MIT researchers wired EEG sensors onto 54 people writing essays and found that the group using ChatGPT not only thought the least, measured by brain connectivity, but afterwards mostly could not recall a single line of what they had supposedly written. (opens in new tab)

In June 2025, a group at the MIT Media Lab released a study about what happens in the brain when people write essays with the help of ChatGPT. Within days it had been compressed, across headlines and social media, into a single claim: AI makes you stupid. The study became shorthand for a fear a […]