April 20, 2026
Is your brain on airplane mode?
AI chatbots could be making you stupider
Brains on autopilot or just moral panic? Internet déjà vu vs “think for yourself”
TLDR: A small MIT study found students using ChatGPT showed up to 55% less brain activity and remembered less, though it’s not yet peer-reviewed. Commenters split: some call it another ‘Google effect’ moral panic, others say it’s about using AI like a tool—move your brain or get ‘More stupid*.’
MIT researcher Nataliya Kosmyna says she spotted AI-written cover letters and forgetful students, then ran a small campus test: 54 students wrote short essays, some with ChatGPT, some with Google, some solo. Result? The chatbot group showed up to 55% less brain activity and struggled to recall their own words. That sounds terrifying—until the comments showed up. Skeptics waved the flag of the old “Google effect” and called this another panic cycle. One user basically said, we heard this with the internet, remember? Another snapped that the constant whining is the real brain drain.
The pragmatic camp brought the spice: an LLM (a large language model) is a tool, like a car. If you never walk, you’ll get soft—so mix it up. A popular analogy had readers nodding: let the AI drive sometimes, but use your brain like legs. Others mocked doomsaying with “More stupid*” grammar-jabs and the evergreen meme: “think for yourself.” Headlines got dragged for twisting research; commenters noted the study isn’t peer-reviewed and used open-ended prompts, so calm down. Still, the findings from the MIT Media Lab are juicy: less mental effort, weaker memory, and students feeling zero ownership. The crowd’s verdict: AI won’t make you dumb—outsourcing everything might.
Key Points
- •MIT researcher Nataliya Kosmyna observed increased AI use in application cover letters and declining student recall.
- •An MIT Media Lab study with 54 students compared writing essays with ChatGPT, Google Search (no AI summaries), or no technology.
- •Brainwave measurements showed the ChatGPT group had up to 55% lower brain activity, especially in creativity and processing areas.
- •Participants using ChatGPT struggled to quote from their essays and some reported reduced ownership over their work.
- •Findings are preliminary and unpublished; the article situates them within broader concerns about AI-driven cognitive offloading and memory decline.