"AI" Does NOT Make You Smarter! It Makes You Dumber!

Several months ago I met someone who wanted to put my books into their AI client so they could discuss my book with the software. This initially confused me because Ai is not Ai, at the moment, it is actually only just a large language learning model which parrots or mimics human patterns of speech. We are a long ways off from true Ai, and what we have now is software that only looks up information on the internet and feeds it to you in the form of language but is not actually capable of thinking, deducing, or solving problems.

What many people enjoy about Ai as it currently exists, however, is that it does make the search for information a bit faster. But the models which exist are programmed to keep you using Ai as long as possible by giving the user affirmation which, among other problems, directly leads it to provide fake information if it lacks an answer to a question. I tried Ai when it first came out, because my research does often involve scouring lots of repetitive, laborious data sets I asked it to search those data sets for me and it would return entirely false information as if it were actually real information, and when I challenged the software on its errors it agreed that it had made up the data, and then proceed to replace the fake data with more fake data.

I know the model gave me fake data because I actually checked the fake data, unlike many other people who simply assume that the data being fed is accurate, derived somewhere on the internet and confirmed by the model to be true, but the models have no idea how to tell true from false, because they are not actually capable of thought, but ARE programmed to provide affirmation, so they must give an answer even if they don’t have one, and very often this simply results in making up something entirely but, modeled on patterns of human speech, makes the false answer appear convincing.

Once during this test the AI in fact began telling me about a biological concept it entirely made up. My knowledge of biology is vast and I had never heard of this and immediately suspected it of being fake, but wondering how the AI could have possibly made up something so absurd I did my own general search of the internet on that word and found that it was just a common misspelling that appeared on Reddit very often, and the AI was apparently scrubbing Reddit, of all places, for its information, meaning that the supposed data these models return for you very often comes from places like Reddit, and I don’t know about you but that is the last place I want my information to come from.

The ultimate problem with Ai, however, is that everyone using it feels that this tool makes us smarter by extension. While it is true that Ai tools can make some tasks and research easier that is the opposite of being smart! Many people misunderstand the purpose of schooling, as children going about repetitive exercises in math, spelling, and reading in order to memorize and retain knowledge. I took AP calculus my junior year of high school, but although I have spent the last decade engaged in academic research it has all been in biology and I do not remember anymore how to do some of even the most routine calculus. The point of schooling is NOT primarily to retain knowledge and information, although that does occur, but is in fact meant to teach people HOW to learn and to train minds to be better at the act of learning. In my book, The Perfect Child, I discuss education systems and how tools for learning are more important than the learning itself because, as the age old adage states, if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime, so it is with the act of learning itself, and taking AP calculus was not meant to make me remember everything in calculus but instead to be better at solving problems, which later served me immensely as I undertook the solving of health conditions which imperiled my life.

It is true my books are also long and laborious. I only have a high school education and although always wanting to be a writer am not superb at doing it. Not only that, the entirety of my research, writing, editing, publishing, printing, cover design, maintaining my site, and managing distribution is all my personal responsibility, where other writers supported by the industry receive an editor, copywriters, cover artists, layout directors, printing managers, and publicity agents and the machine of the publishing industry supporting their work and allowing the writer to simply write. But it does not matter how bad my writing is or how uninterested a person is in reading, it does not change the fact that information is required by any person in order to recover from illnesses, and without that information we remain ineffective in our quest to get well and take care of our bodies and minds. But reading and acquiring information is more of a process than simply learning facts, for instance a person who asks Ai what the cure for diabetes is as discussed in my books might be told about the opportunistic microbes which disrupt the pancreas and sugar digestion in the gut, and how tannins and other phytochemicals and dietary nutrients are required to get well too. But because we don’t know what we do not know the person who uses AI instead of actually reading my book will never learn how their coping and control behaviors that motivate such lazy and incurious behavior are in fact the root cause of their diabetes, because they will not know to even ask the Ai such questions, or because they think they are not alcoholic will not read the chapter on learned hopelessness which is a condition that motivates avoidance and self-doubt, and then will remain unwell even though they believe they have been told the answer by a large language learning model.

Occasionally I also get people suggesting I remove my personal experiences from the book, but those are there for one of the most important reasons, which is relevance without which the biological information would lack context, and context is one of the primary deficits of Ai, because providing context would require it write a 500 page book, and since that already exists it would simply be redudant. The worst effect thus of using Ai is that it actually makes a person more stupid, by doing the work for us that is required to actually become intelligent and learned we then miss out on that process and become all the dumber for it. Learning for many people is inconvenient, but life and nature do not care about your feelings and what you want. As discussed in my new book, Under a Libra God, life operates on immutable laws of causality, and if certain conditions are not addressed it is not possible to get well, and being ignorant or in denial of the parameters of reality is at the root of all illness.

The ability to learn is as important as the information that we learn from the act of learning, without which we feel incompetent and unable to read, pay attention, or comprehend complex topics. But being able to overcome those insecurities is not achieved by having someone or something do the work for us. I have spent a decade engaged in the most rigorous academic research, writing over one million words to bring the information to you, so I don’t feel sorry for you in the least that you have to read a single boring book to get that information. But I promise if you use AI in attempts to get well, you will NEVER get well because at the root of you problem is the unwillingness to do the work that is required for recovery, and that is something an AI, no matter how smart, will ever be able to do for you.

The true measure of intelligence is NOT whether you understand big words or know a lot about biology—the only true measure of intelligence is curiosity, and the act of learning about things of which you’re curious is the act of increasing your intelligence. While learning can feel difficult there are several skills which can make it easier, one of them is learning how to read more efficiently such as discussed in my article How to Speed Read. Some conditions like anxiety or ADHD can also make it difficult to learn, and these are problems rooted in metabolic health and overstimulation of the nervous system by stress hormones and amine producing opportunistic microbes in the gut as addressed in Fuck Portion Control in the chapters on gut health, parasitism, and depression. Many of us also incorrectly believe ourselves to be stupid or that we are incapable of understanding big words (just look them up!), and insecurities about intelligence and learning can be triggered by reading, especially works like mine which contain a vast amount of information—these insecurities are often not based in reality and are instead a result of poor conceptions of self esteem which are resolved through psychological therapy as discussed in my book The Perfect Child, so reading that book can also help a great deal in being better able to learn. All books (the eBooks) are donation based, depending on your income, so even if you have no money there’s no excuse not to read them, to take care of your health by learning the things you need to learn to do it.