HPR4476: Does AI cause brain damage?

Hacker Public Radio

Quick-Glance Summary I walk you through an MIT experiment where 54 EEG-capped volunteers wrote essays three ways: pure brainpower, classic search, and ChatGPT assistance. Brain-only writers lit up the most neurons and produced the freshest prose; the ChatGPT crowd churned out near-identical essays, remembered little, and racked up what the researchers dub cognitive debt : the interest you pay later for outsourcing thought today. A bonus “switch” round yanked AI away from the LLM devotees (cue face-plant) and finally let the brain-first team play with the toy (they coped fine), proving skills first, tools second. I spiced the tale with calculator nostalgia, a Belgian med-exam cheating fiasco, and Professor Felienne’s forklift-in-the-gym metaphor to land one mantra: *scaffolds beat shortcuts*. We peeked at tech “enshittification” once investors demand returns, whispered “open-source” as the escape hatch, and I dared you to try a two-day test—outline solo, draft with AI, revise solo, then check what you still remember. Net takeaway: keep AI on a leash; let thinking drive, tools navigate . If you think I’m full of digital hot air, record your own rebuttal and prove it. Resources MIT study MIT Media Lab. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt. https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ Long term consequences (to be honest - pulled these from another list, didn't check all of them) Clemente-Suárez, V. J., Beltrán-Velasco, A. I., Herrero-Roldán, S., Rodriguez-Besteiro, S., Martínez-Guardado, I., Martín-Rodríguez, A., & Tornero-Aguilera, J. F. (2024). Digital device usage and childhood cognitive development: Exploring effects on cognitive abilities. Children , 11(11), 1299. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11592547/ Grinschgl, S., Papenmeier, F., & Meyerhoff, H. S. (2021). Consequences of cognitive offloading: Boosting performance but diminishing memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 74(9), 1477–1496. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8358584/ Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research , 2(2), 140–154. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462 Zhang, M., Zhang, X., Wang, H., & Yu, L. (2024). Understanding the influence of digital technology on cognitive development in children. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences , 5, 100224. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266724212400099X Risko, E. F., & Dunn, T. L. (2020). Developmental origins of cognitive offloading. Developmental Review , 57, 100921. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32517613/ Ladouceur, R. (2022). Cognitive effects of prolonged continuous human-machine interactions: Implications for digital device users. Behavioral Sciences , 1