Bing Zhang
6.3K posts
Bing Zhang
@Goodflies
A neuroscientist, fly geneticist, & professor trying to solve the mysteries of the brain in health and disease. Cornell Alum Go BigRed Views & RT are mine.
Author explains the story behind this legendary case report 💡
Professors Say AI Is Destroying Their Students' Ability to Think | Frank Landymore, Futurism Professors are fighting an uphill battle against the intrusion of AI into education, and it’s forcing them to rethink how they instruct their students, many of whom have already become hopelessly dependent on the tech. “It’s driving so many of us up the wall,” one told The Guardian in a new piece that interviewed more than a dozen professors in the humanities. “I now talk about AI with my students not under the framework of cheating or academic honesty but in terms that are frankly existential,” Dora Zhang, a literature professor at UC Berkeley said. “What is it doing to us as a species?” Alas, students looking for an easy “A” may not be interested in philosophical inquiries on how AI is fundamentally changing how we interact with the world and with each other — and indeed, according to a burgeoning body of research, how our brains work. One canary in the coal mine comes from a Carnegie Mellon study published in early 2025 that found that knowledge workers who regularly used and trusted the accuracy of AI tools were losing their critical thinking skills. An earlier study found a link between students who relied on ChatGPT and memory loss, procrastination, and worsening academic performance. And an MIT study that performed EEG scans on subjects who were asked to write essays with and without ChatGPT found that AI users had the lowest levels of cognitive engagement during the tasks. Working in the trenches, most professors, especially in the humanities, probably didn’t need formal research to tell them what those studies found, when they could easily intuit it by interacting with their pupils. Michael Clune, a literature professor and novelist, lamented to The Guardian that many students are now “incapable of reading and analyzing, synthesizing data, all kinds of skills.” Clune’s school, Ohio State University, recently required all students to enroll in “AI fluency” courses “across every major,” ostensibly to prepare them for a world that is dominated by the tech. Clune was critical of the push. “No one knows what that means,” he told newspaper. “In my case, as a literature professor, these tools actually seem to mitigate against the educational goals I have for my students.” OSU may be the most egregious example of capitulating to the whims of Big Tech, but the AI industry has its tendrils all across education. Companies like OpenAI and Microsoft have poured tens of millions of dollars into teachers’ unions, providing training on how to use their AI systems. They’ve also partnered with numerous institutions to provide their students with free access to their AI tools. Duke University, after entering such a partnership with OpenAI, introduced its own AI tool called “DukeGPT.” Abroad, xAI founder Elon Musk partnered with the government of El Salvador to launch the “world’s first nationwide AI-powered education program” to provide his Grok chatbot to a million students across thousands of public schools. “These companies are giving these technological tools away partly because they’re hoping to addict a generation of students,” Eric Hayot, a comparative literature professor at Penn State, told The Guardian. “This is part of every single class I teach now, talking to students about why I’m not using AI, why they shouldn’t use AI.” But pedagogues aren’t taking this sitting down. Some are now using oral interrogations and requiring handwritten notebooks, they told the paper. AgainstAI, a faculty-run initiative that advises professors on how to work around AI use, recommends giving assignments like oral exams, requiring students to show pictures of their notes, and paper journals. Some even dare to be optimistic. Several said they noticed more students pushing back or expressing more cynicism about AI tools. “I think the current crop of gen Z students are seeing that they are the guinea pigs in this giant social experiment,” Zhang said. “There’s kind of defeatism, this idea that there’s no stopping technology and resistance is futile, everything will be crushed in its path,” Clune added. “That needs to change… We can decide that we want to be human.” futurism.com/artificial-int…
While the U.S. scientific pipeline is collapsing - China is increasing science funding and doubling down on research, talent, and national labs. An urgent reminder that remaining a global science and technology powerhouse requires sustained investment.
