AI Use Erodes Confidence and Human Cognition, New Studies Warn About Long-Term Impact

Trading Speed for Depth: Does Using AI for Work Affect Our Confidence?

Be careful delegating your work to that chatbot. A new peer-reviewed study published Thursday by the American Psychological Association found that people who heavily rely on AI tools for work tasks reported feeling less confident in their abilities and had less ownership over their work. There has been growing research on how our brains function when we use AI tools. A landmark study from MIT in 2025 found that our brains don't retain as much information or employ necessary critical thinking skills when writing tasks are outsourced to AI chatbots. This new study aimed to understand how our human behavior, specifically executive functions -- like strategic planning and decision making -- can change when AI is part of the process. Sarah Baldeo, the study's author and a Ph.D. candidate in AI and neuroscience at Middlesex University in England, noted in the paper that these findings do not show that AI is harming or causing cognitive decline. Rather, they "highlight variability in how users distribute effort between themselves and AI systems under conditions of convenience and competence." Meaning, people who use AI are making conscious trade-offs, and their confidence fluctuates as a result. The study encouraged nearly 2,000 adults to use AI for a variety of workplace tasks, like prioritizing projects based on deadlines, explaining a strategy and developing plans with incomplete information. It then asked them to self-report their levels of confidence, ownership and AI reliance, including whether they significantly altered the AI-generated outputs. Overall, confidence varied with AI use. A greater reliance on AI was associated with lower confidence in their ability to reason independently. Participants also reported relatively few modifications, meaning they often did not tweak or put their own stamp on what the AI spit out. But those who modified the AI's work reported feeling more confident and more like the author. Men reported higher reliance on AI than women. The trade-off between speed and depth was one of the main themes participants reported. "I got an answer faster, but I don't think I thought as deeply as I normally would," one of the participants said. This reflects one of the biggest caveats of using AI tools. Chatbots, for example, can produce text quickly, but it doesn't always have the same level of subject matter expertise you need. AI tools can also hallucinate, or make up facts, so AI-generated output needs to be verified before it's used. The office is one of the main places where people use AI tools. We're moving beyond just chatbots, with agents that can autonomously handle tasks that would've otherwise required a human. But these tools aren't necessarily making our work lives better; one study found they made workdays longer and more unpleasant. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in our work lives, it's important to understand how it's shaping our mental attitudes. Qualities like confidence and ownership of our work are important factors in determining the quality of our work life.

There's yet another study about how bad AI is for our brains

A group of researchers from across the US and the UK on what AI does to our brains and the results are, in a word, grim. These results were published in a paper called "AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance" which kind of tells you everything you need to know. "We find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost," the study declares. Researchers went on to state that just ten minutes of using AI made people dependent on the technology, which led to worsening performance and burnout once the tools were removed. The study followed people who use AI for "reasoning-intensive" cognitive labor. This refers to stuff like writing, coding and brainstorming new ideas, which are some of the most common use cases. The researchers recruited 350 Americans, who were asked to complete some fraction-based equations. Half of the participants were randomly granted access to a specialized chatbot built on OpenAI's GPT-5 for help and the others had to go it alone. Halfway through the exam, the AI group had their access cut off. This led to a steep decline in correct answers by the AI group and many instances of people simply giving up. This result, in which performance and perseverance both dropped, was repeated in a larger experiment with 670 people. Finally, the scientists performed one final experiment with reading comprehension questions, and not math. The results were more of the same. "Once the AI is taken away from people, it's not that people are just giving wrong answers. They're also not willing to try without AI," Rachit Dubey, an assistant professor at the University of California and coauthor of the study, . "People's persistence drops." Dubey went on to warn that rapid deployment of AI in the education sector could lead to a "generation of learners and people who will not know what they're capable of, and then that will really dilute human innovation and creativity." The study likens using the technology to the , in which "sustained AI use erodes the motivation and persistence that drive long-term learning." These effects accumulate and "by the time they are visible, they will be difficult to reverse." There are two caveats here. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed. Also, researchers found one tiny bright spot regarding the use of AI. People who used AI tools for hints and clarification had a much easier time once the chatbot was removed when compared to those who used the bot to essentially prompt the answers. This is just the latest study trying to get to the bottom of what AI is doing to our collective noggins. It has been found to who rely on the tools, "AI brain fry." To that end, researchers discovered that employees who use AI actually end up than those old-fashioned luddites. The results are even starker in the world of education. Studies have found that AI use in school leads to and that kids who rely on chatbots tend to .

