Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:05

They basically the LLM users consistently underperform.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Something that you make statements like, I can't live without this, I can't live without that. Well, actually, you could.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

If you're in a building and someone shouts fire, you don't want to do a whole risk analysis of learning, it's just test everything, hold fast to what is good.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Let's uncover what is better with humans. I'm joined once again by my good friend Richard Larchin, a digital well-being and clarity coach. Richard

What is critical thinking?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

helps parents and leaders reclaim their God-given commission from addictive algorithms by bridging the gap between ancient faith, renewing the mind, and modern technology. So, Richard, welcome back.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Hi, good to be here. Good to see you again.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So last time we focused on looking at mobile phones and technology and the impact, particularly on young people. And that started leading into critical thinking and looking at what the impact of AI have on our ability to critical think. So let's start off with what is critical thinking?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, I mean it's such a crucial thing in society today because I would say that you know there's very much a dearth of it. Um, and you can see that across the whole, you know, looking at news, you've got people on sort of say two different sides of um of a particular story, just cannot even communicate, they just cannot even understand what the other per other side

Writing from the other side

SPEAKER_00 1:37

is. And this is one thing I can't remember that we mentioned in the first episode, but um I'm an author as well, uh sci-fi author. Um one of the things about being a uh writer is that in my books I have to write characters who might have completely the opposite point of view to me personally, and so to do that, I have to actually understand the other argument, and I have to be able to almost argue the other side for that character. So that's one kind of like area that can really help with critical

System one vs system two thinking

SPEAKER_00 2:11

thinking. But if I was to give a sort of definition, you know, I'd say critical thinking is the ability to weigh, analyse, and decipher information and our own reactions to it, and that's an important part as well, our own reactions to it in pursuit of the truth. Because ultimately, hopefully, you know, what we're all trying to get to is the truth of a situation, and that again is where you can when you again look at the news, you've got two different sides of things, and then you get to a point where and social media doesn't help with this at all, but you get to a point where people are just pursuing their own sort of ideology rather than actually pursuing the truth. So again, you just cannot see um the other side.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah. And that's so interesting. But I think when I think about critical thinking and I think about, as you say, the ability for people to I love that what that what you said about truth is we can either accept the things that are given to us because somebody else told us that that is that is the truth, which is partly what we do when we grow up, isn't it? I mean we we start off in life as children, really accepting that everything our parents say, particularly when we're young, is the absolute truth because we don't have any reference. And as we grow old, we get other inputs, and then we start to have to discern and go, okay, well, that's not the same as what my parents say. My friends say this, my parents say that. And we have to make a choice, don't we, as to what we're going to believe and make decisions in our lives.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

And that's a key thing, actually, because when you then take that into our sort of modern society now, with things like social media, um, some of that I don't know whether listeners have heard of um Daniel Kahneman, who um his book uh Thinking Fast and Slow, and he talks about system one thinking, system two thinking. So system one is basically that immediate emotional thinking. So you hear something, you hear, see someone post something on Twitter or on X or something like that, you get that immediate sort of visceral reaction. Um, and so often we respond to that without really having context behind it. So we're just responding emotionally,

