A MIT study He has shown that chatgpt and similar tools generate what they call “cognitive debt”: students who resort to them for total use end up writing better, but thinking worse.
Why is it important. The study contradicts the belief that AI is like a calculator: a simple support that frees us for more complex reasoning. Actually, these tools can atrophy the brain connections that build critical thinking.
The facts. 54 university students have spent months writing essays, divided into three groups:
- Grupo LLM, which used Chatgpt.
- Search motor group, which used Google.
- And group Solo-Cerebro, without external tools.
The researchers measured their neuronal activity with electroencephalograms and the results have been overwhelming: those who used a neuronal connectivity systematically lower in all frequency bands. Compared to the group that only used its brain, there was a lower activation in key networks that connect parietal, temporal and frontal regions, fundamental for attention, memory and semantic processing.
The contrast. The essays generated with AI received better notes, both from teachers and evaluating algorithms. But their authors remembered worse what they had written minutes before and felt a minor authorship about their texts.
When they forced the usual users to write without help, their brain patterns showed that dependence on external support. They had lost ability to reactivate the necessary neural networks to write independently. How to walk without support after years doing it with crutches.
Yes, but. The students who learned to write without ia and then used it for the first time maintained their engagement neuronal They even showed better memory and reactivation of broad brain areas.
The key difference: You need to know how to think before you can think with machines.
In perspective. This pattern replicates what we see in other professions:
- The subway driver who feels alienated because the train drives alone.
- Translators turned into machine editors.
- 3D creatives that only retouch what the AI generates.
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The threat. The study also analyzed university students who already had developed writing skills. The effects could be more severe in adolescents who are still building these cognitive abilities.
As a Dartmouth teacher said: we run the risk of creating “an educated generation with AI shortcuts” that lacks independent thinking skills.
And now what. The sequence matters more than technology. First, you learn to think. Then, you learn to think with machines. The brain needs to build those Neuronal highways before being able to delegate selectively in AI.
The study concludes that educational interventions should “combine the assistance of AI tools with learning phases without tools” to optimize both immediate skill and long -term neuronal development.
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The news
The danger of using AI chatbots for everything is real: MIT has discovered the “cognitive debt”
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Xataka
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Javier Lacort
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