Latest news with #MassachusettsInstituteofTechnology
Express Tribune
3 hours ago
- Science
- Express Tribune
MIT AI study: Using tools like ChatGPT is making you dumber, study reveals
A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that frequent use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, may suppress cognitive engagement and memory retention. In the experiment, published by MIT, researchers monitored the brain activity of participants as they wrote essays using different resources: one group relied on LLMs, another used internet search engines, and a third worked without any digital tools. The results revealed a consistent pattern — participants who used GenAI tools displayed significantly reduced neural connectivity and recall, compared to those who relied on their own cognitive abilities. Brain scans taken during the experiment showed that LLM users exhibited weaker connections between brain regions associated with critical thinking and memory. While their essays scored well in both human and AI evaluations — often praised for their coherence and alignment with the given prompt — the writing was also described as formulaic and less original. Notably, those who used LLMs struggled to quote from or recall their own writing in subsequent sessions. Their brain activity reportedly "reset" to a novice state regarding the essay topics, a finding that strongly contrasts with participants in the "brain-only" group, who retained stronger memory and demonstrated deeper cognitive engagement throughout. Participants who used search engines showed intermediate neural activity. Though their writing lacked variety and often reflected similar phrasing, they exhibited better memory retention than the LLM group, suggesting that the process of searching and evaluating sources provided more mental stimulation. In a later phase of the experiment, the groups were shuffled. Participants who had initially used GenAI tools showed improved neural connectivity when writing without digital aids — an encouraging sign that cognitive function could rebound when AI dependence is reduced. The findings could carry important implications for education and the workplace. BREAKING: MIT just completed the first brain scan study of ChatGPT users & the results are terrifying. Turns out, AI isn't making us more productive. It's making us cognitively bankrupt. Here's what 4 months of data revealed: (hint: we've been measuring productivity all wrong) — Alex Vacca (@itsalexvacca) June 18, 2025 With GenAI tools increasingly integrated into school assignments and professional tasks, concerns about cognitive atrophy are rising. Some students now generate entire essays with tools like ChatGPT, while educators rely on similar software to grade and detect AI-generated work. The study suggests that such widespread use of digital assistance — even when indirect — may hinder mental development and reduce long-term memory retention. As schools and organisations continue to navigate the integration of AI tools, the MIT research underscores the importance of balancing convenience with cognitive engagement. Researchers suggest that while GenAI can be a useful aid, overreliance could have unintended consequences for human memory and creativity.
Sinar Daily
7 hours ago
- Science
- Sinar Daily
Relying on AI could be weakening the way we think, researchers warn
ARTIFICIAL intelligence is progressively transforming how we write, research, and communicate in this new age of technological renaissance. But according to MIT's latest study, this digital shortcut might come at a steep price: our brainpower. A new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has raised red flags over the long-term cognitive effects of using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, suggesting that outsourcing our thinking to machines may be dulling our minds, reducing critical thinking, and increasing our 'cognitive debt.' Researchers at MIT found that participants who used ChatGPT to write essays exhibited significantly lower brain activity, weaker memory recall, and poorer performance in critical thinking tasks than those who completed the same assignments using only their own thoughts or traditional search engines. 'Reliance on AI systems can lead to a passive approach and diminished activation of critical thinking skills when the person later performs tasks alone,' the research paper elaborated. While AI tools can and have supported learning, overreliance on artificial intelligence risks undermining the very skills schools aim to develop. Photo: Canva The MIT Study The conducted study in question involved 54 participants, who were divided into three groups: one used ChatGPT, another relied on search engines, and the last used only their brainpower to write four essays. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) scans, the researchers measured brain activity during and after the writing tasks. The results were stark. 'EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity. Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM (Large Language Model) users displayed the weakest connectivity,' the researchers reported. As seen in the study, those who used AI chatbots displayed reduced 'theta' brainwaves, which are associated with learning and memory formation. Researchers described this as 'offloading human thinking and planning,' indicating that the brain was doing less work because it was leaning on the AI. Interestingly, when later asked to quote or discuss the content of their essays without AI help, 83 per cent of the chatbot users failed to provide a single correct quote, compared to just 10 per cent among the search engine and brain-only groups. The researchers warned that overuse of AI could cause our 'cognitive muscles to atrophy' — essentially, if we don't use our brains, we lose them. Photo: Canva In context to the study, this would likely suggest they either didn't engage deeply with the content or simply didn't remember it. 'Frequent AI tool users often bypass deeper engagement with material, leading to 'skill atrophy' in tasks like brainstorming and problem-solving,' lead researcher Dr Nataliya Kosmyna warned. The chatbot-written essays were also found to be homogenous, with repetitive themes and language, suggesting that while AI might produce polished results, it lacks diversity of thought and originality. Are our minds getting lazy? The MIT findings echo earlier warnings about the dangers of 'cognitive offloading' — a term used when people rely on external tools to think for them. An earlier February 2025 study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that workers who heavily relied on AI tools reported lower levels of critical thinking and reduced confidence in their own reasoning abilities. The researchers warned that overuse of AI could cause our 'cognitive muscles to atrophy' — essentially, if we don't use our brains, we lose them. This particular trend is steadily increasing concerns of having serious consequences for education and workforce development. Moving forward, the MIT team