Using AI chatbots actually reduces activity in the brain versus accomplishing the same tasks unaided, and may lead to poorer fact retention, according to a new preprint study out of MIT.
Seeking to understand how the use of LLM chatbots affects the brain, a team led by MIT Media Lab research scientist Dr. Nataliya Kosmyna hooked up a group of Boston-area college students to electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets and gave them 20 minutes to write a short essay. One group was directed to write without any outside assistance, a second group was allowed to use a search engine, and a third was instructed to write with the assistance of OpenAI's GPT-4o model. The process was repeated four times over several months.

While not yet peer reviewed, the pre-publication research results suggest a striking difference between the brain activity of the three groups and the corresponding creation of neural connectivity patterns.

To put it bluntly and visually, brain activity in the LLM-using cohort was … a bit dim.