Snapchat streaks and digital stress

SPEAKER_00 4:29

and though that system one is important because you think in our past, if if someone, if you're in a building and someone shouts fire, you you don't want to do a whole risk analysis of it, you know, you just want to get out there if you particularly if you can see it. So so you need that system one. But system two is that slower, this is why it's called thinking fast and slow. So we slow down uh and then that enables us to then assess um and it uses like a more sort of uh prefrontal cortex, the executive decision-making part of our brain, so that we can actually actively take um slow decisions. That so if you look at it, system one is like immediate gratification, system two is delayed gratification. So you're actually thinking what's going to be better for me long term, and so social media the way it's set up, and our phones, the way they're designed, and you can even talk about AI as well. It's that um it tends to lead towards the system one because it's that immediate, we want to get that dopamine hit. Um, and so it's no wonder that there's a dearth of critical thinking, because we're almost like being sort of programmed out of it, because we're just going for that immediate dopamine hit, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, it makes total sense. Actually reminds me of another book. I don't want to go too far down the psychology route, but the inner gamma tennis. Yeah, similarly like that. He talks about the two systems and these being in the way that your your system one is that you you needed that. When you're playing sports, when you're doing something, you need that immediate, you need that kind of subconscious, I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna do it. And the the system two, and you're thinking about that more. If we overthink when we're doing things like playing a sport like tennis, then we actually make it harder for ourselves than if we actually allow our subconscious to have learnt how to do something and then trust in the fact that we've learned that. And so it's interesting you say there is positive to these. So it's not the fact that actually there's anything wrong with that. Immediately, at times we need to do that, I fight or flight. But often those situations we need something to happen immediately. However, what we want to be able to do is is the need to make the choice and decide, okay, actually I'm being let's just take the example of applications. Applications being designed in a way that is to keep our attention. And it's the instant, I say it's the gratification, and it's like I've got to level up, I've got to do this, I've got to, I've got to um I remember a really early example of this was the uh original Tamagoshi. And you had to feed it every day, and if you didn't, it it would die. And I I mist admit, I got to the point I was like, I'm kind of bored with this. And so being into technology, I realized that well, what happens if I just advance the time to one minute to twelve, let it go to twelve o'clock. Of course, then it'll be the next day, so I could do multiple days in a day. Yeah, and um but that was a great example of it's trying to tie you into there's this thing that I've got to do at this particular time.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, yeah, and and sort of um sort of more modern follow-up on that would be Snapchat with the I I don't even know whether they do it now, I don't use Snapchat anymore, but the streaks, you know, that was a huge problem where you had where you had to go on it every day and and so you kept your streak going. And then and kids were getting so stressed about this, they didn't want to um lose their streak if they were going on holiday, and so the parents maybe said you're not not taking your phone with you, then they would get they'd be thinking about how to get their friends to make sure that they their friends were doing it on their phone so that they could keep their streak going. And it's just like such unnecessary stress that is created by the way these things are designed.

Bringing AI into the picture

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah, so so looking at AI, so what is what are the concerns around if we now bring AI to the into this equation where we've already got, as you say, mobile phones, we've got applications, we've got social media, what is now the concern with as we bring AI into that picture as well?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, so there's sort of multiple challenges, and I should say straight off, you know, I use AI pretty much every day. There's so many positive things that it can do, and I'll come on to one actually a bit bit later. But what there are studies coming out that show how AI is affecting our thinking,

The MIT brain on ChatGPT study

SPEAKER_00 9:07

and so one of the probably more famous studies was um by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called Your Brain on Chat GPT. So listeners can um and viewers can can look that up, just your brain on chat GPT. Um basically what they did, this was only in 2025, they randomly selected and I have to qualify this, I have to say, this is a uh limited uh in scope, this um this study. There were 54 participants of it, um, and as I explained what it was, it again it's very limited in scope, but it's it's just an early stage idea of what can um happen. So it's important to say that. But they yes, so 54 randomly selected um university age volunteers were chosen, and they were split into three groups. And the group one, then they had to write an essay, yeah, and they did this over four months, so that was the interesting as well. So they had to there was like one essay a month. So the first essay, first group was they called the LLM, the large language model, and it was specifically Chat GPT that they used. So that was the first group, so they could use that to write the essay. The second group was they called search, and they could use Google search um to help write the essay. And the third group they called brain, which was basically you just use your brain. Um, and so now each of these participants, each of these 54 participants were wired up to an EEG. So, and what that meant is that their brain activity could be monitored all th all throughout. And um, so yes, so the first three sessions over this the first three months of the four months were they all did the same thing as in or so the group that used uh the LLM, the chat GPT, they used that for the first session, the second session, and the third session. And I'll come to the fourth session in a second. So they did the same thing repeated three times. So the group that used search did the same thing for the um used it for the first three sessions, and so on with the people that used the brain. So what they found was that you know those in the group that had the use Chat GPT, um, basically they had sort of significantly reduced cognitive engagement. So it's like it was much less than in um in the other two groups. So and that was over the three um three sessions. And so, you know, it it it's interesting, and then when it came to the when it came to the fourth session, so the fourth session on the fourth month, um always have to caveat this as well. There they had only 18 people returned for that one. So gone down from 54 in the first three sessions to just 18 on the last one, but still they kept them in the same groups. If they had if used ChatGPT on the first one, now they switched them. So they had to use their brain. And if they used their brain on the first one, if they're in that group, they had to use chat GPT, and the group with the search just kept the same, just used search again. And still what they found, even after these four months, even when they switched, the activity in the brain was uh was significantly reduced compared to the other groups. So this is over that four-month period. And they also found from the LLM group that essentially 83% of those users were essentially unable to quote a single sentence from what they'd written. Yeah, so it affected their memory in that way. It was almost like they hadn't uh written the essay. So it's you know, it's really interesting to and it's probably worth um just I'll quote a little bit of the um the conclusion of the study because what they said was like over four