Letting AI Do Your Work Erodes Your Confidence, According to a New Study

But that pattern wasn't inevitable. Participants who pushed back -- editing, questioning, or rejecting AI-generated suggestions -- reported the opposite: greater confidence and a stronger sense that the final output was truly theirs. The findings suggest AI isn't inherently undermining our abilities. Instead, it may be subtly reshaping how we experience our own thinking. "Generative AI can lead to cognitive decline or cognitive evolution -- it depends on your interaction style," says study author Sarah Baldeo, a PhD candidate in AI and neuroscience at Middlesex University in England and author of 100 Ways to Future-Proof Your Brain in The Age of AI. "When we look at brain activity contingent on how people choose to use the tool, we can see increases or decreases. It really doesn't have to do with the tool itself."

AI Use Appears to Have a "Boiling Frog" Effect on Human Cognition, New Study Warns

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In a new study, researchers claim to provide the first causal evidence that leaning on AI to assist with "reasoning-intensive" cognitive labor -- mental tasks ranging from writing to studying to coding to simply brainstorming new ideas -- can rapidly impair users' intellectual ability and willingness to persist despite difficulty. "We find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost," the study declares of its findings. "After just [about] 10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it." The study, which was conducted by a multidisciplinary cohort of scientists from across the United States and United Kingdom, has yet to be peer-reviewed. But it builds on a growing body of research suggesting that extensive AI use can distort and dampen users' thinking and independence, and as experts work to understand the impacts of widely-used chatbots on people as they unfold in real-time, they're warning that outsourcing cognitive tasks to AI tools could put humans in a "boiling frog" conundrum -- in which an unwitting, bit-by-bit erosion of our cognitive "muscles" leads to formidable challenges in the long-term. "If sustained AI use erodes the motivation and persistence that drive long-term learning, these effects will accumulate over years, and by the time they are visible, they will be difficult to reverse," the study urges. "This is analogous to the 'boiling frog' effect, where each incremental act feels costless, until the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming to address." To conduct the study, the researchers recruited a cohort of about 350 Americans, who were asked to try to complete a brief series of fraction equations. A little more than half of participants were randomly granted access to a chatbot -- a specialized bot built on OpenAI's GPT-5 and provided with the specific answers for each question on the brief exam -- for help. Everyone else was funneled into an AI-free control group. At first, the results revealed, the chatbot proved expedient in helping AI-aided participants breeze through the test. But halfway through the short exam, access to the AI was suddenly cut off -- at which point participants' ability to work through the reasoning questions without AI assistance quickly declined, as did their will to keep working at a problem when the going got tough. For a follow-up experiment, the researchers recruited another, larger group of nearly 670 participants. They were once again split into two roughly-equal halves and asked to complete a brief mathematical reasoning test, with one group given access to a chatbot assistant -- only to once again be suddenly abandoned by their AI companion, leaving them to cognitively fend for themselves. The results were pretty much the same: performance dropped, as did perseverance. These same outcomes persisted once again in a final experiment, in which about 200 more participants were asked to complete a brief series of reading comprehension questions, showing that such results aren't simply limited to math problems. "People's persistence drops," said University of California, Los Angeles assistant professor Rachit Dubey, a computational cognitive scientist who coauthored the study alongside peers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Oxford, in an interview with Futurism."Once the AI is taken away from people, it's not that people are just giving wrong answers. They're also not willing to try without AI." One bright spot: how participants used AI appeared to make a difference for individual outcomes, according to the research. Those who self-reported that they essentially prompted the chatbot to cough up the answers unsurprisingly had a worse time once the AI rug was pulled. Participants who instead said that they asked the chatbot for hints or clarification -- as opposed to outright cheating -- appeared to be better off sans AI assistance. Dubey is concerned that leaning too heavily on chatbots to replace cognitive labor could cause people to become more impatient, and even create the conditions for over-reliance on AI to function like an addiction. Most of all, though, he says he worries about how AI reliance will transform individuals' sense of confidence and worth as they struggle to think through problems independently. "The most important thing I learned in college is the value of hard work... if I work hard, I'm capable of doing a lot of things," Dubey reflected, noting that schools and communities should think very carefully about "blindly" integrating chatbots into educational programs. "These are very important core human elements that we learned throughout our childhood, in high school and college years." "If we're offloading to AI at scale for everything and anything, what will it do to our own beliefs about our own selves?" Dubey continued, adding that "practice makes you better in many domains, and that's what AI will take away from you... that's what I'm most worried about. We will have a generation of learners and people who will not know what they're capable of, and then that will really dilute human innovation and creativity." And as the researchers seek to expand their research into longer-term experiments, they're challenging folks across industries to "think about optimizing not just what people can do with AI," as they write in the study, "but what they can do without it."