Widespread daily use of ChatGPT risks creating digital dependence that reduces users' skill and knowledge to perform tasks independently. Reliance on AI tools may diminish memory retention, fragment attention spans, and erode creativity over time. Brain health depends on novelty and moderate stress, which decline when people avoid cognitive effort by outsourcing thinking to AI. Research indicates using ChatGPT for tasks like essay writing can produce cognitive debt, lowering learning skills, critical inquiry, and increasing vulnerability to manipulation by reinforcing shallow or biased perspectives.
Cognitive neuroscientist and author Dr Jared Cooney Horvath never uses ChatGPT - and recommends others do the same because the risks outweigh the benefits. While the possibilities of the AI chatbot seem endless, it's giving rise to 'digital dependence' as people will 'no longer have the skill or knowledge' to complete the task themselves. But that's not all. Dr Horvath, the 42-year-old creator of The Learning Blueprint metacognition program, told Daily Mail that ChatGPT could kill your memory, fracture your attention span and wreck your creativity over time.
Researchers at MIT Media Lab released a study which found using ChatGPT to write essays can lead to 'cognitive debt' and a 'likely decrease in learning skills'. 'Cognitive debt defers mental effort in the short term but results in long-term costs, such as diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity,' the study states. 'When participants reproduce suggestions without evaluating their accuracy or relevance, they not only forfeit ownership of the ideas but also risk internalising shallow or biased perspectives.'
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