Start by limiting your technology usage. Want to know what to eat? Just go for a walk or drive. Want to learn something? Check out a book from the library. Get a physical notebook and write in that. Write your thoughts. Take notes for memory. Just practice every day. I personally don't carry a phone around with me all the time. Going on a walk with just an mp3 player forces me to be alone with my thoughts and music.

Don't be too hard on yourself for not being able to search, I'm a student who's not used AI yet, and I think searching using a search engine is a difficult task

AI is like a slot machine. You pull the lever. You see it do the magic. You get the dopamine boost. You do it again.

It can be addicting.

I use AI quite a lot at work for that productivity boost. I never use AI outside work though. What works for me is that I’m quite used to interacting with my own inner monologue. I rarely go out and seek answers to my questions. Those times I do seek answers I accept I won’t find the answer. I’ve made peace with not having the answer to everything.

Practice being alone with your mind. Go for long walks. Learn to accept it’s ok not to know.

Find a healthy way to socialize that's the main thing. Interact with people face to face.

Your brain is very plastic. If you can endure the discomfort of quitting AI cold turkey, you will start to lift out of your fog quickly. I went through a period of severe depression and heavy drug use that lasted so, so long. By the end, I could barely read 5 pages. Things improved and I started reading/writing again. My skills came back, and it didn't take years. If you are like me, you can bounce back before 2026 is over. Read easy stuff, keep a journal, do simple coding projects - but use no AI. Your momentum will build fast.

There’s a lot of good advice in here, but one other to add on the “brain is a muscle” route. Try downloading and playing logic games like sudoku. Things that force you to think through and understand what’s going on.

As tou start working on honing your logic skills, try to apply it to real world situations. Don’t just ask AI, but start breaking it down like you would a puzzle.

Cold turkey

Ignore everyone in here who implies there's even a tiny extent to which this is your fault. It's 100% not your fault. AI is far from the only difficulty your generation has had to deal with in your education. Things like Tiktok/shorts are also damaging. COVID set a ton of students back quite a lot. The school system is fucked in so many ways. And your devices all try to keep you from doing anything "advanced" with them in favor of prepackaged consumer experiences. It's extremely unfair to expect students these days to just grin and bear it and somehow manage to retain their brain function and simultaneously eek out some measure of success in this world. And the trend has been toward the worse.

And yet, your only real option is to do the hard work to reclaim your own brain. But there's good news. First: you're in college. Congrats on that! That's a huge accomplishment in itself! Second: your attention span isn't so broken as to keep you from reading this far. Third: recognizing that there's a problem and asking for help and advice is a hugely good sign that you've got enough level-headedness to improve your situation.

I think a lot of people have already said "stop using generative AI." And I think that's very much on track. I very much think you're right in thinking that AI is probably the biggest source of the problems you're describing. And most of the rest of what people are saying here is good advice. "Excercise it like a muscle." "Engage with communities like this one." Etc.

Honestly, a fair amount of what keeps me avoiding AI is resentment. I don't know if that'll work for you, but keep in mind what they did to you on purpose in service to their bottom line. It's a lot easier to stay away from something if you don't fall for the false sycophancy and you keep in mind the contempt the companies behind it have for you.

Find a hobby that you enjoy that takes a lot of "brains". I write software a ton, but it definitely doesn't have to be that. Yarncraft is surprisingly thinking-intensive. Games like sudoku. Puzzles. Woodworking. Bonus points if it's something that gives you something to "show for it" when you're done.

I'd go a little further, though. It might be good to also eschew as many addictive dopamine sort of things as possible. Tiktok, addictive games, etc. (There's a lot of propaganda from #nofap weirdos out there claiming that porn is the worst thing you can do to your brain. I don't think it's that simple and I do think probably you're the best one to make the call for yourself whether that's the case for you. Maybe "detoxing" from porn for, say, a week at a time could be helpful from time to time, though. Also, I believe strongly that there's nothing wrong specifically with masturbation or (safe) sex itself. (In fact, it's probably better for you to do so than not to do so.) If there's any truth to the #nofap stuff, I think it only applies to porn. And even then, I think that only applies to a minority.)

Consume more long-term educational content. Read books. Watch stuff that teaches you stuff. (I'm really into STEM stuff. Math, physics, engineering, hardware hacking, programming, etc. I also enjoy a lot of social commentary stuff, philosophy, and psychology. But do what works for you.) Opencourseware is a great resource.

Further still, I think meditation is a pretty big "cheat code". It sucks. A lot. For a while. But it gets easier and I think it'll improve your brain quickly in ways you can't necessarily even anticipate now. Start with short sessions. 10 minutes, 5 minutes, or even 2 minutes. Here is a decent guide for beginners. Over time, you'll start enjoying it.

Good luck! You're doing good recognizing the problem and planning to take action to remediate it! And you're more than welcome here. Post updates if you want!

I want to focus on a particular functional aspect of this: remembering what you've been exposed to.

The best method is rewriting it in your own words by hand. If that seems too daunting then typing is better than nothing but the brain-body connection while moving langauge to script by hand is the real magic.

