Is ChatGPT Making Us Stupid?
Two research studies suggest that heavy use of AI is not only a game changer, but an alarming threat ... More to humanity's ability to solve problems, communicate with one another, and perhaps to thrive.
In boardrooms and classrooms, coffee shops and cubicles, the same question keeps coming up: Is ChatGPT making us smarter, or is it making us intellectually lazy—maybe even stupid?
There's no question that generative artificial intelligence is a game-changer. ChatGPT drafts our emails, answers our questions, and completes our sentences. For students, it's become the new CliffsNotes. For professionals, a brainstorming device. For coders, a potential job killer. In record time, it has become a productivity enhancer for almost everything. But what is it doing to our brains?
As someone who has spent his career helping clients anticipate and prepare for the future, this question deserves our attention. With any new technology, concerns inevitably arise about its impact. When calculators were first introduced, people worried that students would lose their ability to perform basic arithmetic or mental math skills. When GPS was first introduced, some fretted that we would lose our innate sense of direction. And when the internet bloomed, people grew alarmed that easy access to information would erode our capacity for concentration and contemplation.
'Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, is what often gets shortchanged by internet grazing,' noted technology writer Nicholas Carr in a prescient 2008 Atlantic article, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?'
Today, Carr's question needs to be asked anew – but of a different techno-innovation. Just-released research studies are helping us understand what's going on when we allow ChatGPT to think for us.
What Happens to the Brain on ChatGPT?
Researchers at MIT invited fifty-four participants to write essays across four sessions, divided into three groups: one using ChatGPT, one using Google, and one using only their brainpower. In the final session, the groups switched roles. What these researchers found should make all of us pause.
Participants who used ChatGPT consistently produced essays that scored lower in originality and depth than those who used search or wrote unaided. More strikingly, brain imaging revealed a decline in cognitive engagement in ChatGPT users. Brain regions associated with attention, memory, and higher-order reasoning were noticeably less active.
The MIT researchers introduced the concept of "cognitive debt"—the subtle but accumulating cost to our mental faculties when we outsource too much of our thinking to AI. 'Just as relying on a GPS dulls our sense of direction, relying on AI to write and reason can dull our ability to do those very things ourselves,' notes the MIT report. 'That's a debt that compounds over time.'
The second study, published in the peer-reviewed Swiss journal Societies, is titled 'AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking.' It broadens the lens from a lab experiment to everyday life.
Researchers surveyed 666 individuals from various age and educational backgrounds to explore how often people rely on AI tools—and how that reliance affects their ability to think critically. The findings revealed a strong negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical thinking performance. Those who often turned to AI for tasks like writing, researching, or decision-making exhibited lower 'metacognitive' awareness and analytical reasoning. This wasn't limited to any one demographic, but younger users and those with lower educational attainment were particularly affected.
What's more, the study confirmed that over-reliance on AI encourages 'cognitive offloading'—our tendency to let external tools do the work our brains used to do. While cognitive offloading isn't new (we've done it for centuries with calculators and calendars), AI takes it to a whole new level. 'When your assistant can 'think' for you, you may stop thinking altogether,' the report notes.
Are We Letting the Tool Use Us?
These studies aren't anti-AI. Neither am I. I use ChatGPT daily. As a futurist, I see ChatGPT and similar tools as transformational breakthroughs—the printing press of the 21st century. They unlock productivity, unleash creativity, and lower barriers to knowledge.
But just as the printing press didn't eliminate the need to learn to read, ChatGPT doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to think. And that is the danger today, that people will stop doing their own thinking.
These studies are preliminary, and further research is needed. However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that heavy use of AI is not only a game changer, but an alarming threat to humanity's ability to solve problems, communicate with one another, and perhaps to thrive. In integrating metacognitive strategies—thinking about thinking—into education, workplace training, and even product design. In other words, don't just use AI—engage with it. The line we must straddle is between augmentation and abdication. Are we using AI to elevate our thinking? Or are we turning over the keys to robots?
Here are four ideas for using this new technology, while keeping our cognitive edge sharp:
The danger isn't that ChatGPT will replace us. But it can make us stupid—if we let it replace our thinking instead of enriching it. The difference lies in how we use it, and more importantly, how aware we are while using it. The danger is that we'll stop developing the parts of ourselves that matter most—because it's faster and easier to let the machine do it. Let's not allow that to happen.
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