Photo for representation only.
Doha: Excessive reliance on search engines, such as Google, in retrieving information weakens memory in the brain, as daily pressure in life may also affect one's ability to retrieve information at a desired time.
An expert in applied brain sciences, Dr Jamil Babli, said this in an interview on Qatar Radio, adding: “In the past and in the last century, we used to rely heavily on our memory while studying, but now there has been a major shift where anyone can enter Google and extract this information.”
He said that the lack of use of human memory work contributes to its atrophy.
As for the question about who is more likely to suffer from memory loss, Dr Babli said that women are more likely to suffer from memory loss than men.
The doctor added, "Women have a less flexible nervous system than men. Men can receive more trauma and troubles in life, while women do not. This daily pressure that we live in accumulates in our brain and affects our ability to retrieve information at the time we want."
This comes at a time when there is an ever-growing concern and discussions on the usage of ChatGPT, the Open AI smart chatbot that can generate text with high degree of accuracy on a wide range of topics.
The technology could soon turn to be a direct threat to large search engines such as Google and Bing.
Even as experts seem cautious of Google and search-engine tools, one can only wonder about its impact on human brain and memory when dependence shifts towards artificial intelligence software.
