💡 The most high-profile study this year about A.I.'s effects on the brain came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where researchers sought to understand how tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT could affect how people write. The study, which involved 54 college students, had a small sample size, but the results raised important questions about whether A.I. could stifle people's abilities to learn.

💡 参考译文： 今年关于 A.I. 影响大脑的最受关注的研究来自麻省理工学院（MIT）。研究者试图弄清像 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 这样的工具会如何影响人们写作。这项研究样本量较小，仅涉及 54 名大学生，但结果引发了重要疑问：A.I. 是否会扼杀（压抑）人的学习能力。

💡 (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

💡 参考译文：（《纽约时报》已起诉 OpenAI 及其合作伙伴微软，指控其侵犯新闻内容版权；两家公司已否认相关指控。）

💡 For part of the study, students were asked to write an essay ranging from 500 to 1,000 words, and they were divided into different groupsOne group could write with the help of ChatGPT, a second group could look up information only with a traditional Google search, and a third group could rely only on their brains to compose their assignment.

💡 参考译文： 在研究的一部分中，学生要写一篇 500–1000 字的文章，并被分成不同组别：一组可以借助 ChatGPT写作，第二组只能通过传统的谷歌搜索查资料，第三组只能靠自己的大脑来写作业。

💡 The students wore sensors that measured electrical activity in their brains. The ChatGPT users showed the lowest brain activity, which was unsurprising since they were letting the A.I. chatbot do the work.

💡 参考译文： 学生佩戴测量脑电活动的传感器。使用 ChatGPT 的那组显示出最低的脑活动，一点也不意外，因为他们把工作交给了AI聊天机器人。

💡 But the most striking revelation arose after the students finished the writing exercise. One minute after completing their essays, the students were asked to quote any part of their essay. The vast majority of ChatGPT users (83 percent) could not recall a single sentence.

💡 参考译文： 更惊人的发现出现在写作结束之后：写完作文一分钟后，学生被要求复述自己文章的任意片段。使用 ChatGPT 的人中绝大多数83%一句都回忆不起来。

💡 “It has been one minute, and you really cannot say anything?” said Nataliya Kosmyna, the research scientist at M.I.T. Media Lab who led the study, about the ChatGPT users. “If you don't remember what you wrote, you don't feel ownership. Do you even care?”

💡 参考译文： 研究负责人、麻省理工媒体实验室的 Nataliya Kosmyna 针对使用 ChatGPT 的学生感叹：“才过了一分钟，真的一句也说不出口？如果你不记得自己写了什么，就不会有作品归属感。你会在乎你写的东西吗？”

💡 Though the study focused on essay writing, Dr. Kosmyna said she worried about the implications for people using A.I. chatbots in fields where retention is essential, like a pilot studying to get a license. More research urgently needs to be done, she said, on how A.I. affects people's ability to hold on to information.

💡 参考译文： Kosmyna 说，虽然这项研究聚焦于论文写作，但她担心这对那些在记忆留存至关重要的领域比如飞行员备考拿执照使用聊天机器人的影响。她表示迫切需要开展更多研究，看看 A.I. 如何影响人们记住信息的能力。

💡 Over the last two years, schools in states like New York, Indiana, Louisiana and Florida have raced to ban cellphones from classrooms, citing concerns that students were distracting themselves with social media apps like TikTok and Instagram. Lending credence to the bans, a study published last month found a potent link between social media use and poorer cognitive performance.

💡 参考译文： 过去两年，纽约、印第安纳、路易斯安那和佛罗里达等州的学校竞相在课堂上禁用手机，理由是担心学生会被 TikTok、Instagram 等社交媒体应用分心。一项上月发表的研究为禁令提供了佐证（增加了可信度）：社交媒体使用与较差的认知表现之间存在强关联。

💡 Last month, the medical journal JAMA published a study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Jason Nagata, a pediatrician who led the study, and his colleagues looked at data from ABCD, for Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, a research project that followed more than 6,500 youths from age 9 to 13 from 2016 to 2018.

💡 参考译文： 上月，医学期刊 JAMA 刊发了加州大学旧金山分校的一项研究。该研究由儿科医生 Jason Nagata 领衔，他与同事查看了 ABCD（青少年大脑认知发育）项目的数据，该项目在 2016–2018 年间跟踪调查（随访）了 6500 多名9–13 岁的青少年。

💡 All the children were surveyed once a year on how much time they used social media. Every other year, they took several tests. For example, a visual vocabulary test involved correctly matching pictures to words they heard.

💡 参考译文： 所有孩子每年都会接受一次问卷，统计他们使用社交媒体的时长；隔年还要参加若干测试。例如，视觉词汇测试，要求他们把听到的词语与看到的图片正确匹配。

💡 The data showed that children who reported using a low amount of social media (one hour a day) to a high amount at least three hours a dayscored significantly lower on reading, memory and vocabulary tests than children who reported using no social media.