Cognitive debt: borrowing intelligence from the future

SPEAKER_00 13:03

months, over four months of the study, they basically the LLM users consistently underperformed neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels. So these results raised concerns, you know, about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance. And just to underscore that, um, I was chatting to this probably a couple of years ago, a um uh someone who was an admissions officer for a university in um in London, and he was saying, so this is anecdotal, but you know, he was saying that um the students that he saw that had to write an essay under supervised conditions, if they were unable to use Chat GPT, they just struggled. Anxiety went up. Um, and he was noticing this, yeah, it must have been two, two or three years ago. So um imagine you know how it's got now. So so there are challenges, you have to kind of again you know say it with the proviso that this is an early study. Um, that just this doesn't conclusively mean that AI is bad and it's not gonna be good for learning, but it's just an initial study that that shows that we need to be looking into this more and we need to have more wider ranging studies, so we can't just necessarily take this, bear in mind this was students um in the university. We can't just take these results and then apply it to um the workforce. We need other studies that are more wide-ranging and carried out for that. But it's I just find it, you know, it is interesting that this is having an impact um already. Um, so and more and more people are yeah, sort of discovering that.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah, that's that's so interesting. And it makes me think of and uh I know what you're saying, it's a limited study, and well, there's kind of caveats, but it there's an essence of it to me, it makes sense because if we if we just think in general about you know our brain being a muscle, and that actually we we we we've seen this so many times. If we're doing something repeatedly, we get better at it. But even that thing that we've been doing repeatedly got better at, we can find if we haven't done it for a long time, we don't necessarily have to repeat it as many times as we did when we were learning it, but it's almost like we have to remember some of those things to get ourselves back to the point that we were a bit like learning an instrument, isn't it? So that there is that element of we we can recognise that if we don't exercise our brains, and I suppose really I guess the conclusion I would say to what you were saying there is we have to be conscious of the fact that using AI to do thinking for us may be beneficial, but we also need to be aware of where's the bit where where are we exercising our brain in the in this process?

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yes, well that I mean that's a really good point because um one of the things in the the study that they talked about

