Learning and habit formation are not "reprogramming". If you define "reprogramming" as anything that updates neuron weights, the term encompasses all of life and becomes useless.

My point is that I don't see LLM's effect on the brain as being anything more than the normal experience we have of living and that the level of drama the headline suggests is unwarranted. I don't believe in infohazards.

Might they result in skill atrophy? For sure! But it's the same kind of atrophy we saw when, e.g. transitioning from paper maps to digital ones, or from memorizing phone numbers to handing out email addresses. We apply the neurons we save by no longer learning paper map navigation and such to other domains of life.

The process has been ongoing since homo erectus figured out that if you bang a rock hard enough, you get a knife. So what?

So what is, the skill in question is thinking critically. Letting that atrophy is kind of a bigger deal than if our paper map reading skills atrophy.

Now, you could argue that, when we use AI, critical thinking skills are more important, because we have to check the output of a tool that is quite prone to error. But in actual use, many people won't do that. We'll be back at "Computers Do Not Lie" (look for the song on Youtube if you're not familiar with it), only with a much higher error rate.