The Cognitive Debt Myth
The studies keep coming. AI is making us dumber. Students who use ChatGPT perform worse on tests. Dependency on AI erodes critical thinking.
The latest is MIT’s “cognitive debt” study. ChatGPT users showed lower brain engagement during essay writing. Even the researchers pushed back: “Please do not use words like ‘stupid’, ‘dumb’, ‘brain rot’. We did not use this vocabulary in the paper.”
No, AI doesn’t make you dumber. But it changes what you need to be good at.
What the studies are actually measuring
Can you remember the answer without help? Can you complete the task solo? Do you retain information after the AI is gone?
By these metrics, yes, AI users perform worse. But these metrics assume a world where the tools get taken away - where knowing the syntax matters more than understanding the system. That world is disappearing.
What changes instead
Three years ago I couldn’t read React. The syntax tripped me up, I’d get frustrated and go back to design tools where I knew the rules. Now I can read it. Not because I memorised it - because I stopped needing to. I know what needs to happen, I can articulate it, and AI handles the friction that used to stop me cold.
That’s not offloading thinking. That’s externalising it. Offloading means you stop thinking. Externalising means you think somewhere else.
The valuable skill used to be knowing. Now it’s being able to describe what you want precisely enough to get it. Vague prompts get vague answers, so you sharpen the question, add context, notice the gap between what you think you want and what you need. That process is thinking. It’s just thinking out loud.
The shift
The entry point to adjacent disciplines has collapsed. A designer can work in code. A developer can iterate on copy. The higher-order skills - taste, judgment, knowing good output from bad - were always the ones that mattered. AI just made them more accessible.
Every tool creates dependency. The printing press didn’t make us dumber because we stopped memorising books. The question is whether the dependency lets you operate at a level you couldn’t reach alone.
I ship more. I understand more. I ask better questions than I did three years ago. The skill isn’t knowing. It’s knowing what to ask.
FAQ
3The studies say yes, AI users recall less and perform worse alone. But those metrics assume the tools get taken away. The skill that matters now isn't retention, it's articulation: knowing what you want precisely enough to get it. That's thinking. It just looks different.
A term from MIT's 2025 study on reduced brain engagement during AI-assisted writing. The researchers themselves pushed back on the 'getting dumber' interpretation. It reflects changed cognitive patterns, not diminished capability. The distinction between offloading thinking and externalising it is the whole argument.
Taste. Judgment. Knowing good output from bad. The entry barrier to adjacent disciplines has collapsed: a designer can work in code, a developer can iterate on copy. The higher-order skills were always what separated good from great. AI just makes them more visible.
