A study led by researchers from the Mit Media Lab He has put figures to the mental cost of using an AI and letting him think for us. The investigation, entitled Your Brain On Chatgpt: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using An Ai Assistant For Essay Writing Task (Our brain with chatgpt: accumulation of cognitive debt by using an AI assistant for testing tests), concludes that the continued use of language models such as chatgpt generates a clear decrease in cognitive involvement, deteriorates short -term memory and undermines the perception of authorship about what is written. In other words: using artificial intelligence to write essays contributes to a real atrophy of cognitive skills; It makes us more dumbless autonomous and more dependent.
For four months, the researchers carried out a controlled essay with 54 university students. They divided them into three groups: one wrote essays exclusively with chatgpt helpanother used Search engines like Google and the third did not use any type of tool, Only his brain.
Everyone wrote three essays in separate sessions, and In a fourth final session their roles were invested: Those who had used the Writing without the help of Chatgpt and vice versa. The objective was to observe how they adapted after weeks of one method or another.
In addition to evaluating the texts, the researchers used Encephalograms (EEG) to monitor brain activity. The results are conclusive: the more powerful and automatic the assistant, minor is the mental effort That applies. And that, far from being an advantage, can have negative consequences for learning.
The group that used chatgpt showed the lower neuronal connectivity (how different regions of the brain communicate and work together during a cognitive task), especially in alpha and beta bands, related to sustained attention and the working memory. In round numbers, a 47 % less. This means that the brain of those who used ia worked almost half than those who wrote on their own. It is not just that the effort was less: is that The key areas to think, remember and decide were much less active.
When writing without the fourth session, these participants did not recover the normal levels of activity. His brain was still ‘off’in what the researchers interpret as an indication of harmful adaptation to the use of AI.
On the contrary, those who went from writing without helping chatgpt showed a brain activityespecially in areas related to the visual memory and the decision making. That is, the change to AI demanded to reorganize their way of thinking, having to interact and reinterpret what the machine proposed.
The study also measured a psychological factor: the feeling of property. The participants were asked if they felt that the written essay was really his. In the group ‘Only Brain’, the majority (89 %) struggled that yes. In the IA group, many confessed that they did not recognize the text as their own, even when they had edited it. Some described it as ‘too generic’ or ‘robotic’. Only 50 % declared feeling full authorship of content.
This disconnection with the written was also reflected in its Low capacity to cite phrases of your essay a few minutes after finishing it. Only the 16.7 % of AI users were able to do so, while the remaining 83.3 % could not.
Although language models offer clear advantages in this type of task in terms of speed and structure, the study warns of a Cumulative cognitive debt that becomes Skills Atrophy If they are used systematically. In the educational context and long term, this could translate into a real loss of fundamental capacities like the argumentationthe memory wave creativitythe researchers conclude.