🤖 Scientists just proved that large language models can literally rot their own brains the same way humans get brain rot from scrolling junk content online.

They fed models months of viral Twitter data short, high-engagement posts and watched their cognition collapse:

- Reasoning fell by 23%
- Long-context memory dropped 30%
- Personality tests showed spikes in narcissism & psychopathy

And get this even after retraining on clean, high-quality data, the damage didn’t fully heal.

The representational “rot” persisted.

It’s not just bad data → bad output.
It’s bad data → permanent cognitive drift.

The AI equivalent of doomscrolling is real. And it’s already happening.

Full study: llm-brain-rot.github.io

🔗 Alex Prompter