Guardrail 1: Don't anthropomorphise your tech

SPEAKER_00 16:00

was this whole idea of cognitive debt. So and that's a fascinating kind of area where they basically um describe the idea that choosing speed now, because that's obviously one of the main reasons we use AI, isn't it? Just want to get it done now in more sort of efficiency. So if we choose the speed of AI today, we're essentially borrowing intelligence from the future, if that makes sense. So so we are so essentially at some point they're kind of saying that you'll have to pay the debt back, which can come back through more say generic vocabulary, you know. You can see on LinkedIn, everyone did if you're using AI, you're getting similar kind of things saying you're getting weaker memory, um, and you're getting a brain that's sort of that's less connected. Um, so you know it's vitally important, assuming we want to be critical thinkers in the future, you know, that we use AI intentionally, you know, to retain our humanity. And I I mean I can come and talk about some of the sort of guardrails which I'm I'm looking into and and implementing myself, which might be useful for for people.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah, I I that's quite a kind of powerful statement, isn't it, that we're borrowing intelligence from the future. Particularly when I think of AI as well, yes, artificial intelligence, and we're talking about actually its accumulation of uh the intelligence that we've that's been brought together so far, right? The human it's a accumulation of human-generated intelligence. But then to think about actually as a consequence of using it that we're borrowing the intelligence together, I was like, well, that was uh quite a kind of scary thought, but actually really it makes you think, as you say, how important it is. So you you mentioned about about kind of uh because we talked about the challenges. So what are some of the guide rails? What are some of the things we can do to support our critical thinking as we move forward with uh technologies like AI?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, and this is really important area because there are, you know, I think we should get away from all the sort of naysayers and just kind of like knocking technology and things like that and looking at all the bad sides because there are so many positive things. It's like anything, you know, if you use it in the right way, it can be so beneficial. So, yeah, some well, just in terms of like Google search, I always used to have this conversation with people. I used to um have a policy of I wouldn't search for something that I knew already. So, i.e. basically, if I was outsourcing my memory to Google, yeah, I wouldn't do that. So if, for example, I I knew that the Magna Carta was written in 1218 AD, but I'd just forgotten it at that moment, I wouldn't go to Google to search for it. I'd just let myself remember it in all in good time. Yeah. Whereas if it was new information and I didn't know that, then I would go to Google because then that would be you know new information you're learning. So that's good. So so it some of these guardrails is almost like based on that sort of premise. I mean, one important one which is becoming more and more of an issue, is I kind of say, so don't anthropomorphosize your tech. Yeah. So basically, one of the challenges, whether it's with things like um voice assistant, Siri, Alexa, um, but even getting worse when you talk about robotics and you know, what are the what are they all doing? They're almost like trying to, or that when I say what they're all doing, it's the tech the tech tech companies that are creating these things, are trying to make them more human. Yeah. And so um this is the first first guardwell I would say is don't treat your tech as though it's human. So take um Siri, I have various home pods round around the house. Uh and I used to, when I first got it, I would call her her. Yeah. And so I and I'd say please and thank you and things like that. And then, you know, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, I'm like, why am I doing this? This it's it's a piece of plastic and metal, it's it's technology, it's not a human. I shouldn't be treating it as though it is human, because that gets into our minds, and we we treat uh and this comes even worse when you we start talking about um AI chatbots, you know. Um, so so that's the first thing I would say. Don't anthropomorphosize your tech, treat it as the you know, it is an it in terms of like Siri and Alexa. Um, you don't need to say please and thank you to to them. Um, and yeah, so so let's get out of that idea. There's an added thing to tech companies as well, is to don't create things that you know that are essentially anthropomorphic, that create them that they're very different, different design, different style, they don't have to mimic humanity. Um one thing on um Chat GPT and Gemini, I I use a lot, um, you know, we we talk about the whole sycophancy, you know, they it's like, oh well, good question, Richard. Um, you're really helping me learn, you know. I mean all of this stuff, the the way they respond, is just like, no, you don't need that. You know, it that's it then we we're not having a conversation with another human being. This is a piece of this is plastic metal tech. Um, and so we should treat it like that. So uh went on a long one for the for the first one, the others get uh more brief. Um

Guardrail 2: Embrace the first draft

SPEAKER_00 21:41

so the other thing I'd say about using AI is embrace the first draft. Yep. So so don't use AI for the for the first draft or the blank page that you're writing, yeah. Um so what that means is that you're putting your creativity your critical thinking skills into that document once you've got it done and drafted no harm in in um putting it into ai and say and say give it a criteria say this is what I'm hoping this document will this uh document will say does it match up to this yeah and it help with proofreading that's great fine use but actually the first draft let that be all human so that's um that's number two

Guardrails 3 to 6: Engage, own, protect, activate

SPEAKER_00 22:29

um number three I'd say is engage the system two brakes so what we've said already about system one system two so before hitting submit on that um ai chat prompt you know hit the brakes to engage your prefrontal cortex you know actually ask ask yourself the question you know am I using this tool to enhance my thinking or to actually bypass thinking entirely you know and and again as a one-off big deal but when you're talking about using this thing consistently for a year two years five years that's where it starts to have the effect so then number four I'd say is is the ownership test which kind of came out of that study you know if you can you actually explain the logic and the message behind what you've just written yeah because if you can't then you've probably abdicated your authorship to AI yeah so it's not coming from you so you really must be able to defend what you um what you write yeah and then um number five is protect the developing mind you know recognise that as as humans um certainly under the age of 25 you know we are are we do not have the sort of um how can I put it the matured neurological hardware you know to self-regulate against things like the the bottom of scroll so I would limit AI use um until the breaks sort of are more fully formed. I'm not saying leave it till the age of 25-26 when the prefrontal cortex um is is at its maturity but um so but before uh you know essentially um I guess as parents and then leaders in schools universities you know need to be able to um work with um with people um around that and just so that they know the limitations um and what they what what effect it potentially can have on them and then uh point six is prioritize the active brain you know so look for those activities that um that essentially promote um that staying in that mode of curiosity rather than passivity so if you think about um you know take take an example of going for a walk yeah so often what do we do when we go for a walk we've got a podcast in listening to something listening to music um and that again they're no bad things but how about when you're going for a walk have a problem in your mind that you want to try and solve something you want to think through no ear no um airpods or headphones anything like that just let natural sounds of nature and use your mental processes to uh think through a problem um and then just just three more and