💡 参考译文： 数据显示，每天使用社交媒体较少1 小时到较多至少 3 小时的孩子，在阅读、记忆和词汇测试上的成绩显著更低，相比之下那些完全不使用社交媒体的孩子表现更好。

💡 As for why social media apps like TikTok and Instagram would harm test scores, the only safe conclusion is that every hour a child spends scrolling through the apps takes time away from more enriching activities like reading and sleeping, Dr. Nagata said.

💡 参考译文： 至于 TikTok、Instagram 等社交媒体为何会拉低分数，Nagata 博士说，唯一稳妥的结论是：孩子每花一小时刷手机，就会挤占阅读、睡眠等更有益的活动的时间。

💡 Despite findings of a correlation between social media use and cognitive decline, it would be difficult to recommend an ideal amount of screen time for youths, because lots of children spend time in front of screens doing things unrelated to social media, like watching TV shows, Dr. Nagata said.

💡 参考译文： 尽管研究发现社交媒体使用与认知退化存在相关性，但Nagata博士表示，很难为青少年推荐一个理想的屏幕使用时长，因为很多孩子的屏幕时间并不都花在社交媒体上，比如他们看电视节目。

💡 Instead, he suggested that parents enforce screen-free zones, prohibiting phone use in areas like the bedroom and dinner table so that children can stay focused on their studies, sleep and mealtimes.

💡 参考译文： 他建议家长设立无屏区域，在卧室、餐桌等空间禁止使用手机，让孩子在学习、睡眠和吃饭时更专注。

💡 Meta did not respond to a request for comment. A TikTok spokeswoman referred to a webpage with instructions to set up Time Away, a tool for parents to create schedules for when their teenagers are allowed to use TikTok.

💡 参考译文： Meta 未回应置评请求。TikTok 的发言人提及了一个网页，上面有关于如何设置“ Time Away”功能的说明，这是一个供家长为青少年设定允许使用 TikTok 时段的工具。

💡 As for A.I. chatbots, there was an interesting wrinkle in the M.I.T. study that presented a possible solution on how people could best use chatbots to learn and write.

💡 参考译文： 至于 A.I. 聊天机器人，麻省理工的研究里出现了一个有意思的小插曲，它提示了一个可能的解决方案：人们该如何更好地利用聊天机器人来学习与写作。

💡 Eventually, the groups in that study swapped rolesThe people who relied only on their brai ns to write got to use ChatGPT, and the people who had relied on ChatGPT could use only their brains. All the students wrote essays on the same topics they had chosen before.

💡 参考译文： 之后，各组对调角色：之前只靠自己写作的人可以使用 ChatGPT，而之前使用 ChatGPT 的人只能靠自己的大脑。所有学生都在之前选择的同一主题下再次写作。

💡 The students who had originally relied only on their brains recorded the highest brain activity once they were allowed to use ChatGPT. The students who had initially used ChatGPT, on the other hand, were never on a par with the former group when they were restricted to using their brains, Dr. Kosmyna said.

💡 参考译文： Kosmyna 说，原本只靠自己写作的学生在获准使用 ChatGPT 时记录到最高的脑活动；而最初使用 ChatGPT 的学生在被限制只能靠自己的大脑时，始终达不到前一组的水平。

💡 That suggests that people who are eager to use chatbots for writing and learning should consider starting the process on their own before turning to the A.I. tools later in the process for revisions, similar to math students using calculators to solve problems only after they have used pencil and paper to learn the formulas and equations. Both Google and OpenAI declined to comment.

💡 参考译文： 这暗示：急着用聊天机器人写作、学习的人，应该先自己动笔，到后续阶段再借助 A.I. 做修改；就像学数学，只有先用纸笔把公式与方程学透，再用计算器解题。谷歌与 OpenAI 均拒绝置评。

💡 Dr. Melumad, the Wharton professor who led the earlier study involving A.I. search tools, said the problem with those tools was that they transformed what was once an active process in your brain — perusing through links and clicking on a credible source to read — into a passive one by automating all of that.

💡 参考译文： 主导早期涉及 A.I. 搜索工具研究的沃顿商学院教授 Melumad 认为，这些工具把原本是大脑里的主动过程——比如逐一浏览链接、点击可信来源去阅读——通过自动化彻底变成了被动输入。

💡 So perhaps the key to using A.I. in a healthier way, she said, is to try to be more mindful in how we use them. Rather than ask a chatbot to do all the research on a broad topic, Dr. Melumad said, use it as a part of your research process to answer small questions, such as looking up historical dates. But for deeper learning of a subject, consider reading a book.

💡 参考译文： 因此，她说，更健康（有益）地使用 A.I. 的关键也许在于，我们要尝试如何在使用它们时更加留心（审慎）。Melumad博士建议，不要让聊天机器人包办一个广泛主题下的所有研究，而是将其作为研究过程的一部分来解答小问题，比如查历史日期。但如果要深入学习某个主题，还是看书吧。