Brain activity much lower when using AI chatbots, MIT boffins find

Using AI chatbots actually reduces activity in the brain versus accomplishing the same tasks unaided, and may lead to poorer fact retention, according to a new preprint study out of MIT.

Seeking to understand how the use of LLM chatbots affects the brain, a team led by MIT Media Lab research scientist Dr. Nataliya Kosmyna hooked up a group of Boston-area college students to electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets and gave them 20 minutes to write a short essay. One group was directed to write without any outside assistance, a second group was allowed to use a search engine, and a third was instructed to write with the assistance of OpenAI's GPT-4o model. The process was repeated four times over several months.

While not yet peer reviewed, the pre-publication research results suggest a striking difference between the brain activity of the three groups and the corresponding creation of neural connectivity patterns ...