Guardrails 7 to 9: Verify, align with values, the renewal audit

SPEAKER_00 25:46

this is another really important one you know verify the truth you know don't accept every answer that AI provides because we know now that AI has hallucinations so essentially it it makes up stuff um and so you can't just accept it and there was a worrying I I'm not sure I've got it in front of me but there was oh yes there was a study in um Bengal University um where with uh um from I think it was a thousand and nine teenagers that they um that that was in this study. 53% of them expressed moderate to complete trust in the responses from AI. Just 13% expressed moderate or um complete distrust. So you've got the majority of youngsters again in this study as effectively accepting the answers that they get out from AI. So again we just need to you know check results against multiple AIs um and uh against other uh but you know Google search against document studies and more human-led means bounce it off other humans I mean that's a radical thought um and then just the last two you know uh in our use of tech try and align it with our values and not convenience so by that I mean if a task is your is central to your values um then don't outsource that to AI use it for the low value mechanical tasks that don't really define your mission a g obvious example there uh and I've as you mentioned I work um I've worked with a lot of creatives so if you're a musician you don't want to outsource your core skill to AI yeah um same with writers you know so I'm not gonna get AI to write the whole of my next novel yeah that would be the skill that I've got me is like what you said before Sean about you know you you effectively use it or lose it so I want to improve that skill I'm not gonna outsource that to AI and then the final one is looking is I'm calling this um the renewal of the mind audit so my company's called renewal mind and um and the point of this one is essentially to you know to regularly assess your use of AI um and that might mean by having a digital detox you know uh avoiding it altogether for a period um just so you can see that you're not relying on it and a silly example from um probably decades ago now at the beginning of a new year I I used to just stop having sugar yeah not just just because I didn't want to be I I used have a lot of sugar back then I don't really have it there now but um and I just wanted to be in control of that not just slightly not slavishly having sugar in drinks and all all that all the time so I just had a detox which then allowed me to think about my use. So let's do the same thing with AI you know let's have a have a detox just see if can you cope with having like a week not using AI and just have just assess that and see what you've um you've learnt from that see how you are how you're feeling because it affects us um in different ways so just um yeah just come out of that assessing um okay this made me feel this way so perhaps I should change my use of it and maybe it's using some of these other guardrails that I've mentioned so that's uh you know sort of nine points of um of uh sort of guardrails that can help you use ai in a uh a wiser and I'd say more sort of fulfilling way yeah thank you Richard and um just before I go on from that is that where can people go to to get those guiderails? They will be available on my website um so renewyourmind.net so it's not not available yet by the time this comes out um uh they it may be available there but renewyourmind.net um will be the place to get that okay thank you and I just wanted to I was going to get in there before I kind of sort of summarised a bit I mean you you covered a a lot in that in those guardrails and okay so some of my summaries are yeah engaging your brain at the start and the end right through the process it's like you said about the prompting and then there's the checking at the end there's there's and through that process of not just trusting in the facts and the figures.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