If you are having trouble remembering what you've been exposed to, and if you want to transform exposure to information into real knowledge, then re-writing it in you own words by hand is the best way to start doing that.

One of the reasons you are not retaining information is because your LLM dependence makes it trivial to apply solutions to problems without understanding either.

Re-learning task independence is going to require effort against friction you are no longer accustomed to. While I agree with many of the other comments here that cutting LLMs out entirely is ideal I also understand addiction and dependence. If you can start writing down what you are learning and using your own notes to answer your questions that may be a helpful starting point for re-establishing your independence and eventually cutting LLMs out if your life entirely.

Secondary suggestion: Read books.

I'm going to give you an example, if you don't understand. Thats ok. It's normal not to understand things on the first parse:

"I just saw the odyssey, the main character is great. I don't remember the actor's name. He's in batman or something. I don't know. " At this point in the conversation everyone will either say "Matt Damon?" or take out their phones, then say "Matt Damon, but he wasn't in batman, that's Ben Affleck" "But yeah, he was great and I like the sounds the ships make when they are at sea, very authentic sounding. I had a good time seeing it."

Here I will say, knowing the actor's name has no bearing on the conversation at hand. So instead of looking something up we can just move forward with an irrelevant gap. This is what will cure you of your sickness. You are uncomfortable not knowing something, maybe you worry people will think you are stupid. In truth, it is smarter to admit you don't have a complete understanding of the situation. Everyone in my example who took out their phones is also making a grave error. They equate their ability to reference IMDB's cast list with "knowing" something. Stop looking everything up, reading does not equate to knowing - even when you are getting things from a reliable source.

I am starting to notice that now I cannot do searching anymore. I literally cannot do anything on my own like coding, learning something, fact checking, doing my assignments.

This is partially not your fault, because we are all having AI shoved down our throats by the richest companies on Earth via marketing (including stealth marketing) and dark patterns.

You can't even do a basic search anymore with being pushed towards a chat bot or directed to 15 different slop sites that were generated just a few months ago.

The Internet itself is in a dark place. AI has consumed it too.

Sometimes, I "talk" with ChatGPT more than real human beings, maybe cuz I somehow end up having a bad experience or not so fulfilling experience with people.

As bad as all of the other stuff is, this is the scariest part to me by far; you are de-socializing yourself at the time in your life when you will benefit the most from meeting people and forming lifelong relationships.

University is where you have some opportunities to meet real friends, date, have sex, and maybe even fall in love if you're lucky. Whether they are your peers, professors, or just randoms, the people you meet in university can open doors for you later in life too. It only gets harder to meet people as an adult in your 30s and beyond (though it is still possible!), so you want to be taking advantage of being a university setting by doing other things, going out, having fun, introducing yourself to people, asking people out on dates, and so on. University is not all about studying, so you want to balance the social side with the academic side while you can.

But talking to people is a skill that takes practice. Just like how a skateboard can expect to fall down every once in a while, you should expect to have occasional bad/awkward interactions with people or embarrass yourself from time to time. We all do it. But the more you do it, the more you begin to develop the skill of talking to real people, and the better your interactions will become.

Instead, you're talking to chat bots and learning only how to talk to chat bots. Your real social skills are atrophying while you embrace the cold escapism of talking to your computer. Maybe talking to AI will be an important skill in the future too, who knows... But certainly not at the expense of other life skills that are going to help you build lasting connections with other human beings...

One day we will all die. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to die alone with nothing more than memories talking to my computer. You've gotta touch grass, otherwise I fear your quality of life will suffer.

I have to use AI again and again for the same question, e.g., I asked a question today, I got the answer. If I encountered that question later again, I would not know the answer and have to go to AI for solution. What to do now? How to get out of this dependence on AI?

Stop asking questions and start using your head. Sit in silence with your thoughts and think.

Think about life. Think about your philosophy and what you value. Think about opportunity cost of doing one thing in stead of another thing. Think honestly about your own skills and knowledge. Think about what your life will look like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Think about your problematic addiction to AI. Think about what happens if/when society finds a way to actually test people again. Think!

You need to start looking inward for answers now, or else you'll gonna be asking AI how to wipe your ass every day.

Step 1: get a library card. Step 2: read books. Lots of books. Do the exercises in the books, when appropriate (like for programming or math, for example), without help from the chatbots of course.

Sorry if I'm not of much help, but I've never been a mediocre senseless fuck. Sorry, again, if this sounds tactless but judging by the post and your other comments that's the point you're at now. Don't despair, tho, you're young and you can get out of it with a bit of effort, if you're willing to put in the work, that is.

Step 1 is to delete the apps

That's a great question. I tease, but first step is realising the problem and you've done that. Much harder is acting on it.

The truth is nobody really knows. It's new. Addiction to it is also new as is the research showing its deleterious effects on the brain.

If I was looking for somewhere to start by trying to read a book a every week or two. Alternate between appealing fiction and an important topic. If you have readings set by your educational institution - do those instead. Reading and digesting plaintext information works a lot of your brain and doesn't come with any immediate answers to questions, it will help you build your patience back.

You have to go cold turkey. Delete the apps and bookmarks, delete your account. Do things manually even if it's painful. Accept that sometimes you won't get everything you want right away.

