Category: Digital age
‘As a machine thinketh, so he becomes’: New study reveals AI gets brain rot from consuming digital junk
For the majority of modern Americans, scrolling, computer work, streaming, and other forms of screen time have largely, if not completely, replaced reading, introspection, and deep conversation.
We are very quickly becoming “stupid slugs,” Glenn Beck says.
And he means stupid quite literally. Studies have proven time and again that our ability to concentrate and stay focused has become almost laughable. Recent reports indicate that Netflix and other digital entertainment companies are considering adapting content strategies — simplifying narratives, dialogue, and visuals — to accommodate viewers’ shortened attention spans and inability to follow complex plotlines.
“Everything that we’re doing online is fracturing attention, memory, and sustained reasoning,” Glenn says. “So, at what point does this become an epidemic? At what point are our minds starving for any kind of nutrition as we just feed them calories of noise?”
But our own rapid cognitive erosion isn’t even the wildest story. A new study has revealed that AI also experiences brain rot from consuming the same virtual junk that’s making humans dumber.
Large language models like Grok, ChatGPT, and Gemini “are trained on junk web content — so viral, shallow, high-engagement stuff,” Glenn says.
Just like a chronically online person, AI bots are experiencing a decline in “reasoning ability” and “long-context memory.” Further, “dark personality traits (psychopathic tendencies and narcissism)” begin to emerge the longer the bot feeds on digital junk — eerily similar to the terminally online rage-goblin hunched in a dark basement, marinating in memes and manufactured outrage.
But that’s not even the most disturbing part of the study. When researchers began replacing junk content with “clean, high-quality data,” the AI model was unable to recover to baseline capacity.
“The rot remains. As a man — or now as a machine — thinketh, so he becomes,” Glenn says ominously.
This study is a lesson every person living in the digital age needs to hear, and yet, it’s garnered little attention.
But even if it did attract the eye of the public, would it ultimately make a difference? Glenn is concerned we’ll be “too apathetic to wean ourselves off the digital heroin,” even if the consequences are staring us right in the face.
And then there’s this reality to contend with: Even if people reverse course, the study suggests that it might be too late anyway. The AI bot that fed on junk never could fully recover. Will we be the same?
If that’s our bleak reality, then we must also face the possibility that our children will inherit our shallowness — and most disturbingly, that at some point, our inability to think critically will culminate in the collective loss of human agency.
But even still, Glenn isn’t ready to give up. “Can we get people to actually listen to this and then engage again in thoughtful reading and conversation and meaningful silence?” he asks.
So much is at stake — time, freedom, connection, purpose.
Glenn warns: “It’s up to us, America.”
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Megyn Kelly and Stu Burguiere: Smartphones, no God, zero soul — the left’s humanity collapse
Death chants, celebrations of murder, aggressive protests, and violent demonstrations are mostly happening on one side of the political aisle. The Democrat Party is supposed to be all about tolerance, love, and inclusivity, so why are lefties so hostile? Why do they cheer when political opponents are murdered in cold blood? Why do they scream for the death of their own country while championing the causes of terrorists overseas? Why do they physically attack people for wearing MAGA hats or selling Charlie Kirk merchandise on the street?
In other words: Where did their humanity go?
This was a topic Stu Burguiere, BlazeTV host of “Stu Does America,” dove into with conservative firebrand Megyn Kelly on a recent joint episode.
The increase in left-wing violence, while certainly a multifaceted issue, is caused in part by the digital age, Stu speculates. “Young people in the last 20 years — their time socializing with other human beings is down between 50% and 70%” thanks to things like the iPhone and social media, he says.
Given that today “pet owners spend more time actively engaged with their cats than they do other human beings,” is it any wonder their sense of humanity has dwindled? “There’s a disconnect that’s brewing between younger people and just the people around them,” says Stu. “They don’t see them as humans. They don’t have any respect for them at all.”
Never was this clearer than when countless left-wingers across the country celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. Stu laments the fact that feeling sadness for the brutal death of a man whose only crime was to share his opinions in the public square is still too high a bar for the left to clear.
Even feeling sadness for Charlie’s family — his widow, Erika, and their two young children — is too high a bar for some on the left. “There’s a baby boy who’s still sleeping in a crib, there’s a toddler girl who have no understanding that they will never know their father. And there’s a mother who’s trying to raise them,” says Megyn.
And yet numerous left-wing attacks have been aimed directly at Erika and her children. They’ve been mocked; their grief has been publicly celebrated; gruesome re-enactments of Charlie’s murder have circulated online.
Megyn says that while there’s plenty of people she loathes, especially in left-wing media, she would “never wish for them to get hurt.” “God forbid they ever got attacked, I would never celebrate it. I would shed tears for them,” she says.
But young progressives today seem incapable of feeling any emotion for people they disagree with. Are the screens they live behind numbing their humanity?
While the digital age has undoubtedly stunted social and emotional development, conservatives are just as embedded in this technological landscape, but their civility has largely remained more intact than that of their liberal counterparts.
Stu theorizes that the digital age has had more of a negative impact on the left because progressives often prescribe to collectivism — the belief that the group (society, community, race, class, etc.) is more important than the individual, and that people should be judged, valued, or treated primarily based on their membership in that group rather than their personal actions, character, or choices.
Collectivism is the foundation on which DEI, affirmative action, and race/gender quotas are built. It’s a mentality that inevitably leads to bigotry as human beings are reduced to group identity. This ideology, says Stu, exacerbates the negative effects of social isolation caused by our technologies.
However, the loss of faith is another important factor. “In general, right-wing families are connected with faith,” says Megyn.
Progressives, in contrast, are far more likely to be secular, with those who identify as very liberal being the most likely to reject faith altogether. That means they don’t prescribe to a set of moral ideals set by a higher power and therefore can more easily justify things like violence, hatred, and revenge.
But that doesn’t mean lefties aren’t religious at their core. “Wokeism,” which Megyn calls a “false god,” has become the religion of the left. All the fervency, enthusiasm, and commitment that propels people of faith is still there; it’s just channeled in directions that are “extremely damaging.”
To hear more of Stu and Megyn’s conversation, watch the episode above.
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