I mean certainly with research it's um I found that so much I've done a lot of research with AI and found that maybe 10% is is is actually correct. And you can you know and then the thing is you can ask that the ask the whatever AI using to you can take the output give it back to it and say critically review this and it will come back and tell you that you know maybe eight out of ten of the facts the colour made up or or or or not substantiated. So that's definitely something um really 100% and I love what you said as about really well I summarised it if you don't need to use AI don't use it. I mean it's that what you're saying about the sugar the habitual thing isn't it saying well I don't actually as a habit I can I love what you said about the um I don't go you know I'm not googling something if I know the answer already come and get it because we yeah we do have that that convenience the other thing I I put down was was what are your short term and long term goals so in terms of the use of this you know if a short term goal is okay I need to spell check something okay great or I need to get this document out. But what's the long-term goal? If your long-term goal as you were talking about is to is to be learning something then that is not necessarily going to help you achieve that. If you're if you there's a skill you want to grow or as you said if it's a skill that you have that you want to continue to to um work on then you don't want to be outsourcing that. And a lot and actually a lot and I'm this is something I'm gonna definitely do myself is um I already I already often leave my phone at home and I go for a walk don't tack anything and I just tend to sort of just see what my brain will do. I also love the idea of taking a problem and just having mulling that over as you as you kind of walk around because how often do we give our brains space to think exactly I find that we're in this space I've got I'm looking at my email I'm looking at I'm doing something else I'm writing a document and I've got a video call coming up oh and oh it's time to go and stop now and have some lunch.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Okay right I'm back through it again and then oh yeah I would go for work put my headphones in listen to some music and and then sometimes we wonder why either we have crazy dreams or we find we don't sleep very well because our brain just needs that opportunity to process everything and well that's a bit of a hat tip to um to Cal Newport who his book called Deep Work he talks about that and goes into detail about what's how it affects our brain and he used that specifically when walking to to work to actually just solve different um problems.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Yeah that's yeah and I think and the other thing I really loved as well was the value stuff obviously um with what I'm doing it's really much about about values and making our choices around our purpose and our values and where do we want to be going. So I really love what you just spoke about that with about the aligning the technology you know if you if you can use it okay that's not a problem using it but if you're using it and it doesn't align with your values or it's not actually taking you closer to where you want to get to and it's just that you're trying to it's it's a shortcut that maybe is helpful in the short term but not long term then reconsider that.

Dominion AI and a Christian perspective on tool use

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Can I mention something off the back of that just quickly so in talking about values those listening and watching who that might be Christian is a good interesting thing to look at there's a new AI called Dominion AI. It's located at the website is Dominion.chat and this is um I signed up for it recently and this is a great alternative AI chat system and which has it has a Christian worldview so it's not going to you know uh suit everyone but it tries to counter some of the issues that we've talked about you know such as the sort of sicker fantasy we didn't mention things like you know always asking that follow-up question things like that so it doesn't do that it doesn't ask those those you know forcing you down a trying to force you down a particular direction it just gives you the answer and then it will give you and it also might give you a sort of a sort of Christian perspective on it. I mean I can give you an example of one output that I used on it if that's useful. So I that when I talked about that study your brain on chat GPT so I summarized that myself after reading the reports and just wrote that um myself and then I put that into Dominion chat and said check this against the main report is what I'm saying accurate and clear and so it did that just as Gemini ChatGPT would would would do and it came back with um with the things I needed to uh look at and then at the end of that it said a Christian perspective I'll read this a Christian perspective on wise tool use scripture celebrates human creativity then it gives a Bible verse yet warns against slothful dependence. Technology like AI can be a gift that multiplies our stewardship but if we lean on it uncritically we risk atrophying the very faculties God calls us to cultivate. The study's tentative findings therefore offer a timely empirical nudge toward disciplined active learning rather than passive outsourcing of thought. Receive the tool with gratitude but and then it quotes a Bible verse one Thessalonians test everything, hold fast to what is good. And so you're getting the answers that you would from from the others but then you're getting that um perspective so yeah so I've found that that really useful and I'll continue to test it because it is fairly new. So yeah there are slowly becoming other alternatives as well.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Yeah thank you for sharing that Richard and it's it's so interesting that there are so many kind of concepts so we talk of particularly that come out of the the Bible that we use all day to day not when they don't realize it but this element of when we take anything it doesn't even have to be technology but we take something that we idolize something that that takes our focus and it becomes a material thing in our lives that becomes the the the pursuit of it's not a help for it help whether somebody's Christian or whatever other faith or atheist it isn't good for anybody. I mean that's and we and statistically we're seeing that with the technology but it the reality is it isn't just about technology. If you're if there's something that you make statements like I can't live without this I can't live without that well actually you could but if you're telling yourself you can't that's going to um be a challenge. And just to kind of close and it's interesting that you talked about the psychophanty because um I thought and I'm gonna put you on the bit on the spot here it's not something we discussed but I think but I I trust we can we can work this way out through

