posts.}

Topics