🚨 7 HOURS AGO ANDREJ KARPATHY just dropped something UNCOMFORTABLE TO WATCH. He gave a score to every job in America on AI replacement risk. Software developers: 8-9 Paralegals: 8-9 Medical transcriptionists: 10 Think about YOUR job for 3 seconds. Here's what you must know👇
I am reminded once again that research matters. My wife’s friend was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer, resistant to our favorite drug Cis/Carboplatin. Genetic testing revealed, among other things, KRAS G12A mutation. She was started on a KRAS inhibitor but unfortunately developed massive myopathy to the point she could barely walk. At that point, she needed bilateral nephrostomy tubes for renal blockage and was given weeks to live. But her mutation panel had also revealed modestly elevated tumor mutation burden (TMB) and CHEK2 mutation, which is involved in DNA damage response. Based on this (though the evidence was limited), she was started on immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) as a last-ditch effort. Since then, her tumors have melted away, and our friend is now strong enough to clear the snow during LAST NIGHT's blizzard in Northeast. Below is a photo she just sent us. I share not just because this is a miracle, but a SCIENCE IN ACTION! #SpartansWill #ResearchSavesLives @MSUMD, @MSU_Medicine, @HFH_MSU_HS
This is what an EXCEPTIONAL mindset thinks like and sounds like. So impressive from a 22 years old. Not only you CAN control what you think, and how you think it and why, but you SHOULD. See your mind as a skill and practice it as such.
Below is the story of the first patient treated with a prime-edited therapeutic, developed by @PrimeMedicine in a trial led by Dr. Élie Haddad and his team at CHU Sainte-Justine. This teenager suffered from chronic granulomatous disease (CGD), an immunodeficiency, and now—10 months after treatment—the patient is healthy, stable, and living with a functioning immune system. Tracy Attebury, whose story was previously told by @ginakolata @nytimes, was the second patient treated with a prime-edited therapeutic. cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/54638.html
A San Diego startup just made whole genome sequencing cost $100. It used to cost $1 billion + The Human Genome Project took 13 years (1990-2003), billions of dollars, and an international consortium of 20+ institutions to sequence one genome. My PhD advisor, @s_batzoglou, was one of the first MIT PHDs who worked on it. He helped build the computational foundations that made it possible. His career spans the entire arc — from assembling the first human reference genome to making sequencing routine. The 10,000,000x cost drop isn't just a number. It's the difference between a moonshot national project and a routine lab test. Previous generation proved it was possible. This generation proved it could be cheap. The question now: what happens when everyone's genome is a $100 blood test? The implications for medicine, privacy, insurance, human identity? We're not ready. Link: sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/02/19/scr…
Drosophila folks! We just shared a new protocol for surgical preparation enabling long-term imaging in adult flies. It’s low-cost, simple, and highly repeatable. For demonstration, we also show 10-day voltage imaging and 1-week population calcium imaging. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…
Otto Loewi’s vagusstoff discovery showed how the vagus nerve acts like a brake on heart rate. Nearly 75 years later, our lab’s work showed that vagus nerve signaling acts like a brake on cytokine release and inflammation. The “inflammatory reflex” opened the door to bioelectronic therapies for RA, and likely soon, other autoimmune diseases. As summarized in an article published with the title “Shock Medicine” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 312 No. 3 (March 2015), p. 28
For the first time in my entire life, I realize why Vietnamese people (and every Asian people in fact) hate the Chinese so much. This entire campaign to force down the throats of everybody to call it “Chinese new year” is an incredible propaganda campaign. They don’t even call it “Chinese new year” in China. They call it “spring festival” and I guess from now on we should call January 1 “Gregorian new year” in order to satisfy their logic. The reality is the beginning of the Lunisolar agricultural calendar has a different name in a variety of Asian countries, and it’s pretty arrogant of the Chinese to get everybody to call it “Chinese new year.” “Lunar new year” is fine, no one wants to say “happy lunisolar, agricultural new year”. Yet these Chinese propagandists are out there trying to get everybody to just label it “Chinese” in order to satisfy their superiority complex.