cautioned that relying too much on AI could diminish creativity, increase vulnerability to manipulation, and weaken long-term memory and language skills. As seen in the study, those who used AI chatbots displayed reduced 'theta' brainwaves, which are associated with learning and memory formation. Photo: Canva The dawn of a new era? With AI chatbots becoming increasingly common in classrooms and homework help, educators are facing a difficult balancing act. While these said tools can and have supported learning, overreliance on artificial intelligence risks undermining the very skills schools aim to develop. Teachers have been voicing concerns that students are using AI to cheat or shortcut their assignments. The aforementioned MIT study provides hard evidence that such practices don't just break rules — they may actually hinder intellectual development. As such, the primary takeaway is not that AI is inherently bad — but that how we use it matters greatly. The study thus reinforces the importance of engaging actively with information, rather than blindly outsourcing thinking to machines. As the researchers put it: 'AI-assisted tools should be integrated carefully, ensuring that human cognition remains at the centre of learning and decision-making.'
eNCA
8 hours ago
- Science
- eNCA
How did life survive 'Snowball Earth'? In ponds, study suggests
Earth has not always been so hospitable to live. During several ice ages, the planet's surface was almost completely frozen over, creating what has been dubbed "Snowball Earth". Liquid water appears to be the most important ingredient for life on any planet, raising the question: how did anything survive such frosty, brutal times? A group of scientists said Thursday that they had found an astonishing diversity of micro-organisms in tiny pools of melted ice in Antarctica, suggesting that life could have ridden out Snowball Earth in similar ponds. During the Cryogenian Period between 635 and 720 million years ago, the average global temperature did not rise above -50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit). The climate near the equator at the time resembled modern-day Antarctica. Yet even in such extreme conditions, life found a way to keep evolving. Fatima Husain, the lead author of a new study published in Nature Communications, told AFP there was evidence of complex life forms "before and after the Cryogenian in the fossil record". "There are multiple hypotheses regarding possible places life may have persisted," said Husain, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Perhaps it found shelter in patches of open ocean, or in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, or under vast sheets of ice. The tiny melted ice pools that dotted the equator were another proposed refuge. These ponds could have been oases for eukaryotes, complex organisms that eventually evolved into multicellular life forms that would rise to dominate Earth, including humans. - Could aliens be hiding in ponds? - Melted ice ponds still exist today in Antarctica, at the edges of ice sheets. In 2018, members of a New Zealand research team visited the McMurdo ice shelf in east Antarctica, home to several such pools, which are only a few metres wide and less a metre deep. The bottom of the ponds are lined with a mat of microbes that have accumulated over the years to form slimy layers. "These mats can be a few centimetres thick, colourful, and they can be very clearly layered," Husain said. They are made up of single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria that are known to be able to survive extreme conditions. But the researchers also found signs indicating there were eukaryotes such as algae or microscopic animals. This suggests there was surprising diversity in the ponds, which appears to have been influenced by the amount of salt each contained. "No two ponds were alike," Husain said. "We found diverse assemblages of eukaryotes from all the major groups in all the ponds studied." "They demonstrate that these unique environments are capable of sheltering diverse assemblages of life, even in close proximity," she added. This could have implications in the search for extraterrestrial life. "Studies of life within these special environments on Earth can help inform our understanding of potential habitable environments on icy worlds, including icy moons in our Solar System," Husain said. Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's Europa are covered in ice, but scientists increasingly suspect they could be home to simple forms of life, and several space missions have been launched to find out more about them. By Bénédicte Rey
NDTV
10 hours ago
- NDTV
Student Flaunts Use Of ChatGPT At Graduation Ceremony, Faces Backlash: "Next-Level Foolish"
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to professionals as well as students across the world delegating their work to the Large Language Model-powered (LLM) chatbots. From writing emails to completing assignments, the use of chatbots has virtually become a habit for many. Now, an alleged University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) student has gone viral on social media after he openly acknowledged using ChatGPT to complete college work at his graduation ceremony. In a video posted on different social media platforms, the student, wearing the graduation gown, pulls out his laptop and displays ChatGPT, the OpenAI tool that helped him complete his final projects. 'UCLA graduate celebrates by showing off the ChatGPT he used for his final projects right before officially graduating," the post was captioned as saying. UCLA graduate celebrates by showing off the ChatGPT he used for his final projects right before officially graduating 😭 — FearBuck (@FearedBuck) June 18, 2025 Social media reacts As the video raked up millions of views, a significant chunk of social media users called out the student for not thinking about the repercussions as the final marks had not been compiled yet. "Cheating will always be there; however, to flaunt it like this is next-level foolish. Even if it's a "HA HA it's a Joke!!!" Don't be the court jester. This will follow you around," said one user while another added: "The guy is an idiot either for telling the truth or joking about something that would be hard for him to disprove.' A third commented: "Dumb move to make. Especially since commencement does not equal to a degree conferred. Should've waited until eight weeks after spring quarter grades were posted and degree was conferred." AI making people dumb A recent study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists found that AI chatbots were making humans use their brains less. While the use of chatbots enabled 60 per cent faster completion of tasks, it also reduced "germane cognitive load" by 32 per cent. The study revealed that more than 80 per cent of ChatGPT users couldn't quote from essays they wrote minutes earlier. Essays written using ChatGPT were extremely similar. When teachers were asked to check them, they said they could feel "something was wrong".
