Explainer: How AI is learning all the wrong lessons from social media data

A new study has found that large language models, the backbone of artificial intelligence ( AI ), fed on a diet of meme threads & clickbait content suffer irreversible “brain rot” leading to cognitive decline. Careful data curation is therefore critical to protect the integrity of AI systems, explains Banasree Purkayastha

What has the study found?

A study by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and Purdue University has found that LLMs exposed to viral social media data begin to suffer measurable cognitive decay. Repeated training on trivial, engagement-driven, or low-quality information web content can weaken their reasoning, memory, and ethical reliability, thus making AI actually less intelligent. In other words, garbage in, garbage out.

The scient