AI chatbots could be making you stupider

Article

• BBC covers MIT-adjacent research suggesting LLM use correlates with cognitive offloading.
• Study used SAT essay tasks; brain activity lower in heavy AI-users.
• Results not yet peer-reviewed or published in a journal.
• Concern: outsourcing higher-order thinking (not just recall) may atrophy critical skills.

Discussion

• Study methodology critiqued: narrow task (SAT essays), pre-publication, non-representative sample.
• Calculator analogy popular: tools that offload low-level work free up higher-level thinking.
• Key distinction drawn: offloading rote tasks = fine; offloading reasoning = potential problem.
• Commenters note LLM-induced frustration and stress as under-studied cognitive cost.

Discuss on HN