Artificial intelligence (AI) is the biggest economic craze since cryptocurrencies, and GLP-1 agonists are the biggest health craze since statins. But are they as good for users as producers and Wall Street? Will they implode like their predecessors?
We spoke with behavior change expert Kyra Bobinet, MD, author of Unstoppable Brain: The New Neuroscience That Frees Us From Failure, Eases Our Stress, and Creates Lasting Change. She maintains that both tools threaten the brain’s “motivation circuits” and can erode our very skills. Read on!
MR: You have said that when a tool, whether AI or a weight-loss drug, does the work for us, “the brain stops wiring the skills that create lasting competence.” Someone can feel that they are more productive, but their neural circuitry is actually weakening because they are pursuing “performance-based” goals and SMART goals rather than “iteration.”
KB: Yes, there is a novel mindset that has a 300 percent stronger correlation with health habit formation than say doing Weight Watchers or walking 10,000 steps a day. It’s called the iterative mindset.
If you think about how a baby learns to walk, the baby doesn’t say, “I’m gonna set a SMART goal for this to happen by next Tuesday.” The baby just iterates. The baby practices standing up, wobbling, holding onto a coffee table, and then plopping down on their diaper and then getting back up. There’s a natural process there. But then when we hit school, we are trained to be performative. To perform to a test, to perform to a goal, to perform to all these things. Then we go into the workplace and the same thing happens, and we lose track of our natural faculties, that we are iterative beings.
MR: Are you saying GLP-1s hurt and not help this learning process?
KB: What GLP-1s do is actually help turn off a brain area that is responsible for killing your motivation; they can help us recover our motivation to keep trying, and in that way they help us to not get stuck in these addiction loops. But, just like with AI, it’s an easy button. If I break my leg and I put a cast on my leg, that’s the GLP-1. If I take the cast off, the leg’s still broken. Unless the leg heals, unless the bone heals, you can never take away the GLP-1s, which creates lifelong dependency. If you look at the data, there’s a lot of weight regain (after using GLP-1s) just like diets. When you’re off the diet, you regain the weight. And in fact, what’s bad about that is that you actually regain more fat than muscle back. You get fatter and fatter and more and more weak because you have less and less lean body mass when you go through these cycles of GLP-1s.
Seventy-one percent of people go off them whether it’s for economic reasons, side effect reasons, worry about being on a medication long term, not being able to keep up with it, whatever the case. And so even though you look at the media and it looks like everything’s a party, there’s all kinds of harms that are being done (with GLP-1s) that are underreported.
MR: Why do we seldom hear the downsides?
KB: There’s no watchdog, basically. The slowness of academic medicine research is going to eventually catch up to all of these things, like it did with other pharmaceutical booms in the past. We’ll know more over time: what percent of people are having side effects; what percent of people can’t tolerate high doses; how long they can stay on them before they have to go off them. That’s going to happen after the patent runs out.
MR: What about AI and iterative learning? Are the same principles at play?
KB: (There is a) concept called hormesis which is the strength that is built through struggle, through overcoming difficulty, our capacity to handle life. It is developmental resistance training. When we hit in the easy button and take shortcuts we don’t develop hormesis for emotional development, for social development, for physical development.
MR: So, people who rely on AI for writing or academic and professional skills are sidestepping this resistance training development?
KB: They’re going to be weak. They’re going to be fragile, they’re going to be quitters. Their habenula is going to take over.
MR: Wait, what is the habenula?
KB: The habenula is a master control switch for our behavior and our emotions and our decisions; it controls dopamine, it controls serotonin, it controls our motivation. When it is triggered with things like failure, disappointment, discouragement, demoralization, any negative emotion, then it stops us from trying. It kills our motivation to keep trying. It is controlling the reward system; it is controlling addiction, cravings.
MR: You’d think we would hear a lot more about the habenula than we do!
KB: It was discovered in the late 1800s, but we didn’t have technology until recently with MRI machines to see it; it’s only a half centimeter big and it’s in the very center of the brain. It controls our attention, our impulsivity. It controls our decisions; it controls our sleep. It controls our hunger. It controls, you know, withdrawal symptoms, it controls depression, it controls anxiety, it controls … you name it.
MR: So, you are saying that the AI or GLP-1 crazes are not helping us pursue our dreams and potential even if we think they are?
KB: When you look at the most successful people in the world, everything that they did to get to that level of success was iterative. They did not get it from AI or GLP-1 usage!
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
