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The story
Kunie Sakai, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School and a language neuroscientist, has reportedly argued in the December issue of Bungei Shunju that AI use in education “should be banned outright.” His reasoning: if children give up thinking in language by leaning on AI, it risks stunting the development of brain functions — including the grammar center — and he claims abnormalities are already showing up even in current Tokyo University students. On 5ch’s science news board, reactions split between posters sympathetic to the risk of AI dependence eroding critical thinking, and skeptics who doubted the causal link had been proven, with many noting the resemblance to past moral panics over manga and video games.
Leading language neuroscientist and Tokyo University professor Sakai sounds the alarm: “Ban young people’s AI use entirely” — “Kids’ academic ability is plummeting, and abnormalities are even showing up in current Tokyo University students…”
Something is shaking education to its very foundations.
Kunie Sakai, a language neuroscientist and professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has issued an urgent proposal in the December issue of Bungei Shunju (on sale November 10): AI use in educational settings “should be banned outright.”
Source: bunshun.jp / Original article here
What people said
Even grad students these days just dump AI's hallucinated garbage straight into their papers,
so I get why people are worried about younger kids picking up even worse habits.
https://bunshun.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/0/2/1500wm/img_023d0d6be58a6a4e69dcf16cea5b6afa150792.jpg
Anyone who can't even manage that
might as well get a lobotomy.
Left to their own devices, most people end up as the latter.
The "voice of god" from the bicameral mind hypothesis, lol.
As long as you live by whatever AI-sama tells you, there's no problem at alllll~
A regression to the state before Socrates' critique? (He famously warned that writing itself would weaken human memory — same argument, new technology.)
It comes up a lot in cooking talk: AI states something that's chemically wrong,
and when you ask for a source, it turns out to be some copy-paste site dressed up to look legit.
exist everywhere,
no matter where you look.
It was never a needed skill to begin with, so no problem there.
Situations where you can't use a camera are so nonexistent it's almost absurd to even picture one.
Someone has a personal computer that advises them on everything, and when a system glitch cuts off the advice, they're left helpless, unable to do anything on their own.
Apparently Socrates also said that taking notes makes you stupid,
but still, yeah, I do think this AI thing isn't great.
but compulsory education's the same every single year, so AI's probably already got it down perfectly, huh.
I'm your servant
I'm your worker
We're charging our battery
And now we're full of energy
We are the robots
We're functioning automatik
And we are dancing mechanik
We are the robots
I'm your servant
I'm your worker
We've just been programmed
to do
whatever you want us to
Keep that up and AI ends up being something you can only use for harmless small talk.
so reading literary fiction should be banned for young people too.
Literary pretension — that's basically like catching the measles.
Wouldn't it be fine if you could actually pull off imitating Dazai well?
That stuff's easy once you've got reading comprehension — without it, it just comes across as needlessly convoluted.
The correlation between declining reading comprehension and AI is a logical leap, and the rest is just assumption with zero evidence.
Maybe it's professor quality that's declining here, if this is coming from a Tokyo University professor?
Let's get Reiwa White Postboxes (the real bins once used to collect "harmful" manga for disposal — now repurposed for "harmful apps") set up in front of train stations.
For people with disabilities they're a necessary tool, but if you've got full use of your body, handwriting and paper books are what actually stick with you.
"it'll make kids dumb, it'll push them into crime, so keep them away" — that's the kind of half-baked stuff "experts" have been peddling on daytime TV forever.
This guy's probably just more of the same breed.
Using AI, mimicking what AI says — sure, you build that particular skill.
But organizing information with notebook and pencil trains you up through: organizing information yourself → explaining it to others based on that → the ability to revise it.
Use AI well and you can even push past human cognitive limits in that area — but lean on it too hard and… there's a real risk it just never develops.
They're just smartphone addicts. Whatever they can do is well within the range you'd expect.
But AI natives are going to be different.
At least understand deduction and induction first.
Before banning AI use, go ban dictionary use while you're at it.
so we're just going to get more idiots like those economists, huh.
That's probably the real point he's making.
Europe's been in the news over restricting mobile devices in elementary, middle, and high schools —
I wonder if AI's going to start generating that same kind of news eventually too.
Background and key points of this debate
Kunie Sakai is a language neuroscientist known for his research on the brain’s grammar center, and this proposal was published not in an academic journal but as a magazine contribution to Bungei Shunju. Where the thread split was over one specific point: whether a causal link between AI dependence and actual academic decline has ever actually been established. Supporters pointed to real cases of current students using AI output without checking it, while skeptics argued the structure is identical to past moral panics claiming manga or video games “corrupt” children. One thing readers can easily miss is that the proposal targets use in educational settings from elementary school through university — it doesn’t reject AI use by working adults themselves, so it’s worth keeping in mind that this is an age-bracketed argument, as the article itself frames it. The comparison to Europe’s ongoing restrictions on mobile devices in schools also hints that AI regulation could end up following a similar trajectory.
※This article excerpts and summarizes the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Proposal] Leading Language Neuroscientist Sounds the Alarm: “Ban Young People’s AI Use Entirely”.”
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