AI makes knowledge acquisition faster, yet our memory is on the decline.

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Editor's Note: AI can quickly get answers, but it also brings cognitive offloading that weakens memory and thinking ability. We should make good use of AI as a thinking aid, build a sustainable learning system, and hold on to the ability to think independently. This article is translated and compiled, hoping to bring you inspiration.

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As artificial intelligence can more easily provide answers to all kinds of questions, memorizing the knowledge you have learned has instead become a scarce ability. The forgetting curve proposed by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 proves that if you do not consolidate and put what you have learned into practice, most of what you have learned will be gradually forgotten over time.

Many people do not value memory retention. They think: If I can find the content I want through AI, what does it matter if I can't remember it? But the thinking ability we are losing is far more than we realize.

Ebbinghaus wrote in his book Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology: "Left to itself, every mental impression will in the course of time become more and more difficult to recall, or the effect of memory will be greatly reduced."

This is enough to show that the effect of the forgetting curve is very powerful and unavoidable. If you do not take the initiative to memorize and recall, forgetting will happen. We can spend a whole afternoon reading, marking key points, and rereading over and over again, but by the next day, most of the content we have read has already disappeared. If we give up independent thinking and completely rely on artificial intelligence to think for us, the situation of forgetting will become even more serious.

Learning a large amount of content and burying yourself in reading seems to improve efficiency, but it is completely different from active recall. The brain will only retain the content that you have spent effort thinking about. Without repeated mental deliberation, most of the knowledge you have learned cannot be retained.

Therefore, it is extremely important to truly internalize what you have learned. If you want to keep knowledge firmly in mind, you can practice the two methods of Active Recall and Spaced Repetition.

Empirically proven efficient learning methods

These two sets of learning skills have been verified by years of research and are indeed effective. When used in combination, the effect is better than other learning methods.

After learning new knowledge, try to extract it from your memory. All kinds of exams in schools are essentially training these two learning methods. Even if you don't need to deal with exams, you can still keep practicing. Doing this can exercise your brain and strengthen the memory retrieval ability for other content.

After reading a book, close it and try to explain the viewpoints in the book to yourself on a piece of paper. You don't need to be completely accurate, the point is to recall repeatedly and turn these learning methods into habits. Even if the recall fails, it also has a training effect.

Philosopher and psychologist William James once said: "Memory has a very interesting feature: the memory effect brought by active repetition is far better than passive repetition."

Spaced Repetition refers to constantly extending the time interval of review and going back to review the content you have learned. Don't just read it once, and don't finish a book in just one week. Open it again after a few days, reread it after a week, and check it again after a month.

Every successful recall will reinforce the memory curve. You are deliberately training your brain to remember more of what you have learned. This is a very effective way to achieve long-term memory retention.

Only marking key points of wonderful content often fails to achieve the expected effect. Learn to test yourself: close the book, write down notes, and reread after a week. This process is a little boring, but it is really effective.

Nowadays, people always want to acquire knowledge quickly, but if you want to have a clear mind and improve your cognition, you must let your brain complete the laborious work of "recalling".

Another feasible method

You can also try the Feynman Technique, which is named after physicist Richard Feynman, to improve knowledge retention. Choose a concept, assume you are going to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it, and write down the content. When you get stuck, go back to the original materials to check, then close the notes and retell it again.

The reason why this method works is that it forces you to face the parts you don't understand directly, see the parts you think you have mastered but actually only have a superficial understanding of, and at the same time exercise the clarity of your thinking. Furthermore, you can explain the new knowledge to your colleagues, at which point your brain will expose your knowledge blind spots.

Feynman said: "If you really want to master something, go and teach it to others. The more you teach, the more thoroughly you learn. Teaching is a powerful learning tool."

The Feynman Technique is very suitable for understanding new knowledge, but if you want to remember knowledge for a long time, you still need to cooperate with Spaced Repetition.

Combining the two methods will have a better effect. Explain what you have learned to others, test yourself the next day, and review again after a week. This mode will completely change your learning style. When the brain predicts that this knowledge will need to be retrieved later, it will take this learning process seriously.

You may wonder: Since there are tools that can do the work for you, why bother to spend so much effort? The problem is that AI is easy to use, but it also hides risks. When using AI, you will feel in a good state, and even feel that your efficiency is very high. But over time, after you get rid of AI, your thinking and memory ability will deteriorate.

If you leave everything to AI to think for you, you will skip the necessary mental polishing process for building memory. You can get the answers you want instantly, but you miss the learning process that should belong to you.

This phenomenon has a proper term: Cognitive Offloading. AI is like a fast answer vending machine that can give you a huge amount of information in a very short time, but the cost is that you can hardly remember any content. If you have to use AI, you should let it challenge and expand your thinking, instead of directly completing the thinking for you.

How to make good use of artificial intelligence to assist learning

You can treat AI as a thinking partner for the Feynman Technique. First retell the concept in your own words, then use your commonly used AI tool to find the loopholes in your logic: What key points have I missed? How can I further optimize my thinking process?

You can think together with the tool, but be sure to go back to the original materials to verify whether the content given by AI is correct. Remember, remembering wrong information is worse than knowing nothing. The focus should be on clarifying the facts, using Active Recall and Spaced Repetition to improve your thinking ability and truly keep the knowledge in mind.

Build a systematic learning mechanism

Finally, it is very important to build your own learning system. Learning requires a framework. You can plan your time and arrange Active Recall and review consolidation. Calendars, mobile apps, and sticky notes can all be used, there is no limit to the form, the key is to create a personal learning system that you can stick to for a long time.

In what way do you want to learn? What kind of review interval suits your life rhythm? When do you plan to retell the new knowledge you have learned to yourself or others? If you can't explain it clearly without reference materials, it means that the knowledge has not really been memorized in your mind. Build a learning system that you are willing to invest in, and its return will far exceed other methods.

Today, human beings have the richest learning tools in history. The only thing missing is the determination to face the difficult parts of learning: recalling repeatedly, reviewing many times, and trying again after every failure. And the most important thing is the self-discipline of independent thinking.

Tools that help us learn are everywhere. What is really missing is your determination to study steadily and guard your own ability to think independently.

Translator: Teresa