MIT just published the First Brain Scan Study of ChatGPT Users & the Results are Terrifying

Author(s): Youssef Hosni

Originally published on Towards AI.

AI isn’t making us more productive; it’s making us cognitively bankrupt

We live in an age of unprecedented technological assistance. Tools like ChatGPT can draft emails, write code, and brainstorm ideas in seconds. This convenience is powerful, but a groundbreaking study from researchers at MIT and other institutions asks a critical question: What is this convenience costing our cognitive muscles?

In a comprehensive study titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT,” researchers explored the cognitive and neural impacts of using AI for a common educational task: writing an essay. They divided 54 participants into three groups:

The LLM Group: Used ChatGPT (an advanced Large Language Model) as their only resource.The Search Engine Group: Used Google search, but without AI-generated summaries.The Brain-only Group: Used no external tools, relying solely on their own knowledge and thoughts.

For four months, participants wrote essays under these conditions while their brain activity was measured with EEG, their essays were analyzed with NLP, and they were interviewed about their experience. The findings paint a startling picture of a trade-off between short-term ease and long-term cognitive engagement.

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Published via Towards AI