As artificial intelligence becomes integrated into our lives, there is one question that is becoming more relevant. Is AI making us dumb? Maybe stupid is not the right word, but rather lazy, or at least that is the direction in which it points a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania.
Cognitive surrender. It is what they have called the phenomenon that arises when we use AI “with minimal scrutiny, overriding intuition and deliberation.” The researchers carried out three experiments in which the participants had to answer cognitive reflection tests, in which the intuitive answer tends to be wrong and the deliberate one is correct (trick questions, wow). One group could only use their brains and the other had access to ChatGPT, although it was rigged to fail on purpose half of the time.
The result was that when the AI gave an incorrect answer, people copied it 80% of the time. And what’s worse: the security of the participants who had access to the AI was superior despite accumulating incorrect answers. In other words, the participants endorsed the great confidence with which the AI formulated its answers and stopped checking whether they were correct.
A new system . The study takes as its starting point the system 1 and system 2 theory by Daniel Kahnemanin which system 1 is fast thinking or intuition and system 2 is slow thinking or deliberation. The problem with this theory, especially at the current time, is that it ignores the fact that we are increasingly delegating the cognitive process to generative AI. Therefore, the researchers propose adding a third system, which they have called “artificial cognition” and which refers to the thinking or reasoning that occurs outside our mind, that is, in AI.
Give up or delegate. The study makes a distinction between cognitive surrender and cognitive download, that is, simply accepting what AI tells us is not the same as using it as a help tool. The first thing would be to use system 3 with a little of system 1 (intuition), while its use as a tool also implies the use of system 2 (deliberation or reasoning). Using AI to delegate certain tasks is comparable to using a calculator or searching for something on Google. In the experiment, 73% accepted the wrong answers (gave up) and 17% corrected her (delegated to her, but without blindly accepting what she said).
Researchers warn that cognitive surrender can erode critical thinking and cause us to lose the habit of distrusting and checking things for ourselves.
Cognitive debt. In June 2025 it went viral an MIT study called “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulating Cognitive Debt by Using an AI Assistant When Writing an Essay.” In the experiment, they monitored the participants using encephalography while they performed the task. The results were that the group that used ChatGPT gave the worst results in brain activity and became lazier as the test progressed.
AI doesn’t make us stupid. Over the years there have emerged many studies who sought to verify if the technology is diminishing our capabilitiesbut there are also others who they point to the complete opposite. Going back to the MIT study, it makes sense that there would be less brain activity if we are using a supportive tool (and one as powerful as AI). There will also be less activity if we use a calculator than if we do the operations by hand, but it does not necessarily mean that we are worse at mathematics. Of course, if we need the calculator to add 2+2, we have a problem there.
The key is not whether using AI makes us stupid, but whether how we use itif we surrender to it or if we delegate to it.
Image | Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels
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