Newsweek
a day ago
- Health
- Newsweek
HIV: Supercharged Vaccine Could Protect Well With Just One Dose
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A supercharged HIV vaccine could offer strong protection with just one injection, a study in mice has indicated. Developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Scripps Research Center, the vaccine includes two "adjuvants"—materials that help stimulate the immune system response. In the experiments, the dual-adjuvant vaccine was found to produce a wider diversity of antibodies to protect against an HIV protein than with either single adjuvant or none at all. This was because the vaccine accumulated in the mice's lymph nodes and remained there for a month—giving their immune systems more time to build up antibodies against HIV. "What's potentially powerful about this approach is that you can achieve long-term exposures based on a combination of adjuvants that are already reasonably well-understood, so it doesn't require a different technology," said paper author and MIT chemical engineer professor J. Christopher Love in a statement. And, the researchers said, the same approach could be used to create one-shot-only vaccines against other diseases, including COVID-19 and influenza. A man receives a vaccination. A man receives a vaccination. Rani Nurlaela Desandi/iStock / Getty Images Plus Most vaccines administered today are accompanied by adjuvants to help make them more effective. One often used with protein-based vaccines—such as given against hepatitis A and B—is "alum," short for "aluminum hydroxide." Alum activates the body's innate immune response, helping it to form a stronger memory of the vaccine antigen in case of a real infection. The new HIV vaccine combines alum with a nanoparticle known as SMNP, which itself combines the FDA-approved, naturally derived adjacent saponin with an inflammation-promoting molecule. In their study, the researchers found that the SMNP–alum combination helped the HIV protein in their vaccine both penetrate the protective layer of cells surrounding the lymph nodes without being broken down, as well as stay intact in the nodes for up to 28 days. The lymph nodes are where protective "B cells" are exposed to antigens—the substances that the body uses to recognize a given infection—and learn to produce the antibodies to fight back. Vaccine antigens (pink) concentrate in B cell follicles (cyan) Vaccine antigens (pink) concentrate in B cell follicles (cyan) MIT "As a result, the B cells that are cycling in the lymph nodes are constantly being exposed to the antigen over that [up to 28 day] time period—and they get the chance to refine their solution to the antigen," Love explained. He added: "When you think about the immune system sampling all of the possible solutions, the more chances we give it to identify an effective solution, the better." When the researchers analyzed the RNA of the B cells from the vaccinated mice, they found that those who had received both adjuvants had produced a more diverse array of B Cells and antibodies than the other rodents. In fact, those who received the dual-adjuvant vaccine produced more than twice as many unique B cells than those mice who received a single-adjuvant vaccine. This, the team explained, increases the odds that the mice's immune systems will be able to produce antibodies against a variety of strains of HIV in the case of a future injection. And the benefits of the dual-adjuvant tactic is not just limited to fighting HIV. "This approach is compatible with many protein-based vaccines, so it offers the opportunity to engineer new formulations for these types of vaccines across a wide range of different diseases, such as influenza, SARS-CoV-2, or other pandemic outbreaks," said Love. Do you have a tip on a health story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about HIV? Let us know via health@ Reference Rodrigues, K. A., Zhang, Y. J., Lam, J., Aung, A., Morgan, D. M., Romanov, A., Maiorino, L., Yousefpour, P., Gibson, G., Ozorowski, G., Gregory, J. R., Amlashi, P., Van, R., Buckley, M., Ward, A. B., Schief, W. R., Love, J. C., & Irvine, D. J. (2025). Vaccines combining slow release and follicle targeting of antigens increase germinal center B cell diversity and clonal expansion. Science Translational Medicine, 17(803).
