New research says using AI reduces brain activity – but does that mean it's making us dumber?

Amid all the debates about how AI affects jobs, science, the environment, and everything else, there's a question of how large language models impact the people using them directly.

A new study from the MIT Media Lab implies that using AI tools reduces brain activity in some ways, which is understandably alarming. But I think that's only part of the story. How we use AI, like any other piece of technology, is what really matters.

Here's what the researchers did to test AI's effect on the brain: They asked 54 students to write essays using one of three methods: their own brains, a search engine, or an AI assistant, specifically ChatGPT.