For thousands of years, humans have built tools to make hard things easier. A hammer doesn't make you worse at building, but is AI different? AI helps your brain, not your hands. This raises a question: what happens to the skills we outsource? Is AI brain rot real?
A study showed that 52 junior software engineers were split into two groups. One group used AI for coding and the other didn't. The AI group finished their tasks a little faster, but not by much. However, when they took a quiz, the AI group did much worse.
The study found that the AI group was especially bad at debugging. This means that if you rely too much on AI, you might lose the ability to fix problems. The study also found that the AI group was about 8% faster than the non-AI group, but this difference was not statistically significant.
The study suggests that using AI can be helpful, but it's also important to use it wisely. If you use AI to help with things you already know, it can be a good tool. However, if you rely too much on AI, you might lose skills and become less productive.
