I'm worried Artificial Intelligence could make us stupid

DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: I’m worried Artificial Intelligence could make us stupid

Once upon a time if I wanted to find my way to somewhere unfamiliar, I would have pulled out a map and plotted my route. These days I just put the destination into my smartphone and let it make all the decisions.

Is this a simple, practical thing to do or, by relying on increasingly smarter phones, are we allowing them to make us, day by day, a little bit dumber?

I’ve spent the last few days at an international conference on artificial intelligence pondering just this question. We were discussing, among other things, the effect that the rise of machine intelligence is having on our brains. It’s scary stuff.

In his final book, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote that creating a true artificial intelligence could be our greatest achievement and, perhaps, our last. He fears that one day scientists will create an artificial intelligence so smart it will destroy us.

Although I don’t dismiss Hawking’s fears, I think a more immediate threat comes from relying on machines, rather than our ‘grey cells’, to do our thinking for us.

RISE OF THE MACHINES … AND DIABETES

THE rise of machines, from the steam engine to the dishwasher and the personal computer, has meant that we do less and less physical work. Cars and escalators whisk us from one place to another without ever having to use our feet. Jobs are done sitting at desks.

This in turn contributed to the rise of obesity, type 2 diabetes and a range of other chronic diseases.

I fear that this century the spread of sophisticated thinking machines means that we won’t use our mental muscles as much as we do today. This in turn may help accelerate the onset of brain diseases such as dementia, already the number one cause of death in British women.

These robots are designed to help us. For instance, last week the Education Select Committee invited a ‘teaching assistant’ robot called Pepper to answer questions from MPs, alongside the Middlesex University academics who built him. And at this conference I saw an AI translator that was almost as good as a human one.

My worry is this: why would you bother to learn a new language or drive a car or even teach someone else something if a machine can do it for you?

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We need to keep challenging ourselves mentally, if we are to keep our brains supple and nimble. It is very much a case of use it or lose it.

Recently I took part in an experiment. With the help of researchers from the University of Edinburgh, we recruited a group of 20 people, half aged 18 to 30 and half aged over 56 and none of whom spoke Spanish. We asked them to spend a month intensively learning the language. Before starting, we also asked them to go through a battery of cognitive tests which scored their memory, mental flexibility and ability to pay attention. Then they started their lessons. At the end of the month we assessed their Spanish-speaking skills, but also repeated the cognitive tests.

Although the younger group had made better progress with Spanish, the older group saw the biggest improvements in their general brain power: proof of the wide-ranging mental benefits of learning something new.

CLEVER ROBOTS… BUT NOW OUR IQ IS FALLING

I ASKED Dr Thomas Bak, a lecturer in cognitive science at Edinburgh who oversaw the experiment, if they would have got the same improvement if we had asked them to play video games or something like Sudoku.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Trying to learn a new language has wider benefits. It’s like going to the gym and using 20 machines for different parts of the body. It causes much bigger activation of the brain.’

Interestingly, studies have found that learning a second language may delay the onset of dementia by up to five years, and may also improve the rate at which you recover from stroke. You get none of these benefits if you leave machines to do the work.

But is there any real evidence that the use of modern technology is actually making us dumber? I’m sorry to say that there is. It is called the Flynn Effect.

It is named after a psychologist called James Flynn who, in the 1990s, looked at the results of hundreds of studies done on IQ and discovered, to his surprise, that scores had been rising in most industrialised countries by about three points every decade.

In other words, someone who scored 100 on an IQ test in 1930 would probably have scored 115 in 1990. When I met Dr Flynn a few years later, I asked him: ‘Why?’

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Sweet potato chips, egg, tomato, beans and spinach – serves 2

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 6. Chip 2 medium sweet potatoes and spread on a baking tray along with half a large tomato. Drizzle with 1⁄2 tbsp olive oil and season. Cook for 30-40 minutes or until chips are crisped up and tomato is golden. Meanwhile, heat 1⁄2 tbsp oil in a pan, add 400g drained cannellini beans and 50ml water. Season, bring to a simmer. Add 100g spinach, cover and cook for 2 minutes. Fry 2 eggs to your liking. Serve chips, tomato, beans and spinach with the egg and a sprinkle of black pepper.

He thought it was the result of a combination of factors including improved nutrition, more time in school and a more demanding intellectual environment.

The disturbing thing is the Flynn effect has now stopped.

Not only are IQ levels no longer rising, they are falling. No one knows why but plausible reasons are the rise of junk food, computer games, social media and a fall in reading and less face- to-face communication.

So if you want to keep your brain in good shape as you get older what should you do? I recommend that you limit your screen time, and eat a Mediterranean diet, one rich in vegetables, olive oil and oily fish.

You need to remain active, physically and mentally, and keep up with old friends. Social isolation and loneliness are almost as bad for the brain as having high blood sugar levels.

In the years ahead, AI will have an extraordinary impact on our lives, from self-driving cars to robot surgeons, but we would be foolish to allow ourselves to become too reliant on them.

I like my smartphone. But I like my brain even more.

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