MIT Study: AI Chatbots Reduce Brain Activity, Impair Fact Retention

A new preprint study from MIT reveals that using AI chatbots to complete tasks actually reduces brain activity and may lead to poorer fact retention. Researchers had three groups of students write essays: one without assistance, one using a search engine, and one using GPT-4. The LLM group showed the weakest brain activity and worst knowledge retention, performing poorly on subsequent tests. The study suggests that early reliance on AI may lead to shallow encoding and impaired learning, recommending delaying AI integration until sufficient self-driven cognitive effort has occurred.