Is AI getting dumber?

[FMH]

 

Is it just me or the results of Perplexity and ChatGPT seem less smart. Not being able to answer to some basic questions or do analysis where they need to get data from multiple sources before compiling the results. The context window seems to be smaller. 

I do not recall that being the case. I notice a distinct degradation. I wonder if they’re “throttling” their compute to save cost.

[+thexfile Subscriber²]

Study: AI Is Making Us All Dumber

Well, it’s official: An increased reliance on artificial intelligence has been linked to diminished critical thinking abilities, a new study has found.

https://tech.co/news/study-ai-making-us-dumber#:~:text=According to a new study,workout that helps people learn.&text=Well%2C it's official%3A An increased,a new study has found.

[FMH]

  On 20/03/2025 at 00:02, thexfile said:

Study: AI Is Making Us All Dumber

Well, it’s official: An increased reliance on artificial intelligence has been linked to diminished critical thinking abilities, a new study has found.

https://tech.co/news/study-ai-making-us-dumber#:~:text=According to a new study,workout that helps people learn.&text=Well%2C it's official%3A An increased,a new study has found.

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I definitely believe that. People around me who would work on solving problems for hours a day now just get it done in a few minutes. No brain cells burned. 

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

  On 19/03/2025 at 23:54, FMH said:

 

Is it just me or the results of Perplexity and ChatGPT seem less smart. Not being able to answer to some basic questions or do analysis where they need to get data from multiple sources before compiling the results. The context window seems to be smaller. 

I do not recall that being the case. I notice a distinct degradation. I wonder if they’re “throttling” their compute to save cost.

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More that their results are being polluted by a rapidly increasing amount of stupid on the internet...

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

  On 20/03/2025 at 00:40, FMH said:

I definitely believe that. People around me who would work on solving problems for hours a day now just get it done in a few minutes. No brain cells burned. 

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I work for a large international software company and though we develop a few systems ourselves, the USE of external AI systems such as ChatGPT has been banned throughout the entire company...

[+Dick Montage Subscriber²]

So, a few things I have an opinion on here:

Is AI getting dumber: The LLMs now have massively more data to build upon and there are certainly more hallucinations than previously.  As a consumer of GenAI, then I feel it's valid to feedback to it when it's wrong, as it learns from this.  This was demonstrated and proven.  

But people are (generally) not feeding back, so it is significantly hampered in it's ability to learn from what is a good and bad result.

Is AI making people dumber: Some yes, some no.  I use GenAI frequently, and it has not made me "dumber", if anything it has improved the rate at which I digest information.  But again, I use it "correctly" and understand it is a work in progress and both feedback and analyse it's output.

I liken it to when GPS devices started appearing on people's dashboards, the early TomTom devices - they begat poorer drives with respect to lane discipline.  I am from an era of looking at a map, planning my route, knowing where I am going before I get there, but when people just started relying on TomToms, they would change lane at the last second because the device hadn't prepped them to turn left at the roundabout until it hit the roundabout.

We use GenAI significantly within our workspace, trained on our own data, and restricted to our own uses.  We have a robust policy about the use of CoPilot and others (e.g. ChatGPT).  I'm currently looking into Agentic AI  to go beyond basic automation of jobs, but as ever - I always check what it is wanting to do with data, how it uses it, where it's taking it and what it outputs.

[neufuse Veteran]

basically getting dumber... initial models were trained on approved and collected sources of data...... then they add more and more to it and then start harvesting crap like reddit for info then it all just goes to heck because its trained not smart..... it doesn't know what is real or not just keeps telling itself what i see is real so start merging that into what i already know

[+Dick Montage Subscriber²]

  On 20/03/2025 at 13:22, neufuse said:

basically getting dumber... initial models were trained on approved and collected sources of data...... then they add more and more to it and then start harvesting crap like reddit for info then it all just goes to heck because its trained not smart..... it doesn't know what is real or not just keeps telling itself what i see is real so start merging that into what i already know

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EXACTLY.  Unless you feed back that the output is tosh, it basically says to itself "Yeah, that looks right" and ups it in its preferred responses.

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

  On 20/03/2025 at 13:26, Dick Montage said:

EXACTLY.  Unless you feed back that the output is tosh, it basically says to itself "Yeah, that looks right" and ups it in its preferred responses.

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I remember a while ago I asked ChatGPT to write a simple bubble sort function in C# just as a simple test.  It didn't work.

 

So I did a quick search on Stack Overflow and found the EXACT same code, with the same bug.  So not only did it return buggy code, but it stole it from Stack Overflow without any kind of citation.  Double fail!

 

[+Dick Montage Subscriber²]

I’ve had it write code which I then noticed was using a deprecated function. I pointed this out and it agreed and provided more up to date code.

So… why give me the first code? Idiot AI

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

So, now AI's are "Hallucinating"....

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kgydkr516o

 

[WallyMcClure]

  On 19/03/2025 at 23:54, FMH said:

 

Is it just me or the results of Perplexity and ChatGPT seem less smart. Not being able to answer to some basic questions or do analysis where they need to get data from multiple sources before compiling the results. The context window seems to be smaller. 

I do not recall that being the case. I notice a distinct degradation. I wonder if they’re “throttling” their compute to save cost.

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Absolutely AI is getting dumber.  They're using social media sites like facebook, instagram, and reddit.  Social media is proof that not everyone's opinion is important.

[+Dick Montage Subscriber²]

  On 20/03/2025 at 20:52, FloatingFatMan said:

So, now AI's are "Hallucinating"....

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kgydkr516o

 

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Hallucinations is the technical term yeah

[Tomo]

AI has never been smart, there is no intelligence whatsoever. It draws upon data that is already available on the Internet, whether that information is accurate or not.

[+Dick Montage Subscriber²]

  On 21/03/2025 at 11:45, Tomo said:

AI has never been smart, there is no intelligence whatsoever. It draws upon data that is already available on the Internet, whether that information is accurate or not.

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Facile interpretation at best.