MIT Study Warns ChatGPT Could Dull Critical Thinking
- June 21, 2025
- 3 min read
Picture this: You’re staring at a blank page, cursor blinking mockingly. Deadline looming. What do you do? If you’re like millions of people, you probably fire up ChatGPT and ask it to write something brilliant for you.
But what if I told you that this seemingly harmless shortcut might be rewiring your brain in ways you never imagined?
A bombshell study from MIT just dropped, and honestly? It’s kept me up at night thinking about what we’re doing to ourselves—and our kids.
Dr. Nataliya Kosmyna and her team at MIT did something genius. They didn’t just ask people what they thought about using AI. They literally watched their brains work in real-time.
Here’s what they did:
54 people. 3 groups. One eye-opening experiment.
But here’s the kicker—while participants wrote timed essays about ethics and decision-making, researchers monitored their brain activity with EEG caps. Think of it like a fitness tracker, but for your thoughts.
The ChatGPT users? Their brains were practically coasting. The EEG readings showed:
But wait, it gets worse.
Over multiple essays, something troubling happened. ChatGPT users got progressively lazier:
One English teacher reviewing the essays called them “soulless.” Ouch.
The Google searchers and brain-only writers? Their neural activity was firing on all cylinders. Their brains showed:
The difference? They were actively thinking, not passively consuming.
A week later, researchers asked everyone to rewrite one of their essays—but with a twist:
The results were devastating.
The ChatGPT veterans barely remembered their own essays. Their brains showed weak learning patterns—they’d never actually processed the information the first time around.
But the brain-only group? When they used ChatGPT, their performance actually improved. They had the cognitive foundation to use AI as a tool, not a crutch.
Dr. Kosmyna did something unusual—she released this study before full peer review. Why? Because she’s terrified.
“I am afraid in 6-8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental.”
She’s not alone. Dr. Zishan Khan, who works with teenagers, is seeing this firsthand:
“Neural connections that help you access information, remember facts, and build resilience—all of that is going to weaken.”
Translation: We might be raising a generation that can’t think for themselves.
The MIT team is already testing this with software engineers. The preliminary results? Even worse than the essay findings.
Think about it:
These aren’t just school skills—they’re life skills.
Don’t panic, but don’t ignore this either.
Time for some honest self-reflection:
Here’s the thing—I’m not anti-AI. I use these tools too. But this study is a wake-up call.
We’re at a crossroads. We can either:
The convenience of ChatGPT isn’t going anywhere. But neither should our ability to think deeply, create originally, and solve problems ourselves.
