When you say "And there is also a cost in the brain atrophy that these are causing in people who use them regularly. LLMs will make a huge segment of the population mentally and emotionally stunted." I have difficulty believing it.

A mit professor did a study where she asked students to use llms to write a paper in one prompt then copy and paste and submit, she then checked and found none of them remembered the next week. Everyone else who wrote down the essay actually remembered and had good brain scans. This is bad evidence because there are other examples of people trying to learn a language who learn faster and with better articulation with llm as a tailoring tutor. There are examples of people feeling isolated at work using llms as a "rubber duck and / or inexperienced intern from a foreign country" and the daily collaborator increases creativity and productivity and mental health of the human. As such, I don't see conclusive evidence either way.

Generally I find using llms for brainstorming has led me to think outside of my tunnel vision. I have found using a llm for vibe coding ( I am not a programmer) is a lot of frustration. They are too verbose for their own "time savings".

I think social media and short form videos like tick tok do far more harm to attention spans than the rounding error of a llm. I think attention spans are more closely linked with regular handling one's own boredom.

Thanks for your engagement, I look forward to conversations like this. Also if you have a source for your claim of brain atrophy, please give it!