Prolonged AI Use May Hit Brain, Creativity And Critical Thinking: Report
AI makes everything easier, reducing the amount of mental and physical labor it requires to get something done. A new study which was carried out by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that the ease of AI may come at a cost, though it certainly lightens the mental load.
The study analysed individuals aged 18 to 39 years from the Boston area into three groups. The researchers asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine, and nothing at all, respectively.
The team used EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement. They also consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.
ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste, the study pointed out. It further underlined that the usage of LLMs could actually harm learning, especially for younger users.
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The research paper is yet to be peer-reviewed. However, according to the paper’s author, Nataliya Kosmyna, publishing the report and findings was very important to raise concerns as society increasingly relies on AI for immediate convenience.
She notes that long-term brain development may be sacrificed in the process. “What really motivated me to put it out now before waiting for a full peer review is that I am afraid in 6–8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental,” the author said.
