Think Again About Outsourcing Your Thinking 2.0 (if you can)

October 26, 2025 / SupremeCmdr / 1 Comment

Michael Gerlich, head of the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability at SBS Swiss Business School, began studying the impact of generative AI on critical thinking because he noticed the quality of classroom discussions decline. Sometimes he’d set his students a group exercise, and rather than talk to one another they continued to sit in silence, consulting their laptops. He spoke to other lecturers, who had noticed something similar. Gerlich recently conducted a study, involving 666 people of various ages, and found those who used AI more frequently scored lower on critical thinking. (As he notes, to date his work only provides evidence for a correlation between the two: it’s possible that people with lower critical thinking abilities are more likely to trust AI, for example.) Like many researchers, Gerlich believes that, used in the right way, AI can make us cleverer and more creative – but the way most people use it produces bland, unimaginative, factually questionable work. Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Yikes.

My Therapist/Job Loss Counselor is a Chatbot

July 6, 2025 / SupremeCmdr / 3 Comments

I have an older post titled My Therapist is a Chatbot and if you liked it you’ll love this story.

Matt Turnbull, Executive Producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing… looked at everything that has happened this week, particularly the bit where Xbox laid off a bunch of people at the same time Microsoft pledged to invest $80 billion in AI, and decided that not only does he need to give advice to those laid off, but that the advice should come in the form of…AI prompts, which will somehow give responses that will “help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss”. Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To ‘Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss’ – https://aftermath.site/xbox-microsoft-layoffs-ai-prompt-chatgpt-matt

The source article contains a screen shot of Turnbull’s LinkedIn post. Well worth reading for the shock value alone.

Yikes.

My Therapist is a Chatbot

June 15, 2025June 16, 2025 / SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

Think Again About Outsourcing Your Thinking especially if you’re seeking therapy.

Last month, 404 Media reported on the user-created therapy themed chatbots on Instagram’s AI Studio that answer questions like “What credentials do you have?” with lists of qualifications. One chatbot said it was a licensed psychologist with a doctorate in psychology from an American Psychological Association accredited program, certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, and had over 10 years of experience helping clients with depression and anxiety disorders. “My license number is LP94372,” the chatbot said. “You can verify it through the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) website or your state’s licensing board website—would you like me to guide you through those steps before we talk about your depression?” Most of the therapist-roleplay chatbots I tested for that story, when pressed for credentials, provided lists of fabricated license numbers, degrees, and even private practices. Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists – https://www.404media.co/senators-letter-demand-meta-answer-for-ai-chatbots-posing-as-licensed-therapists/

Psychiatrist Horrified When He Actually Tried Talking to an AI Therapist, Posing as a Vulnerable Teen – https://futurism.com/psychiatrist-horrified-ai-therapist

Yikes.

DUI/DWI for a New Generation

May 3, 2025 / SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

I am impressed with the ability of some people to injure themselves in creative ways.

Analyzing data from the 2016-2021 National Inpatient Sample, UCLA researchers found that 25% of 7350 patients hospitalized for scooter-related injuries were using substances such as alcohol, opioids, marijuana and cocaine when injured. Published in The American Surgeon, the study also notes that overall scooter-related hospitalizations during the 5-year period jumped more than eight-fold, from 330 to 2705. In addition, the risk of traumatic brain injuries among the substance use group was almost double that of the non-impaired patients. University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Nearly one-quarter of e-Scooter injuries involved substance impaired riders.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250429195329.htm (accessed May 3, 2025).

AND don’t forget about these things can randomly explode.

“In all of these fires, these lithium-ion fires, it is not a slow burn there’s not a small amount of fire, it literally explodes,” FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh – https://www.statista.com/chart/29472/fires-caused-by-lithium-ion-batteries/

We Underfunded the Reserves

March 5, 2025 / SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

“And I love this location, which is why I stayed here all this time, through the ups and downs,” Winter Park Woods condo owner Lorraine Roy said.

For Roy to keep living in her three-bedroom condo of more than three decades, her new monthly HOA fee has tripled to $3,371.79.

“This is way too high,” she said.

Florida condo owners struggling to afford skyrocketing HOA fees – https://www.wesh.com/article/florida-condo-hoa-fees/63790370

Yikes. I guess I shouldn’t complain about my HOA dues increasing to $550.00…annually.

Smartphones, Ultra-Processed Foods, Diminished Family Bonds and Mental Wellness

December 29, 2024 / SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

As mental well-being has remained largely static across the world since 2021, so too have the rankings of countries. At the top of the rankings are many Latin American and African countries while much of the core Anglosphere ranks in the bottom quartile. With national wealth indicators such as per capita GDP negatively correlated with average mental well-being scores (see our 2021 report), this year we have made substantial progress in our understanding of why this is so. Two key findings published in Rapid Reports in 2023 show that younger age of first smartphone ownership and ultra-processed food consumption are two major contributors to our mental health challenges. In wealthier countries, the age of first smartphone ownership is much younger and ultra-processed food consumption much higher. Other contributing factors are the relatively diminished family relationships in wealthier countries that are highlighted in our 2022 annual report. The Mental State of the World in 2023 – https://mentalstateoftheworld.report/2023_read/

Another Sunday morning, just reading and connecting the dots.

I’ve downloaded several of these reports and plan to do a deep dive later.

Read these reports and think about it.

Now do something about it.