'Think outside the bots': How to stop AI from turning your brain to mush

GPS ruined our sense of direction. Search engines weaken our memory. AI, scientists warn, could do the same to everything from creativity to critical thinking.

Years ago, I forced myself to start using AI as often as possible. If I was going to be writing about it, I also had to use the technology. But an emerging crop of studies over the last year or so have me worried – am I harming my brain in the process?

These studies suggest people who lean too much on tools like ChatGPT could have problems with creativity, attention span, critical thinking, memory and more. Others raise concerns that AI users could be surrendering the cognitive friction that makes thinking sharp, and that as a society we may have fewer original ideas. But the science on this is brand new, and we don't have the answers. So should we be worried?

"On a high level, yes," says Adam Greene, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Laboratory for Relational Cognition at Georgetown University in the US. There's a lot of nuance here, but AI will do work that used to require mental labour. "There's plenty of evidence that if you are not doing as much of the actual thinking, then your capability to do that kind of thinking is going to atrophy."

Even if you don't seek to use ChatGPT or Claude, there are AI responses at the top of Google and tech giants are rushing to shove more of it onto our phones. The technology is getting hard to avoid, but there are steps you can take to avoid the biggest potential risks.

This isn't all or nothing though, according to Jared Benge, a professor and clinical neuropsychologist at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. Using AI doesn't automatically mean it's going to be bad for you. For example, if AI frees up your brain space for other more important things, that might be great for your cognition.

"Why do we think AI is going to be that different from other things that our brain has already adapted to?" Benge says. "It's not inherent to the tool to be good or bad."

As with any other technology, how we use AI will determine whether it helps us or harms us. But the concerns are serious enough that you might want to rethink how you use these tools – before it's too late.

With this in mind, I spoke with some leading experts in this field to find out how they think we should use AI to ensure it doesn't dull our minds.

What are we worried about?

Twenty years ago, an idea cropped up that overreliance on technology might cause some kind of "digital dementia" resulting in the deterioration of short-term memory and other cognitive processes. Benge recently co-authored a meta-analysis that looked at 57 studies covering more than 411,000 adults. All told, he and his co-author found no evidence for digital dementia. Technology use actually seemed to reduce the risk of cognitive impairment.

But that doesn't mean there's nothing to fear.

Studies have found that people who rely on satellite navigation like GPS stop building mental maps of their surroundings and their spatial memory continues to decline over time. A similar phenomenon called the "Google Effect" emerged when search engines took over. Apparently, we're less likely to remember information that we find using a search engine because it takes so little effort. It seems the brain........

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