Study Finds AI Tools Like ChatGPT Could Hurt Your Brain

A recent study suggests that the use of large language models (LLMs) may significantly impair learning abilities, as reported by SiliconANGLE.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted an experiment involving 54 participants. The subjects were tasked with writing short essays in 20-minute sessions. The study divided participants into three groups: one that wrote without assistance, another that used search engines, and a third that utilized ChatGPT. The experiment was repeated four times over four months. In the final round, the ChatGPT group was instructed to compose essays without AI support.

The findings revealed that participants who had been using LLMs exhibited up to 55% lower dynamic directed transfer function (dDTF) connectivity compared to those who didn’t use ChatGPT in their essay writing process.

The research team observed that while the advantages of AI usage were evident initially, over four months, the LLM group participants underperformed across all metrics—neural, linguistic, and scoring—compared to the other groups.