I think you outlined a couple of different problems, which requires different solutions.

First, the reliance on it for assignments. How are you grades? Is AI helping you learn enough to do well or no? I think AI can be useful to explain things in a different way from your professor, but if you're using it to basically do the work for you, your grades will likely reflect that you're not retaining anything. You need to learn how to learn if you haven't.

Second, relying on it for food and exercise advice. Are you asking it for specific recipes and targeted exercises or are you literally asking "what should I eat for dinner?" What I'm trying to get at is whether this is a matter of convenience or codependence. It's normal to be inexperience and unsure at this age, so if you're just using it to make up for your lack of experience, just cut the middle man out and look at recipes/workout plans directly and be curious about experimenting. However, if you feel insecure without AI deciding for you, you do need to just cut it out and sit with the discomfort of deciding for yourself.

Third, "talking" with it more than human beings. This is by far the most risky use of AI for your own well-being. If you have the option to do in-person therapy, I would start there. Since you're in school, try studying in public places like the park, the library, student center, common areas in your dorm or major, etc. Make yourself available to spontaneous human interactions and they are more likely to happen. Also talk to your friends more and more often if you have some.

Lastly, on having to re-ask the same question multiple times a day. That worries me. Are you sleeping and eating well? Do you also experience brain fog? Make sure you're ok physically first. Then, work out your brain like a muscle. When the same question pops into your head the second time, write down what you think the answer is first before googling it, even if it takes you a couple of minutes. You need to practice recall or your brain will be happy to offload information storage onto AI.

I think you're experiencing very normal challenges for your age, but with the added unknown of how AI helps/hurts humans at this stage, so don't be too hard or punishing on yourself! I don't think it's helpful to equate AI to a hard drug that you have to quit cold turkey because you don't seem to me like you have AI psychosis or at risk for it. So take a deep breath and just take it one step at a time <3

Quit it cold turkey Consider subscribing to Kagi, a paid search engine, to avoid Google shoving its AI bullshit down your throat every time you search the web.

If you truly get stuck on something specific that you feel the impulse to ask am LLM about, instead ask friends for advice, or post about it here on Lemmy for help.

I suggest going so far as getting rid of Siri or Alexa or Hey Google or whatever the fuck Google calls its voice assistant now. They're all fuckin wiretaps anyways. But I understand if this in particular is too much to ask

Connecting on a community like this (with at least the intent) of having actual human responses is a good first step. For the sorts of questions about what to do in life keep exploring why you've had bad human interactions and see how you could lower the chance of that happening. For the coding try accepting that very likely you'll make mistakes or do things in a non optimal way for the first pass. Think of writing code like writing a rough draft don't worry about big o etc. Focus on building an understanding and mentally model rather than producing an output (read: source code). AI gives you output and brain chooses lazy way to reach the goal.

Think of non AI code production like a woodworker that can read a piece of wood knows where the knots and the unexpected grain direction c changes are and uses that understanding to make something. Maybe what they set out to build wasn’t actually feasible. Compare to an ai it’s more like a factory it will make cuts right on knots etc. All is focus on output with the inputs at any cost.

• You need digital detox. Get the LLM apps off your phone, and maybe get something like this if its affordable: https://commodore.net/callback/

• Sign up for university counseling. Trust me, I WISH I had done this.

• Restrict yourself to "offline" LLMs on your laptop if you MUST use them, with all the search/agenic features turned off. This turns them into more of a utility and forces you to find the references yourself, to actually integrate blocks of code, and so on.

Treat this like smoking or some physical addiction, as that's what these digital addictions are.

Its probably unpopular here, but I'd also suggest you play with a "raw" LLM with completion syntax in mikupad, with the raw formatting tokens and everything:

https://github.com/lmg-anon/mikupad

Among other things, it dispels the "psychological mysticism" around them, and kinda shows your brain what they really are. A weather prediction model, for text. Not "AI" you brain can't help but anthropomorphize.

And:

This is not your fault.

Tech companies spend billions designing the chat UIs to be addictive, just like social media.

You can address it though, even if it feels like everyone around you is compelling you to use. I'm not even coming at this from the anti AI angle either: I've been hacking at LLMs since 2022, but what OpenAI, Google and such have done is beyond fucked up.

All the skills you loss at the AI are muscle. Start rebuilding them, it will be hard at first but if you don’t want to do it it will not work.

ChatGPT offer us with the sense of simplicity and truth but we know that 1- this simplicity have an enormous price, personal and environmental 2- the truth it advertised is a lie or at least a partial lie. If you don’t build the skill to see where it hallucinate it don’t matter if it give you false answers 20% of the time

My advice would be try replace asking AI with asking a human some of the time, like you're doing here. That's a great start. Other examples :

• Try to do homework with a group of people, where you can ask them random questions
• Ask a librarian
• Join an online chat with a #random channel

The key is, when you talk to AI, that doesn't build your relationship with another human or community, it all kind of goes to waste. So try to spend more time with communities and enjoy the benefits of contributing and building relationships.

Cold turkey struggle club. Your brain has an ai shaped hole in it and you need to create new habits and routines to fill that hole