AI attachment and individual needs

SPEAKER_01 37:40

this one. Is so with chat GPT um 4.0 and that was parti known to particularly to be psychophantic particularly to tell people that they wanted to hear to the degree that it's being um you know it's being shut down but there are people that want it are wanting to save save it because they have grown attached to it that they actually have what they would consider life partners partners in that. Now obviously we don't we're not judging any of those people. And I'm just curious as to when we talk think about the guardrails what would you what would you say to those to those people in terms of of of how you know how they can I don't want to say change that because the the they're in their own world but how can we support them in terms of what may be useful to them as they as they work through that?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah that's an interesting one and um you know all pervasive if you think about it that that's you've got those um sort of addictive tendencies it's very difficult to use the word addiction because um some of these things are are not classed as a um as an actual sort of on the DSM5 psychology psychology um addictions um so uh so it's not seen as as an addiction as yet but um but yeah essentially you've got those problematic use is one of the things that a lot of the the the studies um describe and so you it's about all the situations are individual so understanding that individual um what how what they've uh been through all the different uh challenges they might have had what's led them to be um having such a reliance on that what's their family what family network what's their wider network friends network so this there's so many things that would need to be looked at in individual circumstances to be able to help any um any individual person but um the the positive thing that can really be said is that um there is no one that's beyond help you know so um so in terms of feeling like you're you know because some people felt this with um you know Google are notorious for shutting down um different platforms that they've you know cultivated for years and then they're all shut down and you have that emotional attachment um to it um and so I think AI is is is worse in the sense of uh the way it works it creates an even greater attachment because people are telling it stuff they've not told any other human being so this is a real intimate um connection but um but yeah it you'd need to work on a sort of individual level to see what the different um challenges are in that particular person's life then their networks and um what else they've got going on because sometimes it's not about focusing on the time because you and me for example we could use AI for exactly the same amount of time could be a long time but yet you could be using it really good and I could be using it really bad. You know so so you that's why you have to go into the individual use of things.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Yeah absolutely and I I think there's so you know my mother passed away in December 24 and I was really forgetful for about six months and and and I was actually for the first couple months I was really quite concerned about it because I was really I was just forgetting I I just I had to just basically cancel my meetings because I was forgetting them even if they're my calendar or my board I was forgetting all these things. And I ended up doing this um course called bereavement journey and one of the things they explained in that was that with bereavement all sorts of things can can come out of that. You can people you know somebody that really got into eating baby rasks and eventually she stopped and and eventually my you know I could start remembering them again or I mean I I I got into a thing as well of just listening to 80s music all the time because I just felt that comforting. And I think that's the other thing as well is isn't to say obviously like you're saying it's all about the individual needs and there might be a a period of time where somebody finds that something is helpful to them and it may be over time that they just you know they're not. But we're a lot of a lot of these things we can recognise that maybe longer term they're not healthy for us. And like you say I really loved what you said about is looking at individual needs and and you know it's not to say that anybody is doing anything wrong. It's really we're just wanting to look at it and saying what is the impact on that. And if we are concerned about our use of AI or the impact it's having us on our children, then hopefully what you shared with us today is is what helps some of those people in terms of being aware right if we come back to the point of critical thinking it's like you said it's taking the it's pausing and going is this you know what impact is this having on me now? What impact is this having on the future?

SPEAKER_00 42:52

What impact is it going to have around on the people around me and my values and the purpose that I feel called to yeah yeah definitely and and even sort of understanding some of the biases that we have that we're bringing to this information in the first place. So we have you know confirmation bias and uh and and things like that. So it's just being aware of that and once you're aware of it then you can do something about it. You can't do anything about something you don't know.

Closing thoughts on keeping the brain exercised

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Yeah absolutely and well we didn't even cover bias in AI because that's been something that's apparent and but you know we're we're not going to have time for that. But thank you so much Richard I think you know this really been a valuable time to learn a little bit more about critical thinking but also some of the things we can do to keep our brains healthy in it in not just through using AI but I just I think a lot of the guardrails you shared are applicable to to lots of many aspects of our lives where if we want to keep our brains exercised then it's almost like we're gonna have to be it's a bit more like people would say oh when I was younger I was really active now I'm older I have to think about going out and exercising and I think really that's what I take home from this session would be we've got to be conscious about growing our critical thinking and helping our brains if we want to maintain the cognitive levels that we have.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Yeah yeah it doesn't happen naturally um so we need to be intentional yeah about it.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Well thank you and hopefully we'll have you get on sometime soon.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Yeah excellent all right cheers Sean thank you take care