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SINGAPORE – Tan Wan Ting, 34, founder of a digital marketing agency, is such a fan of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) that she has three accounts with Claude, an AI chatbot.
Since March, AI has helped her automate many work processes and boosted productivity among her team of almost 30. Excited about its potential, she would lie awake at night thinking of what to automate next.
In the process, however, it distorted the standards she had set for herself and her team. She started comparing humans to a machine that never gets tired or has a bad day.
“It's an impossible bar. Holding my team and myself to it slowly eroded my patience and my sense of what a reasonable amount of output is,” she says.
Tan also realised that she became dependent on AI to process information, including simple materials, before she attempted to digest it herself. For instance, she would feed everything through AI to read first and summarise.
“I even started getting AI to crawl through e-books I'd bought and generate summaries rather than re-reading them myself,” she says, on how her habit of revisiting texts has changed.
“I realised that this shortcut was taking away my ability to sit with information and think it through.”
Her experience is probably becoming more commonplace as Singaporeans embrace a nation- wide push for AI in the work sphere and beyond.
But what is the price for doubling or tripling performance?
Gen AI is such a new phenomenon that there is little data on its long-term effects on the brain. After all, the public version of ChatGPT launched only in November 2022.
Zhao Yi Jing, a neurologist in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, says early data in 2025 showed that university students with high Al usage were less engaged in independent problem-solving, and the younger ones demonstrated greater dependence and lower critical-thinking scores. These studies include one published in The New England Journal of Medicine by American researchers and one by Wuhan University in China.
Whether relying too much on AI leads to permanent brain atrophy is still unknown, Zhao adds.
Some may argue that using an AI chatbot is no different from using a search engine or using a vehicle Global Positioning System for navigation as these tools have enhanced, rather than eroded, human performance.
But neurologists say this analogy does not hold.
Such technological tools replace specific cognitive tasks since one still needs to choose from different routes or process search findings to form one's own conclusion, says Jennifer Hung, a consultant in the Division of Neurology within the National University Hospital's Department of Medicine.
“AI can substitute multiple higher-order executive functions simultaneously. It doesn't just find information. It analyses it, structures arguments, writes the text and delivers a completed opinion,” Hung says.
“Older technologies automated the mechanics of a task, but Al automates the synthesis. When you bypass synthesis, you bypass the neuroplastic exercises that build human expertise.”
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2015/05/singapore-education-news-updates.html
Since March, AI has helped her automate many work processes and boosted productivity among her team of almost 30. Excited about its potential, she would lie awake at night thinking of what to automate next.
In the process, however, it distorted the standards she had set for herself and her team. She started comparing humans to a machine that never gets tired or has a bad day.
“It's an impossible bar. Holding my team and myself to it slowly eroded my patience and my sense of what a reasonable amount of output is,” she says.
Tan also realised that she became dependent on AI to process information, including simple materials, before she attempted to digest it herself. For instance, she would feed everything through AI to read first and summarise.
“I even started getting AI to crawl through e-books I'd bought and generate summaries rather than re-reading them myself,” she says, on how her habit of revisiting texts has changed.
“I realised that this shortcut was taking away my ability to sit with information and think it through.”
Her experience is probably becoming more commonplace as Singaporeans embrace a nation- wide push for AI in the work sphere and beyond.
But what is the price for doubling or tripling performance?
Gen AI is such a new phenomenon that there is little data on its long-term effects on the brain. After all, the public version of ChatGPT launched only in November 2022.
Zhao Yi Jing, a neurologist in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, says early data in 2025 showed that university students with high Al usage were less engaged in independent problem-solving, and the younger ones demonstrated greater dependence and lower critical-thinking scores. These studies include one published in The New England Journal of Medicine by American researchers and one by Wuhan University in China.
Whether relying too much on AI leads to permanent brain atrophy is still unknown, Zhao adds.
Some may argue that using an AI chatbot is no different from using a search engine or using a vehicle Global Positioning System for navigation as these tools have enhanced, rather than eroded, human performance.
But neurologists say this analogy does not hold.
Such technological tools replace specific cognitive tasks since one still needs to choose from different routes or process search findings to form one's own conclusion, says Jennifer Hung, a consultant in the Division of Neurology within the National University Hospital's Department of Medicine.
“AI can substitute multiple higher-order executive functions simultaneously. It doesn't just find information. It analyses it, structures arguments, writes the text and delivers a completed opinion,” Hung says.
“Older technologies automated the mechanics of a task, but Al automates the synthesis. When you bypass synthesis, you bypass the neuroplastic exercises that build human expertise.”
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2015/05/singapore-education-news-updates.html
